Event Information

Off the Shelf: Author Talk with Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. (Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South)

Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. discusses his book
“Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South”

(Register for this event to receive a 40% discount off the book price. Details below.)


On the eve of the Civil War, most people of color in the United States toiled in bondage. Yet nearly half a million of these individuals, including over 250,000 in the South, were free.

 

In “Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South,” Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. draws from a wide array of sources to demonstrate that from the colonial period through the Civil War, the growing influence of white supremacy and proslavery extremism created serious challenges for free persons categorized as “negroes,” “mulattoes,” “mustees,” “Indians” or simply “free people of color” in the South. Segregation, exclusion, disenfranchisement and discriminatory punishment were ingrained in these people’s collective experiences. Nevertheless, in the face of attempts to deny them the most basic privileges and rights, free people of color defended their families and established organizations and businesses.

 

These people were both privileged and victimized, both celebrated and despised, in a region characterized by social inconsistency. Milteer's analysis of the way wealth, gender and occupation intersected with ideas promoting white supremacy and discrimination reveals a wide range of social interactions and life outcomes for the South's free people of color and helps to explain societal contradictions that continue to appear in the modern United States.

Warren E. Milteer Jr. is assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.


This virtual event will be hosted by Matt Turi, manuscripts research and instruction librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries.

 

This talk is part of Off the Shelf, a collaboration between the University Libraries and the UNC Press to present new works on racial and social justice in our history and our world.

To order this book, visit uncpress.org or call 1-800-848-6224. To receive a 40% discount off the book price, register for this event and you will receive a discount code.

REGISTER FOR THIS VIRTUAL EVENT.

Date:
Thursday, October 28, 2021
Time:
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Categories:
Friends of the Library   Lectures, Readings and Talks   Special Events  

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Katie Fanfani