Tet Offensive: How Lyndon B. Johnson Won the Battle but Lost the War

Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Rice University
Abstract

Historians have often depicted the relationship between freed African Americans and Freedmen’s Bureau Agents as being a relationship where African Americans often depended on bureau agents for protection, guidance in understanding politics and labor, etc. This paper argues that bureau agents and freedpeople had a more complex and interdependent relationship in which bureau agents also depended on African Americans. Black civilians served as informants to bureau agents providing them with important local knowledge to better understand the physical spaces in which they operated. This paper will rely primarily on the assistant state commissioner’s Freedmen’s Bureau Records for Texas and the Texas Field Office Records to support these claims. Bureau agents used this information to request assets from the state commissioners in the form of military manpower, supplies, and other things to help implement Reconstruction policies in Texas in an effort to extend liberties associated with citizenship to newly freed African Americans.

Description
Submission to the Friends of Fondren Library Undergraduate Research Awards, 2017.
This paper was originally prepared for Course HIST 291 (Fall 2016): 20TH C. AMERICAN PRESIDENTS, given by Professor Douglas Brinkley, Department of History.
Advisor
Degree
Type
Keywords
History
Citation

Wang, Tim. "Tet Offensive: How Lyndon B. Johnson Won the Battle but Lost the War." (2017) Rice University: https://hdl.handle.net/1911/94003.

Has part(s)
Forms part of
Published Version
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Citable link to this page