New Books In African American Studies

We often focus on enslaved people of color but Dr. Warren E. Milteer Jr.’s Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South (UNC Press, 2021) directs our attention to the people of color who were free -- and the complex web of intersecting values that led to significant inconsistencies in how they were treated and the institutions they built for themselves. Although many white southerners prized the racial hierarchy, Milteer insists that they also recognized other forms of hierarchy such as “gender, wealth, reputation, occupation, and family connections.” Engaging how these other forms of hierarchy intersected with racial categorization creates a rich history of how free people of color in the South negotiated legal regimes, political ideas, and institutions to carve out as much freedom as possible. Rejecting laws and political rhetoric as the only evidence for discerning the viewpoints of everyday people, Beyond Slavery’s Shadows places everyday people in their wider political and social contexts b