Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery

Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery PDF Author: John Garrison Marks
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643361244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This historical study examines how free people of color in Charleston and Cartagena challenged the foundations of racial hierarchies in the Americas. Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference challenged the foundations of white authority—and linked the Americas together. In Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery, John Garrison Marks examines how these individuals built lives for themselves and their families in two of the Atlantic World’s most important urban centers: Cartagena, along the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, and Charleston, in the lowcountry of North America’s Atlantic coast. Built on research conducted on three continents, this book takes a comparative approach to the contours of black freedom in the Americas. It examines how various paths to freedom, responses to the Haitian Revolution, engagement in skilled labor, involvement with social institutions, and the role of the church all helped shape the experiences of free people of color in the Atlantic World. As free people of color claimed rights, privileges, and distinctions not typically afforded to those of African descent, they engaged with white elites and state authorities in ways undermined whites’ claims of racial superiority.

Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery

Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery PDF Author: John Garrison Marks
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643361244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This historical study examines how free people of color in Charleston and Cartagena challenged the foundations of racial hierarchies in the Americas. Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference challenged the foundations of white authority—and linked the Americas together. In Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery, John Garrison Marks examines how these individuals built lives for themselves and their families in two of the Atlantic World’s most important urban centers: Cartagena, along the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, and Charleston, in the lowcountry of North America’s Atlantic coast. Built on research conducted on three continents, this book takes a comparative approach to the contours of black freedom in the Americas. It examines how various paths to freedom, responses to the Haitian Revolution, engagement in skilled labor, involvement with social institutions, and the role of the church all helped shape the experiences of free people of color in the Atlantic World. As free people of color claimed rights, privileges, and distinctions not typically afforded to those of African descent, they engaged with white elites and state authorities in ways undermined whites’ claims of racial superiority.

Criminalizing a Race

Criminalizing a Race PDF Author: Charshee Charlotte Lawrence-McIntyre
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781879831087
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description


A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Race, Slavery, and Free Blacks

A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Race, Slavery, and Free Blacks PDF Author: Loren Schweninger
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780886926922
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Microform catalog for a collection of 2751 petitions assembled by the Race and Slavery Petitions Project, University of North Carolina at Greensboro from state archives in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi.

Black Reconstruction in America (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois)

Black Reconstruction in America (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois) PDF Author: W. E. B. Du Bois
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019938567X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1134

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Book Description
W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history. Black Reconstruction in America tells and interprets the story of the twenty years of Reconstruction from the point of view of newly liberated African Americans. Though lambasted by critics at the time of its publication in 1935, Black Reconstruction has only grown in historical and literary importance. In the 1960s it joined the canon of the most influential revisionist historical works. Its greatest achievement is weaving a credible, lyrical historical narrative of the hostile and politically fraught years of 1860-1880 with a powerful critical analysis of the harmful effects of democracy, including Jim Crow laws and other injustices. With a series introduction by editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and an introduction by David Levering Lewis, this edition is essential for anyone interested in African American history.

Almost Free

Almost Free PDF Author: Eva Sheppard Wolf
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820343641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
In Almost Free, Eva Sheppard Wolf uses the story of Samuel Johnson, a free black man from Virginia attempting to free his family, to add detail and depth to our understanding of the lives of free blacks in the South. There were several paths to freedom for slaves, each of them difficult. After ten years of elaborate dealings and negotiations, Johnson earned manumission in August 1812. An illiterate “mulatto” who had worked at the tavern in Warrenton as a slave, Johnson as a freeman was an anomaly, since free blacks made up only 3 percent of Virginia’s population. Johnson stayed in Fauquier County and managed to buy his enslaved family, but the law of the time required that they leave Virginia if Johnson freed them. Johnson opted to stay. Because slaves’ marriages had no legal standing, Johnson was not legally married to his enslaved wife, and in the event of his death his family would be sold to new owners. Johnson’s story dramatically illustrates the many harsh realities and cruel ironies faced by blacks in a society hostile to their freedom. Wolf argues that despite the many obstacles Johnson and others faced, race relations were more flexible during the early American republic than is commonly believed. It could actually be easier for a free black man to earn the favor of elite whites than it would be for blacks in general in the post-Reconstruction South. Wolf demonstrates the ways in which race was constructed by individuals in their day-to-day interactions, arguing that racial status was not simply a legal fact but a fluid and changeable condition. Almost Free looks beyond the majority experience, focusing on those at society’s edges to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of freedom in the slaveholding South. A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication

Lincoln on Race and Slavery

Lincoln on Race and Slavery PDF Author: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140083208X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
From acclaimed scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the most comprehensive collection of Lincoln's writings on race and slavery Generations of Americans have debated the meaning of Abraham Lincoln's views on race and slavery. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation and supported a constitutional amendment to outlaw slavery, yet he also harbored grave doubts about the intellectual capacity of African Americans, publicly used the n-word until at least 1862, and favored permanent racial segregation. In this book—the first complete collection of Lincoln's important writings on both race and slavery—readers can explore these contradictions through Lincoln's own words. Acclaimed Harvard scholar and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis Gates, Jr., presents the full range of Lincoln's views, gathered from his private letters, speeches, official documents, and even race jokes, arranged chronologically from the late 1830s to the 1860s. Complete with definitive texts, rich historical notes, and an original introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this book charts the progress of a war within Lincoln himself. We witness his struggles with conflicting aims and ideas—a hatred of slavery and a belief in the political equality of all men, but also anti-black prejudices and a determination to preserve the Union even at the cost of preserving slavery. We also watch the evolution of his racial views, especially in reaction to the heroic fighting of black Union troops. At turns inspiring and disturbing, Lincoln on Race and Slavery is indispensable for understanding what Lincoln's views meant for his generation—and what they mean for our own.

Race and Liberty in the New Nation

Race and Liberty in the New Nation PDF Author: Eva Sheppard Wolf
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807131946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
"By examining how ordinary Virginia citizens grappled with the vexing problem of slavery in a society dedicated to universal liberty, Eva Sheppard Wolf broadens our understanding of such important concepts as freedom, slavery, emancipation, and race in the early years of the American republic. She frames her study around the moment between slavery and liberty - emancipation - shedding new light on the complicated relations between whites and blacks in a slave society." "Wolf argues that during the post-Revolutionary period, white Virginians understood both liberty and slavery to be racial concepts more than political ideas. Through an in-depth analysis of archival records, particularly those dealing with manumission between 1782 and 1806, she reveals how these entrenched beliefs shaped both thought and behavior. In spite of qualms about slavery, white Virginians repeatedly demonstrated their unwillingness to abolish the institution." "The manumission law of 1782 eased restrictions on individual emancipation and made possible the liberation of thousands, but Wolf discovers that far fewer slaves were freed in Virginia than previously thought. Those who were emancipated posed a disturbing social, political, and even moral problem in the minds of whites. Where would ex-slaves fit in a society that could not conceive of black liberty? As Wolf points out, even those few white Virginians who proffered emancipation plans always suggested sending freed slaves to some other place. Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831 led to a public debate over ending slavery, after which discussions of emancipation in the Old Dominion largely disappeared as the eastern slaveholding elite tightened its grip on political power in the state." "This well-informed and carefully crafted book outlines important and heretofore unexamined changes in whites' views of blacks and liberty in the new nation. By linking the Revolutionary and antebellum eras, it shows how white attitudes hardened during the half-century that followed the declaration that "all men are created equal.""--BOOK JACKET.

Witness for Freedom

Witness for Freedom PDF Author: C. Peter Ripley
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807864358
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Encompassing a broad range of African American voices, from Frederick Douglass to anonymous fugitive slaves, this collection collects eighty-nine exceptional documents that represent the best of the five-volume Black Abolitionist Papers. In these compelling texts African Americans tell their own stories of the struggle to end slavery and claim their rights as American citizens, of the battle against colonization and the "back to Africa" movement, and of their troubled relationship with the federal government.

Family or Freedom

Family or Freedom PDF Author: Emily West
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813136938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In the antebellum South, the presence of free people of color was problematic to the white population. Not only were they possible assistants to enslaved people and potential members of the labor force; their very existence undermined popular justifications for slavery. It is no surprise that, by the end of the Civil War, nine Southern states had enacted legal provisions for the "voluntary" enslavement of free blacks. What is surprising to modern sensibilities and perplexing to scholars is that some individuals did petition to rescind their freedom. Family or Freedom investigates the incentives for free African Americans living in the antebellum South to sacrifice their liberty for a life in bondage. Author Emily West looks at the many factors influencing these dire decisions -- from desperate poverty to the threat of expulsion -- and demonstrates that the desire for family unity was the most important consideration for African Americans who submitted to voluntary enslavement. The first study of its kind to examine the phenomenon throughout the South, this meticulously researched volume offers the most thorough exploration of this complex issue to date.

Race, Slavery and the Civil War

Race, Slavery and the Civil War PDF Author: James Oliver Horton
Publisher: Virginia Civil War 150
ISBN: 0983401209
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
From 1861 to 1865, the Civil War was fought in ten thousand places across this nation. More than three million Americans fought in it, and more than six hundred thousand men died in it. The Civil War has been given many names: the War Between the States, the Second American Revolution, and the War of the Rebellion. By whatever name, it was unquestionably the most important event in the life of our nation. It saw the end of slavery and the downfall of a southern planter aristocracy. It was the watershed of a new political and economic order and the beginning of big industry, big business, and big government. It was the first modern war and, for Americans, the costliest. --jacket.