Freedom in the Age of Slavery
A History of Free People of Color in Virginia
Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.
Series:
An authoritative study of the free people of color in the largest state of the Old South
Virginia was the state with the most enslaved people prior to the Civil War. It was also at one time the state with the most resident free people of color—free from the legal disabilities specifically associated with enslavement but still denied many basic civil rights. Written by an award-winning expert on free people of color in the American South, Freedom in the Age of Slavery is the first modern comprehensive history of free Virginians of color from the colonial period through Reconstruction.
Milteer recounts in granular detail the discriminatory policies and resulting hardships that free Virginians of color faced, while also documenting the openings they created for themselves and the successes they enjoyed against overwhelming odds. Throughout, he highlights the commonwealth’s significance as the laboratory for legal discrimination throughout the nation, while never losing sight of the ways free people of color seized their opportunities wherever possible and built meaningful lives in the face of massive white resistance.
- Joshua D. Rothman, University of Alabama, author of A Pioneer in the Cause of Freedom: The Life of Elisha TysonBoth accessible and extensively researched, Warren Milteer's Freedom in the Age of Slavery is the first book in more than a century to provide a broad survey of the experiences and circumstances of free people of color in Virginia. Moving between stories of individual lives and the changing legal and social contexts that shaped them, Milteer shows the perseverance, determination, and ingenuity demonstrated by free people of color to survive and thrive in a state deeply committed to the institution of slavery. This is an important book likely to be the starting point on the subject for years to come.
- Peter Wallenstein, Virginia Tech, author of Cradle of America: A History of VirginiaNever in all of pre-1865 Virginia were all the free people white, or all nonwhite people enslaved. Indeed, in many areas of Virginia, especially in the late pre-Civil War years, neither Whites nor the enslaved constituted a local majority. Freedom in the Age of Slavery is quintessential Milteer, thorough and thoughtful. Here he focuses on the in-between group and what the “spectrum of freedom” looked like. Did people he studied experience something more akin to White freedom (never possible), or to enslavement (always threatened)? He shows that the answer differs, depending on where individual “free people of color” lived, and when, what the laws at that time said, and their standing in the community.
- Nemata Blyden, University of Virginia, author of African Americans and Africa: A New HistoryIn an accessible and readable book Professor Milteer provides a fresh account of the lives of free people of color in Virginia from the colonial era to Reconstruction. Going beyond the existing literature the author mines the sources to personalize the experiences of a group of people whose histories we have come to believe we know. Instead, Milteer expands our notion of who people of color were, showing us how they created communities, built families, and navigated a society that persistently tried to circumscribe their lives. In these pages men, women and even children are given life, and we come to know them in more than a one-dimensional way. A must read for those who seek to understand the experiences of Virginia’s people of color in early America.
Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. is Associate Professor of History at George Washington University and the author of Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South.
