Rita Roberts

From the venue:

Amidst bloody battles and political maneuvering, thousands of African Americans spent the Civil War trying to hold their families together. This moving book illuminates that struggle through the letters they exchanged. Despite harsh laws against literacy and brutal practices that broke apart Black families, people found ways to write to each other against all odds. In these pages, readers will meet parents who are losing hope of ever seeing their children again and a husband who walks fifteen miles to visit his wife, enslaved on a different plantation.

Join Atlanta History Center for an Author Talk with Rita Roberts, author of the book I Can’t Wait to Call You My Wife: African American Letters of Love and Family in the Civil War Era.

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