Family is a bedrock of human civilization. After all, it’s where we first learn to care for ourselves, work for others, and socialize among each other. However, life is not always easy on families, and many eventually separate as time proceeds. Separation often takes a heavy toll. For those who suffered under slavery, dehumanizing conditions continually forced separations among spouses, parents, and children. On top of that, the Civil War caused a social upheaval that’s tragically normal for war zones. After freedom was granted, stability was hard to come by, and the end of Reconstruction only made matters worse.
In the antebellum American south, whites casually cast aside black pain by surmising that blacks did not develop deep familial bonds. Indeed, even today, one can hear similar sentiments casually made about the “weak” nature of black families. Judith Giesberg seeks to correct this mistaken sentiment by providing enthralling historical examples of how many blacks sought husbands, wives, parents, and children through newspaper ads for up to 50 years after emancipation.
The ads that Giesberg bases this book on are relatively short – a few sentences each. This book displays them at the start of each chapter, and readers can be excused if they find them unimpressive. Yet Giesberg plumbs them to an extraordinarily deep level. She finds other mentions of the seekers in the historical record; she empathetically explores the social bonds that drove people towards freedom decades after emancipation; and she provides historical context on both local and national levels to instruct. She weaves these approaches into a tapestry that realistically portrays the hardships of new freedom among a vindictive class of former white “masters.” She shows the deeply human longing and resiliency that undergird these queries.
Although Giesberg seems to extract all that exists about each of these brief narratives, high levels of detail often trump moving the plot along. That is, it reads like an academic history more than a gripping tale. This book could have benefitted from more of a central storyline. As it stands, it’s more of an anthology around a common theme and structure. The historical analyses are excellent, and she certainly enlivened my imagination about how enslavement oppressed many lives – and oppresses us still today. The stories of how much this “Freedom Generation” overcame will inspire readers for decades to come.
Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families
By Judith Giesberg
Copyright (c) 2025
Simon & Schuster
ISBN13 9781982174323
Length: 336 pages
Genre: American History
www.amazon.com