Austin, Karl Maddox. "The Morass of Resistance during the Antebellum: Agents of Freedom in the Great Dismal Swamp." Order No. 10265142, American University, 2017. https://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/auislandora%3A68607.
Day, Thomas. “Mired Memory: ‘Marronage’ in The Great Dismal Swamp.” Social and Economic Studies 67, no. 1 (2018): 33-47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45174649.
Golden, Kathryn Elise Benjamin. "Through the Muck and Mire: Marronage, Representation, and Memory in the Great Dismal Swamp." Order No. 10816265, University of California, Berkeley, 2018. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6gq4r78s.
Hunter, Antwain K. “‘A Nuisance Requiring Correction’: Firearm Laws, Black Mobility, and White Property in Antebellum Eastern North Carolina.” The North Carolina Historical Review 93, no. 4 (2016): 386-404. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44114475.
Kay, Marvin L. Michael, and Lorin Lee Cary. “Slave Runaways in Colonial North Carolina, 1748-1775.” The North Carolina Historical Review 63, no. 1 (1986): 1-39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23518609.
His Promised Land by
An unusual and stirring account of the rarely told story of how the underground war against slavery was foughtand sometimes won. This narrative, never before published, was dictated to a newspaperman after the Civil War. It follows John P. Parker, a determined young slave who is forced from his family in Virginia and made to walk to Alabama, where he is sold to a doctor. Escaping to New Orleans, after a series of harrowing near-captures, he is found by his master and returned to Mobile. He convinces a widow to buy him and earns his way out of slavery through working in a foundry. Moving to Ohio, Parker becomes a major member of the abolitionist movement in Ripley, a stronghold of the Underground Railroad.
The North Carolina Manumission Society, 1816-1834 by
In the early 1810s, North Carolina Quakers used a vagary in North Carolina law to protect slaves under their care and provide them with as much education and training as the law would allow. By 1826, these anti-slavery advocates took steps to give these ex-slaves, approximately 2,000, opportunities for freedom outside the South or to remain under the care of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting. By 1830 the Manumission Society had completed this task and went on to attempt to convince the North Carolina Legislature to abolish slavery, to little effect. About half of the Manumission Society delegates left the state for Indiana, where they continued to work for freedmen and abolition.Part 1 includes a history of the work of the Manumission Society and short descriptions of the 50+ branch anti-slavery societies belonging to the main assembly. Part 2 includes biographies of approximately 600 delegates in the Society, with a detailed name index.
Slave Escapes and the Underground Railroad in North Carolina by
Quaker safe houses and freed slave communities were a fixture in North Carolina. The Coffin family in Greensboro helped develop safe zones and houses on the Underground Railroad in the 1800s. In the east, networks of freedmen and sympathizers aided slaves, hiding in remote locations such as the Dismal Swamp. In coastal towns like New Bern and Wilmington, slaves were secreted aboard ships in search of freedom along maritime routes. Authors Tim Allen and Steve Miller use harrowing firsthand accounts to investigate how African Americans escaped oppression in a dark chapter of Tarheel State history.
To Free a Family: the journey of Mary Walker by
What was it like for a mother to flee slavery, leaving her children behind?" To Free a Family" tells the remarkable story of Mary Walker, who in August 1848 fled her owner for refuge in the North and spent the next seventeen years trying to recover her family. Her freedom, like that of thousands who escaped from bondage, came at a great price-remorse at parting without a word, fear for her family's fate. This story is anchored in two extraordinary collections of letters and diaries, that of her former North Carolina slaveholders and that of the northern family-Susan and Peter Lesley-who protected and employed her. Sydney Nathans' sensitive and penetrating narrative reveals Mary Walker's remarkable persistence as well as the sustained collaboration of black and white abolitionists who assisted her. Mary Walker and the Lesleys ventured half a dozen attempts at liberation, from ransom to ruse to rescue, until the end of the Civil War reunited Mary Walker with her son and daughter. Unlike her more famous counterparts-Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs, and Sojourner Truth-who wrote their own narratives and whose public defiance made them heroines, Mary Walker's efforts were protracted, wrenching, and private. Her odyssey was more representative of women refugees from bondage who labored secretly and behind the scenes to reclaim their families from the South. In recreating Mary Walker's journey, "To Free a Family" gives voice to their hidden epic of emancipation and to an untold story of the Civil War era.
"James William Evans (1814-1883), his wife Mary Eliza Hoggard, and their children William, John and Mary Evans. Mary Eliza Hoggard was a descendant of the free African American Cobb and Bazemore families of Bertie County, North Carolina. James William Evans was from Dorchester County, Maryland."
Image and caption credit: Nineteenth Century Photos, part 5, Free African Americans in Colonial Virgina, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, website.
"Matilda Blanks, born about 1870, was the daughter of Salter and Curly Blanks of Bladen County, North Carolina, granddaughter of Mikal Blanks, great granddaughter of Alfred Blanks, and great-great granddaughter of John Blanks who was a "Mixt Blood" taxable in Bladen County in 1774."
Image and caption credit: Nineteenth Century Photos, part 9, Free African Americans in Colonial Virgina, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, website.
"Dora Anderson Miller, born June 1859 in Henry County, Tennessee, married George Miller in Chattanooga and died in Ohio in 1924. She was the daughter of Sandy Anderson who was born in Granville County, North Carolina, in 1825. She was apparently the descendant of Files (Phillis?) Anderson, born about 1785, who was listed in Sandy's household in the 1880 Henry County census.
The Anderson family of Granville County was freed in 1712 by the Norfolk County, Virginia will of John Fulcher."
Image and caption credit: Nineteenth Century Photos, part 9, Free African Americans in Colonial Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, website.
Batchman, Lindsey A. "Thinking Resistance: Free Black Intellectual Life in the Antebellum South." Order No. 10269569, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2017. http://nclive.org/cgi-bin/nclsm?url=http://search.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/thinking-resistance-free-black-intellectual-life/docview/1904914447/se-2.
Franklin, John Hope. “The Free Negro in the Economic Life of Ante-Bellum North Carolina: Part I.” The North Carolina Historical Review 19, no. 3 (1942): 239-59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23515385.
Milteer, Warren E. “Life in a Great Dismal Swamp Community: Free People of Color in Pre-Civil War Gates County, North Carolina.” The North Carolina Historical Review 91, no. 2 (2014): 144-70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23719092.
Rohrs, Richard C. “The Free Black Experience in Antebellum Wilmington, North Carolina: Refining Generalizations about Race Relations.” The Journal of Southern History 78, no. 3 (2012): 615-38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23247372.
Schweninger, Loren. “Prosperous Blacks in the South, 1790-1880.” The American Historical Review 95, no. 1 (1990): 31-56. https://doi.org/10.2307/2162953.
West, Emily. "“We Chilluns, Long Wid Her, Wuz Lak De Udder Slaves”: Free Black Families and Quasi-Slavery in the Late Antebellum Era." Journal of American Studies 55, no. 5 (12, 2021): 991-1018. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875820001735. http://nclive.org/cgi-bin/nclsm?url=http://search.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/we-chilluns-long-wid-her-wuz-lak-de-udder-slaves/docview/2614086994/se-2
North Carolina's Free People of Color, 1715-1885 by
In North Carolina?s Free People of Color, 1715?1885, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. examines the lives of free persons categorized by their communities as ?negroes,? ?mulattoes,? ?mustees,? ?Indians,? ?mixed-bloods,? or simply ?free people of color.? From the colonial period through Reconstruction, lawmakers passed legislation that curbed the rights and privileges of these non-enslaved residents, from prohibiting their testimony against whites to barring them from the ballot box. While such laws suggest that most white North Carolinians desired to limit the freedoms and civil liberties enjoyed by free people of color, Milteer reveals that the two groups often interacted?praying together, working the same land, and occasionally sharing households and starting families. Some free people of color also rose to prominence in their communities, becoming successful businesspeople and winning the respect of their white neighbors. Milteer?s innovative study moves beyond depictions of the American South as a region controlled by a strict racial hierarchy. He contends that although North Carolinians frequently sorted themselves into races imbued with legal and social entitlements?with whites placing themselves above persons of color?those efforts regularly clashed with their concurrent recognition of class, gender, kinship, and occupational distinctions. Whites often determined the position of free nonwhites by designating them as either valuable or expendable members of society. In early North Carolina, free people of color of certain statuses enjoyed access to institutions unavailable even to some whites. Prior to 1835, for instance, some free men of color possessed the right to vote while the law disenfranchised all women, white and nonwhite included. North Carolina?s Free People of Color, 1715?1885 demonstrates that conceptions of race were complex and fluid, defying easy characterization. Despite the reductive labels often assigned to them by whites, free people of color in the state emerged from an array of backgrounds, lived widely varied lives, and created distinct cultures?all of which, Milteer suggests, allowed them to adjust to and counter ever-evolving forms of racial discrimination.
Hertford County, North Carolina's Free People of Color and Their Descendants by
Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Hertford County had one of the largest populations of free people of color in North Carolina. Although they lived in a rural community, Hertford County's free people of color and their descendants found success in business, education, community development, religious life, and politics. Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr.'s tireless efforts in numerous archives have produced the first full-length study of their lives and contributions from the colonial period into the twentieth century.
In Full Force and Virtue by
There is a wealth of information abounding in the petitions wherein masters expostulate to the court the reasons for wishing to free their slaves. The petitions reveal relationships between diverse cultures and races, and many of them depict those relatio
List of Free African Americans in the American Revolution by
Over 420 African Americans who were born free during the colonial period served in the American Revolution from Virginia. Another 400 who descended from free-born colonial families served from North Carolina, 40 from South Carolina, 60 from Maryland, and 17 from Delaware. At least 24 from Virginia and 41 from North Carolina died in the service. Over 75 free African Americans were in colonial militias and the French and Indian War in Virginia and North and South Carolina. While the information on each of the free Black veterans varies, in most cases the author gives the individual's name, state and county, unit served in, military theater, some family information, often a physical description, pension applied for or received, sometimes other information, and the source.
Sergeant-Major of the Second U.S. Colored Cavalry, born in Bertie County, NC
Image Credit: Robbins, Parker David, NCpedia biographical article.
Assistant surgeon in the 1st NC Colored Volunteers of the Union Army and the first African American to be admitted to an American medical society.
Image credit: John Van Surly Degrasse (1825-1868), BlackPast.org
"African American U.S. Army Lt. J Thomas. Bullock. Born and raised in Henderson, N.C., Bullock served in the Spanish-American War, and later served as the principal of the Williston Industrial School in Wilmington, N.C. Bullock served during World War I in the 367th Infantry, U.S. Army. He died in action at the Second Battle of the Marne in France on September 2, 1918"
Image Credit: From Compiled Individual Military Service Records, WWI 14, WWI Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina. Accessed through Flickr.com
Bollettino, Maria Alessandra. "Slavery, War, and Britain's Atlantic Empire: Black Soldiers, Sailors, and Rebels in the Seven Years' War." Order No. 3445982, The University of Texas at Austin, 2009. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/ETD-UT-2009-12-543.
Brimmer, Brandi C. "Her Claim for Pension Is Lawful and Just": Representing Black Union Widows in Late-Nineteenth Century North Carolina." The Journal of the Civil War Era 1, no. 2 (2011): 207-236. doi:10.1353/cwe.2011.0029 http://www.jstor.org/stable/26070114.
Browning, Judkin Jay. “‘Little Souled Mercenaries’? The Buffaloes of Eastern North Carolina during the Civil War.” The North Carolina Historical Review 77, no. 3 (2000): 337-63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23522270.
Coffman, Peter W. "He has Earned the Right of Citizenship": The Black Soldiers of North Carolina in the Civil War; A Comment on Historiography, Treatment, and Pensions." Order No. 1590073, East Carolina University, 2015. https://thescholarship.ecu.edu/handle/10342/4890.
Gatewood, Willard B. “North Carolina’s Negro Regiment in the Spanish-American War.” The North Carolina Historical Review 48, no. 4 (1971): 370-87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23518178.
Hutchins, Shana Renee “Just Learning To Be Men: A History of the 35th United States Colored Troops, 1863-1866” (MA Thesis, North Carolina State University, 1999).
McGuire, Samuel B. “The Making of a Black Militia Company: New Bern Troops in the Kirk-Holden War, 1870.” The North Carolina Historical Review 91, no. 3 (2014): 288-322. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44113199.
A history of the Negro troops in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865 : preceded by a review of the military services of Negroes in ancient and modern times by
A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865 (originally published in 1887) by pioneer African American historian George Washington Williams remains a classic text in African American literature and Civil War history. In this powerful narrative, Williams, who served in the U.S. Colored Troops, tells the battle experiences of the almost 200,000 black men who fought for the Union cause. Determined to document the contributions of his fellow black soldiers, and to underscore the valor and manhood of his race, Williams gathered his material from the official records of U.S. and foreign governments, and from the orderly books and personal recollections of officers commanding Negro troops during the American Civil War. The new edition of this important text includes an introductory essay by the award-winning historian John David Smith. In his essay, Smith narrates and evaluates the book's contents, analyzes its reception by contemporary critics, and evaluates Williams's work within the context of its day and its place in current historiography
Black Soldiers in Blue by
Inspired and informed by the latest research in African American, military, and social history, the fourteen original essays in this book tell the stories of the African American soldiers who fought for the Union cause. An introductory essay surveys the history of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) from emancipation to the end of the Civil War. Seven essays focus on the role of the USCT in combat, chronicling the contributions of African Americans who fought at Port Hudson, Milliken's Bend, Olustee, Fort Pillow, Petersburg, Saltville, and Nashville. Other essays explore the recruitment of black troops in the Mississippi Valley; the U.S. Colored Cavalry; the military leadership of Colonels Thomas Higginson, James Montgomery, and Robert Shaw; African American chaplain Henry McNeal Turner; the black troops who occupied postwar Charleston; and the experiences of USCT veterans in postwar North Carolina. Collectively, these essays probe the broad military, political, and social significance of black soldiers' armed service, enriching our understanding of the Civil War and African American life during and after the conflict. The contributors are Anne J. Bailey, Arthur W. Bergeron Jr., John Cimprich, Lawrence Lee Hewitt, Richard Lowe, Thomas D. Mays, Michael T. Meier, Edwin S. Redkey, Richard Reid, William Glenn Robertson, John David Smith, Noah Andre Trudeau, Keith Wilson, and Robert J. Zalimas Jr.
The Marines of Montford Point by
With an executive order from President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, the United States Marine Corps--the last all-white branch of the U.S. military--was forced to begin recruiting and enlisting African Americans. The first black recruits received basic training at the segregated Camp Montford Point, adjacent to Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina. Between 1942 and 1949 (when the base was closed as a result of President Truman's 1948 order fully desegregating all military forces) more than 20,000 men trained at Montford Point, most of them going on to serve in the Pacific Theatre in World War II as members of support units. This book, in conjunction with the documentary film of the same name, tells the story of these Marines for the first time. Drawing from interviews with 60 veterans, The Marines of Montford Point relates the experiences of these pioneers in their own words. From their stories, we learn about their reasons for enlisting; their arrival at Montford Point and the training they received there; their lives in a segregated military and in the Jim Crow South; their experiences of combat and service in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam; and their legacy. The Marines speak with flashes of anger and humor, sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with great wisdom, and always with a pride fostered by incredible accomplishment in the face of adversity. This book serves to recognize and to honor the men who desegregated the Marine Corps and loyally served their country in three major wars.
Freedom for Themselves by
More than 5,000 North Carolina slaves escaped from their white owners to serve in the Union army during the Civil War. In Freedom for Themselves Richard Reid explores the stories of black soldiers from four regiments raised in North Carolina. Constructing a multidimensional portrait of the soldiers and their families, he provides a new understanding of the spectrum of black experience during and aftger the war.
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