“Administering Freedom is an exceptional piece of scholarship — a story both fascinating and largely untold . . . . superb.”—Matthew E. Stanley, Jacobin
“Rarely does a book make an original and seminal contribution to a well-worn field, the history of emancipation.”—American Historical Review
“In an important, engaging, and well-researched book, Dale Kretz makes a valuable contribution to this scholarship and offers a distinctive, innovative perspective on African Americans' long battle for full citizenship.”–Journal of American History
“Administering Freedom deftly blends legal, political, and social history. Kretz weaves together an extensive array of sources. . . . [He] has written an incisive, timely book that merits a place on many syllabi and library shelves.”—Journal of African American History
“A compellingly told history of state power that displays how newly freed people contributed to the centralization of state bureaucracy. . . . [A] worthwhile and enlightening contribution to the post-Reconstruction period and the legal history of freedpeople.”–Journal of Southern History
“A significant addition to scholarship on the Reconstruction era, the expansion of the federal government, and the history of welfare in the United States.”—Journal of the Civil War Era
“An incredible story of the attempts to devise collective solutions to problems left by the demise of slavery and how those problems were instead dealt with in a piecemeal way. Filled with novel source material and archival research, Administering Freedom is a staple book for anyone teaching African American history and histories of the American South.”—Bruce Baker, coeditor of After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South
“A remarkable achievement and invaluable contribution to the study of emancipation, Reconstruction, and citizenship. Kretz has crafted cohesive story out of many varied histories, weaving together the narratives of former slaves' encounters with federal government agencies and drawing a clear line from the Freedmen’s Bureau to the Social Security Act of 1935.”—Elizabeth Regosin, author of Freedom’s Promise: Ex-Slave Families and Citizenship in the Age of Emancipation
