Free people of color

2 May 2014 On the eve of America's Civil War, roughly one out of every eight African-Americans was considered free—either freeborn or emancipated from slavery. The census of 1860 identified 488,079 Americans as ...

17 February 2014 When a tax roll is arranged alphabetically—or semi-alphabetically by first letter of surname—that makes it easy to find a person of interest, right? Wrong! If we simply search under the "proper" letter of the alphabet, we'll miss much.

24 January 2014 When we set out to study slaves and freedmen in antebellum America, we learn quickly the importance of knowing the laws. Not the suppositions we hear right and left, not the broad generalizations we "learn" from the media, but the actual text of state and local laws for the time and place.