'This is a book I have been waiting, yearning, for. In this important and beautifully written work, Johnson takes up the sorely neglected topic of Black homemaking/peacemaking in the rural South, rural but not unconnected to regional, national, and global webs of circulation – of economies, revolution, and knowledge. It is a powerful story not of people 'run off' but who stayed and fought and found 'warmth under the same old sun.'' Thavolia Glymph, author of Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household