Freedom's First GenerationIn this age of affirmative action and increasing complexity in black white relations, this pioneering study of Hampton, Virginia, tells the story of what race relations in postbellum America might have been. Here, if only for a time, the promises of Emancipation and Reconstruction were fulfilled. Why was the American Dream realized by blacks in Hampton and not elsewhere? Engs follows a community of freedmen over a thirty year period to answer this