A Stronger KinshipA Stronger Kinship
One Town's Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith
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Book, 2007
Current format, Book, 2007, , Available .Book, 2007
Current format, Book, 2007, , Available . Offered in 0 more formatsA close-up study of Covert, Michigan, describes how this small town, beginning in the 1860s, created a unique, fully integrated community that emphasized complete equality, a sharing of power and wealth between blacks and whites, and racial intermarriage, drawing on diaries, oral history, and period records to describe how residents made this town work in the face of the era's pervasive racism.
Presents the story of the nineteenth-century community of Covert, Michigan, describing how its mixed-race citizens lived in harmony and enjoyed completely integrated schools and churches and shared power and wealth between races.
In the heartland of the United States 150 years ago, where racism and hatred were common, a community decided there could be a different America. Here schools and churches were completely integrated, blacks and whites intermarried, and power and wealth were shared by both races. But for this to happen, the town&;s citizens had to keep secrets, break the laws of the world outside, and sweep aside fear and embrace hope. In a historical-detective feat, Anna-Lisa Cox uncovers the heartening story of this community that took the road untaken. Beginning in the 1860s, the people of Covert, Michigan, attempted to do what then seemed impossible: love one&;s neighbor&;regardless of skin color&;as oneself. Drawing on diaries, oral histories, and contemporary records, Cox gives us intimate glimpses of Covert&;s people, from William Conner, the Civil War veteran who went on to become Michigan's first black justice of the peace, to Elizabeth Gillard, who, shipwrecked and washed onto Covert's shores, ultimately came to love the unusual community she would call home. In bringing these and other stories of this small town to light, Cox presents a vision of what our nation might have been, and could be.
Presents the story of the nineteenth-century community of Covert, Michigan, describing how its mixed-race citizens lived in harmony and enjoyed completely integrated schools and churches and shared power and wealth between races.
In the heartland of the United States 150 years ago, where racism and hatred were common, a community decided there could be a different America. Here schools and churches were completely integrated, blacks and whites intermarried, and power and wealth were shared by both races. But for this to happen, the town&;s citizens had to keep secrets, break the laws of the world outside, and sweep aside fear and embrace hope. In a historical-detective feat, Anna-Lisa Cox uncovers the heartening story of this community that took the road untaken. Beginning in the 1860s, the people of Covert, Michigan, attempted to do what then seemed impossible: love one&;s neighbor&;regardless of skin color&;as oneself. Drawing on diaries, oral histories, and contemporary records, Cox gives us intimate glimpses of Covert&;s people, from William Conner, the Civil War veteran who went on to become Michigan's first black justice of the peace, to Elizabeth Gillard, who, shipwrecked and washed onto Covert's shores, ultimately came to love the unusual community she would call home. In bringing these and other stories of this small town to light, Cox presents a vision of what our nation might have been, and could be.
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- Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
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