Norah's Handkerchief: Placing Last Seen Ads after the Civil War

by Regine Sawyer

Norah’s Handkerchief follows Norah, a determined and hopeful young woman who was freed from slavery at the end of the Civil War. Norah learned to read and write while enslaved, and after her enslavers found out, they sold her away from her mother. After the War, will Norah be able to find her long-lost family? Norah’s Handkerchief focuses on the aftermath of emancipation for newly freed Black people. We often discuss emancipation as a one-time event, but it was an ongoing process in which people continually seized and asserted their freedom. This graphic inquiry highlights the resilience that newly freed people exhibited in trying to establish new beginnings for themselves and their loved ones. After reading this book, you will know how formerly enslaved people used literacy, faith, and community networks to search for their families, and how their resilience reshaped the meaning of freedom in the years following the Civil War.