Gregory Mixon – författare

In Show Thyself a Man, Gregory Mixon explores the ways African Americans in postbellum Georgia used the militia as a vehicle to secure full citizenship, respect, and a more stable place in society. As citizen-soldiers, black men were empowered to get involved in politics, secure their own financial independence, and publicly commemorate black freedom with celebrations such as Emancipation Day.

White Georgians, however, used the militia as a different symbol of freedom--to ensure the postwar white right to rule. This book is a forty-year history of black militia service in Georgia and the determined disbandment process that whites undertook to destroy it, connecting this chapter of the post-emancipation South to the larger history of militia participation by African-descendant people through the Western hemisphere and Latin America.

The history of Black militias in Georgia after the Civil War and their importance in defining citizenship

In Show Thyself a Man, Gregory Mixon explores the ways in which African Americans in postbellum Georgia used militia service after the Civil War to define freedom and citizenship. Independent militias empowered them to get involved in politics, secure their own financial independence, and mobilize for self-defense.As whites and blacks competed for state sponsorship of their militia companies, African Americans sought to establish their roles as citizens of their country and their state. They proved their efficiency as militiamen and publicly commemorated black freedom and progress with celebrations such as Emancipation Day and the anniversaries of the Civil War Amendments.White Georgians, however, used the militia as a different symbol of freedom—to ensure not only the postwar white right to rule but to assert states’ rights. This social, political, and military history examines how Black militias were integral to the process of liberation, Reconstruction, and nation-building that defined the latter half of the nineteenth century South. A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller