In Landscapes of Freedom, Rebecca Capobianco Toy tells the story of an emblematic community of freedpeople during the Civil War era. Some of the earliest acts of wartime emancipation happened in the Tidewater of Virginia, where enslaved people voted with their feet and escaped the Confederacy by crossing into U.S. Army lines. At Yorktown, Virginia, freedpeople developed their own self-governing enclave near (and in some cases on) the Revolutionary War battlefield. Toy describes that Black community, its formation, and its development well into the twentieth century. She traces the effect of Reconstruction policy and the consequences that its subsequent rollback had on the lives of Black citizens. Toy also documents the Black community's attempts to commemorate its members' role in the Civil War. The Black community fought to retain that memory, one that challenged not only the Lost Cause interpretation of the war but also the federal government's efforts to privilege the Revolutionary memory of Yorktown while ignoring its ongoing role in the story of American freedom.
Rebecca Capobianco Toy received her Ph.D. from The College of William & Mary and currently serves as an interpretation and engagement coordinator for the Washington, D.C., Office of the National Park Service. Her work has appeared in Civil War History. She is the author of Landscapes of Freedom: Restoring the History of Emancipation and Citizenship in Yorktown, Virginia, 1861–1940.
