Emilie Davis’s Civil War
The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863–1865
Emilie Davis was a free African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War. She worked as a seamstress, attended the Institute for Colored Youth, and was an active member of her community.
She lived an average life in her day, but what sets her apart is that she kept a diary. Her daily entries from 1863 to 1865 touch on the momentous and the mundane: she discusses her own and her community’s reactions to events of the war, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as the minutiae of social life in Philadelphia’s black community.
Her diaries allow the reader to experience the Civil War in “real time” and are a counterpoint to more widely known diaries of the period kept by elite white women.
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016.
Praise and reviews
“Emilie Davis’s Civil War offers a rare ‘interior’ view of the daily life and doings of a young black Philadelphian during the Civil War. In brief but regular daily jottings, Emilie Davis recorded the rhythms of life in the city; the associations in clubs, school, and church that formed the marrow of the black community; the feelings she had about loved ones, friends, and public figures; and moments when the war brought home death and dangers. This book commands attention because sustained private views from black women are few, and those few we have are from more educated and affluent writers than Davis. The diaries also benefit from a perceptive introduction by Judith Giesberg and excellent annotation throughout. The result is a book that is at once a rarity and a necessity. It allows us to enter a place and meet a people we hardly know―black Philadelphia during wartime―and by doing so, in critical ways, it turns the narrative of the home front upside down and inside out.”
– RANDALL M. MILLER
Editor of Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth
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