{"id":49010,"date":"2016-09-09T16:53:12","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T16:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49010"},"modified":"2016-09-09T16:53:12","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T16:53:12","slug":"an-offer-of-my-heart-a-story-of-black-love-after-the-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49010","title":{"rendered":"\u2018An offer of my heart\u2019: A story of black love after the Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/an-offer-of-my-heart-a-story-of-black-love-after-the-civil-war\/2016\/09\/07\/7a566d4c-5a60-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>\u2018An offer of my heart\u2019: A story of black love after the Civil War<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Washington Post<\/a><br \/>\n2016-09-08<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DeNeenLBrown\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>DeNeen L. Brown<\/strong><\/a>, Reporter<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/video\/c\/embed\/de3154d0-752c-11e6-9781-49e591781754\" width=\"480\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One hundred and forty-four years after they were written, the civil rights advocate found the letters in the bottom of an old suitcase, stacked in thin envelopes and tied together by a faded, baby-blue ribbon.<\/p>\n<p>Somebody had preserved them with such care. Laura W. Murphy opened a letter, looked at the date and gasped.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho has anything [written] from 1871 in their possession?\u201d she thought.<\/p>\n<p>The handwriting was exquisite, penned by her great-grandfather in ink that flowed from a quill. In all, there were 12 letters, capturing a courtship between a black man and a black woman six years after the end of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\" target=\"_blank\">Civil War<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"552\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/an-offer-of-my-heart-a-story-of-black-love-after-the-civil-war\/2016\/09\/07\/7a566d4c-5a60-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_1484w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2016\/09\/07\/Local-Enterprise\/Images\/letters0091469758033.jpg?uuid=XaTjbnUcEeaBSbjQUyHbYg\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<small>Laura W. Murphy reads through letters between her great-grandparents, Mary Rebecca Lee and James W. Hughes, which were exchanged during <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction_Era\" target=\"_blank\">Reconstruction<\/a>. (Sarah L. Voisin\/<em>The Washington Post<\/em>)<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/an-offer-of-my-heart-a-story-of-black-love-after-the-civil-war\/2016\/09\/07\/7a566d4c-5a60-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018An offer of my heart\u2019: A story of black love after the Civil War The Washington Post 2016-09-08 DeNeen L. Brown, Reporter One hundred and forty-four years after they were written, the civil rights advocate found the letters in the bottom of an old suitcase, stacked in thin envelopes and tied together by a faded, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,6940,20],"tags":[4203,4202,24942,24941,24940,24943,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-49010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-deneen-brown","tag-deneen-l-brown","tag-james-w-hughes","tag-laura-murphy","tag-laura-w-murphy","tag-mary-rebecca-lee","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49011,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49010\/revisions\/49011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}