HENRY ADAMS was born into slavery in Georgia in 1843 and brought to Louisiana at age seven. Emancipated in June 1865, he learned to read and write while serving in the army. In 1869 Adams settled in Caddo Parish and worked as a wood cutter, mill operator, and sometime plantation manager. He also became active in "the committee," a secretive group of Black workingmen dedicated to learning "the true condition of our race." There is no record of him after 1884.

STEVEN HAHN is professor of history at New York University and the author of A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (2016) and Illiberal America: A History (2024). A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003) was awarded the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes.