Esther W. Douglass collection

This collection consists of photocopies of materials in the Michigan Historical Collections at the University of Michigan. Esther W. Douglass was a teacher and missionary for the American Missionary Association in Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee for 31 years. Included in the collection are 22 outgoing letters to family members, 32 incoming letters from her family and such persons as Booker T. Washington and Billy Sunday. Also present is the biography written by her great-nephew, James Adams, a diary and memoirs, a speech on the Women's christian Temperance Union, poems, religious notations, news clippings, and miscellaneous items. Subjects deal with the period of Reconstruction generally - the life of the ex-slaves, their need for and desire for education and religious instruction, the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee, the night riders in the South, and the attitudes of the Whites toward those who attempted to educate or assist the freedmen.