Passing through Mathews County, Virginia, one of eleven states that seceded (separated themselves) from the Union to become the Confederacy, a Union officer encountered a slave woman named Eliza Sparks. Stopping to admire her baby, the officer asked for the child's name. The woman answered that the baby's name was Charlie Sparks, just like his father's. As the officer rode off he called out, "Goodbye, Mrs. Sparks!" As recorded in Been in the Storm Too Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, the woman was pleasantly surprised to be shown such respect by a white person. "Now what do you think of dat?" she said. "Dey all call me Mrs. Sparks!" In the days before the Civil War (1861–65), the African American people who had lived in the Southern United States for over two hundred years as slaves were...