Description
Book SynopsisThis book has stood the test of time as one of the most readable microhistories of colonial free blacks in America. It restores to the historical record the lives of individuals who strove to better their lives, as well as elucidates a pre-Revolutionary period when social and racial laws in America had not yet hardened. In a new preface, Breen and Innes situate their work in the explosion of work on early American slavery and African-American life over the past twodecades
Trade ReviewThis fascinating account proves that for a couple of generations in seventeenth-century Virginia the two races lived fairly comfortably side by side...It is an extraordinary and convincing story. The New York Review of Books [Breen and Innes] have pieced together sufficient details relating to the lives of some of these blacks to establish firstly that skin colour was not originally an absolute impediment to social advancement, and secondly that the white immigrant population on Virginia's eastern shore were not averse to accepting as social equals blacks who had recently purchased their freedom from slavery. The Historical Journal A thorough exploitation of available sources coupled with a sophisticated understanding of the difficult issues confronting those trying to unravel the complexities of early American race relations...[Breen and Innes] have reminded us of forgotten alternatives in this society's racial odyssey. The Journal of Southern History
