Cultivating a new South

"Born into a Massachusetts abolitionist family, Abbie Holmes Christensen (1852-1938) epitomized the Yankee reformer spirit of the nineteenth century. Well educated and passionate about human rights, she moved to Beaufort, South Carolina, with her parents in 1864 as part of the Port Royal Experiment. In 1870, as a teenager, she began teaching black students.

During her life she labored to educate South Carolina's African Americans, fought for women's equal participation in politics, and eventually took a role in the Socialist Party of America.".

"Tetzlaff chronicles Abbie Holmes's education at Mount Holyoke College, her return to Beaufort, and her marriage in 1875 to Niels Christensen, a Danish immigrant and former captain of "Colored Troops" in the Union army. Tetzlaff depicts the intensity of Christensen's private and public life as the mother of six children and as a tireless reformer engaged in the temperance and women's suffrage movements.

Together with black South Carolinians, Christensen did pioneering work as a Gullah folklorist and established an African American agricultural school and hospital. In cooperation with white southern women, she promoted the conservation of wildlife and the greening of town spaces.".

"As Tetzlaff recounts an uncommon life story, she also sheds light on the time and place in which Christensen worked. Through Christensen's biography, Tetzlaff illumines the collapse, recovery, and second collapse of agriculture in South Carolina's lowcountry, African Americans' brief equality and second subjugation under the forces of Jim Crow, and the transformation of Beaufort County by industry, migration and national politics."--BOOK JACKET.