Few diaries kept by African Americans during the late 19th century have survived, but those that have endured provide a unique glimpse into the everyday life of free African Americans of the time.
Recently the Reginald F. Lewis Museum hosted Dr. Karsonya Whitehead, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Loyola University Maryland, who spoke about her 2014 book Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis, examining the three diaries that the twenty-one year old freeborn woman kept from 1863 to 1865. Today, she reflects on what we can learn from this primary source and