Williamsburg Regional Library

Family bonds, free Blacks and re-enslavement law in Antebellum Virginia, Ted Maris-Wolf

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-307) and index

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

facsimiles

index present

non fiction

Family bonds

bibliography

1325231845

Ted Maris-Wolf

free Blacks and re-enslavement law in Antebellum Virginia

Between 1854 and 1864, more than a hundred free African Americans in Virginia proposed to enslave themselves and, in some cases, their children. Ted Maris-Wolf explains this phenomenon as a response to state legislation that forced free African Americans to make a terrible choice: leave enslaved loved ones behind for freedom elsewhere or seek a way to remain in their communities, even by renouncing legal freedom. Maris-Wolf paints an intimate portrait of these people whose lives, liberty, and use of Virginia law offer new understandings of race and place in the upper South. Maris-Wolf shows how free African Americans quietly challenged prevailing notions of racial restriction and exclusion, weaving themselves into the social and economic fabric of their neighborhoods and claiming, through unconventional or counterintuitive means, certain basic rights of residency and family. Employing records from nearly every Virginia county, he pieces together the remarkable lives of Watkins Love, Jane Payne, and other African Americans who made themselves essential parts of their communities and, in some cases, gave up their legal freedom in order to maintain family and community ties

Introduction -- Freedom bound in a new republic -- Black clients, white attorneys -- The Doswell brothers demand a law -- Family and freedom in the neighborhood -- To Liberia and back -- Family bonds and Civil War -- The barber of Boydton -- Conclusion

adult