“In this spectacular book Thulani Davis presents a framework for not only rewriting the Civil War and Reconstruction, but for understanding the entire history of the Black freedom movement extending into the twentieth century. As groundbreaking as W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction, The Emancipation Circuit is a masterpiece.”
~Robin D. G. Kelley, author of, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression
"The Emancipation Circuit offers a powerful reimagining of the networks that helped to secure Black freedom during the Civil War and Reconstruction: It is a history about enslaved people’s efforts to free themselves and about their local struggles to give substance to their legal emancipation, as well as a mapping of the geography that enabled their achievements and the circuits that spread their political goals like pollen in the wind. . . . The Emancipation Circuit reminds today’s activists that any organizing for Black freedom must be multifaceted and must pursue local aims while traveling along preexisting networks to become a broader collective effort."
~Elias Rodriques, The Nation
"Thulani Davis’s The Emancipation Circuit is an important contribution to Black social and political thought that helps center Black women and Black resistance of United States history and social movements."
~Krystal Batelaan, Ethnic and Racial Studies
"The Emancipation Circuit provides a convincing analysis of the spatial history of emancipation ... a valuable reference for future research."
~Keith D. McCall, Journal of Southern History
