For discussion

How important was the free black community in the antebellum South?

Did they have an equal importance everywhere?

How did free blacks survive in slave society?

How important were the privileges to which they were entitled because they were free?

Readings

• Michael Johnson & James Roark, Black Masters
• Whittington Johnson, Black Savannah
• Christopher Phillips, Freedom’s Port
• Berlin, Ira, Slaves without masters (1 copy SRC)
• Lachance, Paul, 'The limits of privilege: where free persons of colour stood in the hierarchy of wealth in antebellum New Orleans' S&A 17 (1996) 65-84
• Hancock, Harold, 'Not quite men: the free Negroes in Delaware in the 1830s' CWH 17 (1971) 320-331