Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: the motherless child in the post-reconstruction United States
  • "The blessed relief of tears": maternal redemption in Contending forces
  • Motherlessness in the nation's capital: the national father in Hagar's daughter
  • "Somethin's gwine happen": national warning in Winona
  • Finding mother Africa: of one blood and Hopkins's national vision
  • Coda.