Impressive use of documents

She is adept at accessing the experience of those without a voice or a direct record.  Since Harriet Anthony was poor and black, we don’t know as much about her as we do about the Martin family.  But, armed with an awareness of how the culture worked at the time, she was able to weave together sources such as newspaper articles and Freedman’s Bureau records to depict her experience.  Eg, when a Bureau agent asked permission to recruit “able bodied negro women” and when agent De Gress considered race, not gender in investigating unequal punishment for vagrancy.