when she said (to paraphrase)- they had no choice in surnames, these were from their owners, but instead chose to come up with first names for their children.
I should find the exact quote;

"Black naming practices, so often impugned by
mainstream society, are themselves
an act of resistance. Our last names
belong to the white people who once
owned us. That is why the insistence
of many black Americans, particularly those most marginalized, to give
our children names that we create,
that are neither European nor from
Africa, a place we have never been,
is an act of self- determination."


Im mainly interested in reconstruction because she talks about attempts to create a more perfect union
by people who were half a step from bondage.
im amazed, awed and highly impressed by the profound humanity in all this.
;

- "With federal troops tempering widespread white
violence, black Southerners started branches of the Equal Rights League — one of the nation’s first human
rights organizations — to fight discrimination and organize voters; they headed in droves to the polls, where they placed other formerly enslaved people into seats that their enslavers had once held.

...They helped pass more equitable tax legislation and laws that
prohibited discrimination in public transportation, accommodation
and housing.
Perhaps their biggest achievement was the establishment
of that most democratic of American institutions: the public school.

..., the years directly after slavery saw the greatest expansion
of human and civil rights this nation would ever see.
In 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, making the United States one of the last nations in the Americas to outlaw slavery.
The following year, black Americans, exerting their new
political power, pushed white legislators to pass the Civil Rights Act,
the nation’s first such law and one of the most expansive pieces of civil rights legislation Congress has ever passed.
It codified black American citizenship for the fi rst time, prohibited housing discrimination and gave all Americans the right to buy and inherit property, make and enforce contracts and seek redress from courts.
In 1868, Congress ratifi ed the 14th Amendment, ensuring citizenship to any person born in the United States"
---
America would've been a very different place today if white southerners hadn't prevailed and the jim crow era had never happened.
its a lot to take in and think about.