Professor publishes New York Times op-ed about the shortcomings of emancipation policies

History professor Jim Downs, author of
History professor Jim Downs, author of "Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction."

History professor Jim Downs, author of “Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction,” has published an op-ed in the New York Times about the shortcomings of emancipation policies.

Read the op-ed.

Downs argues that President Lincoln failed to consider the reality freed slaves would face, and writes that many actually became sick and died at the moment of freedom.

“As the nation continues to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, we must remember that even though we celebrate emancipation as the end of chattel slavery, the policies that enacted it were failures,” he wrote.

“Sick from Freedom” was also the subject of a New York Times feature in June.


January 10, 2013