‘We chilluns, long wid her, wuz lak de udder slaves’: free black families and quasi-slavery in the pre-Civil War US South.

West, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3444-3814 (2021) ‘We chilluns, long wid her, wuz lak de udder slaves’: free black families and quasi-slavery in the pre-Civil War US South. Journal of American Studies, 55 (5). pp. 991-1018. ISSN 1469-5154 doi: 10.1017/S0021875820001735

Abstract/Summary

This article shows how and why some free black families ended up living among the enslaved in the late antebellum era. Enslavers brought free people of colour into forms of informal quasi-slavery that differed little from enslavement despite their free legal status. Despite a lack of evidence, piecing together free blacks’ experiences through surviving sources reveals much about the porous boundary between slavery and freedom where enslavers manipulated marginality for financial gain. There was no sharp delineation between slavery and freedom but instead a continuum of oppression characterized by varying degrees of persecution and fragile freedoms.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/72358
Identification Number/DOI	10.1017/S0021875820001735
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > History
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
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