It is my recollection that the largest slaveholder in Louisiana was a Black woman named Richard.  There were a number of very wealthy Black slaveholders in Louisiana and other Southern states.  Black Masters by Michael Johnson is one book on the subject. Black Slaveowners--Free Black Slave Owners in South Carolina 1790-1860 by Larry Koger is another.  A a very good portrait of a Black slaveowner is Andrew Durnford by Charles Daudert.


JDS



-----Original Message-----
From: Kimball, Gregg (LVA) <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, Oct 20, 2010 2:28 pm
Subject: Re: Virginia 4th-grade textbook criticized over claims on black Con...


On black slaveowners in the Old Dominion, see Philip Schwarz,
Emancipators, Protectors, and Anomolies: Free Black Slaveowners in
irginia," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 95, No.
 (Jul., 1987), pp. 317-338. I guess it depends on how you define
significant," but this article demonstrates that the total number of
laveholders among blacks in Virginia was tiny, especially when compared
o overall white slave ownership, and that it declined over time.
utside of small areas of New Orleans and Charleston, the same can be
aid of the rest of the South. In my view, giving white and black
laveholding equal billing in text books would be ridiculous, although
ontextualizing it within the larger experience of slavery, as Schwarz
oes,  would be fine with me. 
This article and others like it have another saluatory element.  It
emolishes the claim, common on the internet, that black slaveownership
s some kind of historical secret that "liberals" or "left-wing
cademics" don't want you to know.  Schwarz builds on the work of
ioneering black historians, several of them Virginians, who documented
his phenomena more than a half-century ago.  Schwarz's scholarship and
any other books and articles are readily available.  There is no
onspiracy to "hide the truth."
Expanding the discussion of slavery to the North is a laudable goal.  I
sed the online component of the New York Historical Society's recent
xhibition on slavery in New York the last time I taught a university
ourse on American cities as an adjunct. I don't know how this is
andled in textbooks these days, but of course such a discussion might
ccur much earlier in a chronological narrative than a description of
he Cotton South. 
Gregg
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