“A marvelous story for all readers with a taste for the ironies, the ambiguities, and the surprises of history”—C. Vann Woodward

“Historical writing at its best”—David Bradley New York Times Book Review

This fascinating history set in the Reconstruction South is a testament to African American resilience, fortitude, and independence. It recounts the story of the experiment at Davis Bend, formerly Joseph Davis’s plantation along the Mississippi near Vicksburg.

After the war the slaves who had toiled in these fields belonging to the Confederate president’s brother became the owners of his lands, some of the most fertile cotton acreage in America. From their utopian communitarian haven rose the third most successful cotton operation in the entire South from Reconstruction to World War I.

This miracle at Davis Bend occurred when blacks were accorded the opportunity to pursue th