The Penn Bookstore Homecoming Weekend Panel Discussion

"Sick From Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction"

Jim Downs, Connecticut College
Herman Beavers, Dept. of English, University of Pennsylvania
Kathleen Brown, Dept. of History, University of Pennsylvania

In “Sick Freedom,” Downs recovers the untold story of emancipation and its devastating consequences for a vast number of newly freed people.  Drawing on research into the Medical Division of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Downs shows how the collapse of the plantation economy released a plague of lethal diseases.  Through the migration journey, African-Americans encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition and exposure.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please visit www.upenn.edu/bookstore or contact Risa Levitt at rkredo@exchange.upenn.edu