Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860

Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860 PDF

Author: Tommy Bogger

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780813916903

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Very few studies of free blacks have attempted to interpret the actions and events affecting them from their own perspectives. At the same time. the search for understanding the antebellum black experience in the South usually has centered on slaves. In Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860, Tommy L. Bogger portrays lives somewhere between slavery and freedom. A free black community of skilled artisans and semi-skilled laborers emerged in Norfolk around 1800. Some free blacks earned the respect of leading white businessmen, and many enjoyed easy access to credit and steady employment. They showed no hesitation in suing recalcitrant debtors -- black or white -- and until 1805 they could count on the cooperation of court officials in helping them to collect. But from then on. free blacks experienced a steady decline in status that continued throughout the antebellum period. Legal restraints were placed on them at the same time that Norfolk's economy stagnated. and white immigrants arriving in the 1830s entered fields once monopolized by blacks. By the 1850s the free black community was sunk in hopelessness and despair. Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860 discusses the active roles that blacks played in creating their community, contradicting prevalent images of free blacks at the mercy of whites. While previous studies of Virginia's free blacks have focused on Richmond or Petersburg, developments in Norfolk's free black community also merit analysis. Norfolk also offers the advantage of a population large enough to provide a reliable data base yet small enough to preserve the stories of individual lives. Those interested in African-American history, Virginia history, orthe South in general will find this book a valuable new resource.

Free Blacks of Lynchburg, Virginia, 1805-1865

Free Blacks of Lynchburg, Virginia, 1805-1865 PDF

Author: Ted Delaney

Publisher: Old City Cemetery

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9781890306274

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The defining feature of this work is the collection of official registrations, records of emancipations, orders of apprenticeship, tax lists and other local court records of free people of color residing in Lynchburg from 1805 through the Civil War. A remarkable primary source for genealogical and historical research. -- Publisher.

Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830-1860

Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830-1860 PDF

Author: Luther Porter Jackson

Publisher:

Published: 1942

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

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The free Negro in Virginia before the Civil War was a by-product of slavery. During one period he was granted certain civil rights and had many economic opportunities; at another period these rights were withdrawn and the opportunities were diminished. The span of time in which the free Negro is thought to have suffered the most severe restrictions is that treated in this study, from 1830 to 1860. During this period limitations were many, but they were largely legal and political. Favorable economic conditions mitigated the force of the law and enabled the free Negroes to advance along with the general upward movement in the state. The advancement made by the free Negro, in spite of the law, is the theme of this study. -- Introduction.

The Free Negro in Virginia 1619-1865

The Free Negro in Virginia 1619-1865 PDF

Author: John H. Russell

Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1605206539

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It is one of the least commonly known facts about the Civil War: there were many, many free negroes living in slaveholding states before the Emancipation Proclamation. This monograph on that surprising reality, originally published in 1913, draws on such firsthand documents as court records, contemporary literature and newspaper accounts, and other sources to create the first such portrait of this nearly forgotten chapter of African-American history. From the various origins of the "free negro" classes to their legal and social statuses-regarding everything from their right of travel to their relationship with their enslaved fellows-this "should supply some of the facts upon which the history of the negro race in the United States must be based," wrote author JOHN HENDERSON RUSSELL (b. 1884) in his preface.

"Myne Owne Ground"

Author: T. H. Breen

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0195175379

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During the earliest decades of Virginia history, some men and women who arrived in the New World as slaves achieved freedom and formed a stable community on the Eastern shore. Holding their own with white neighbors for much of the 17th century, these free blacks purchased freedom for family members, amassed property, established plantations, and acquired laborers. T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes reconstruct a community in which ownership of property was as significant as skin color in structuring social relations. Why this model of social interaction in race relations did not survive makes this a critical and urgent work of history.

Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South

Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South PDF

Author: Diane Miller Sommerville

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2005-10-12

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0807876259

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Challenging notions of race and sexuality presumed to have originated and flourished in the slave South, Diane Miller Sommerville traces the evolution of white southerners' fears of black rape by examining actual cases of black-on-white rape throughout the nineteenth century. Sommerville demonstrates that despite draconian statutes, accused black rapists frequently avoided execution or castration, largely due to intervention by members of the white community. This leniency belies claims that antebellum white southerners were overcome with anxiety about black rape. In fact, Sommerville argues, there was great fluidity across racial and sexual lines as well as a greater tolerance among whites for intimacy between black males and white females. According to Sommerville, pervasive misogyny fused with class prejudices to shape white responses to accusations of black rape even during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, a testament to the staying power of ideas about poor women's innate depravity. Based predominantly on court records and supporting legal documentation, Sommerville's examination forces a reassessment of long-held assumptions about the South and race relations as she remaps the social and racial terrain on which southerners--black and white, rich and poor--related to one another over the long nineteenth century.

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