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Subject:
From:
"Stephan A. Schwartz" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 12 May 2002 22:44:15 -0400
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Thanks, Jon.  Very good points, which will add nuance.  I do know Berlin,
that's where I started.

-- Stephan


  on 5/12/02 9:36 AM, Jon Kukla at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Re question 2 and on the assumption that your gaze may extend beyond the
> boundaries of the Old Dominion.: I've just been reading Carl Brasseaux's essay
> on "Creoles of Color in Louisiana's Bayou Country" in connection with my book
> on
> the Louisiana Purchase - He offers very reliable figures on slave-holding by
> free people of color and raises the question and attempts to gauge the degree
> to
> which _some_ of their slave purchases were done for the purpose of manumitting
> or taking care of family members - while others were for laborers and with
> attitudes that paralleled their white planter neighbors. Of course Louisiana
> had
> a different legal approach to manumission than Virginia; the Louisiana law &
> practice is well described in the late Kim Hanger's essay on The Origins of
> NEw
> Orleans's Free People of Color - Both essays are found in James H. Dormon, ed
> Creoles of Color of the Gulf South (Knoxville: Univ of Tenn Press1996) along
> with other good things.
> I trust you're familiar with Ira Berlin's Slaves without Masters (New York:
> Oxford 1974) and Berlin's more recent big book (title of which eludes me until
> the coffee kicks in........)  Brasseaux (who edits the journal Louisiana
> History) says good things about H. E. Sterkx's The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum
> Louisiana (Rutherford NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press 1976
> 
> Jon Kukla
> 
> "Stephan A. Schwartz" wrote:
> 
>> I am doing research for a major national magazine piece I have been asked to
>> do which will touch on the issue of reparations.  In the course of my work,
>> I have come across the following volume:
>> 
>> Black Masters. A Family of Color in the Old South, Michael P. Johnson and
>> James L. Roak New York: Norton, 1984)
>> 
>> Two questions for the list:
>> 
>> 1.)  Although the book seems sound, and comes from a reputable publisher,
>> does anyone know any reason I should be leery of the research it uses (I am
>> more interested in the research than the arguments);
>> 
>> 2.)  Can anyone provide any additional material on free black ownership of
>> slaves.
>> 
>> I am not writing a polemical piece and am not interested in arguing a
>> partisan position.  My interest is solely factual accuracy, so that I give
>> an honest presentation of the history here.  Since this is such an explosive
>> subject, I want to make sure I am on firm ground, and would appreciate any
>> input from other members of this list.
>> 
>> Thanks.
>> 
>> -- Stephan
>> 
>> Stephan A. Schwartz  €  Email:  [log in to unmask]
>> Personal Website:  http://www.stephanaschwartz.com  €   Schwartzreport:
>> http://www.schwartzreport.net    147 Pinewood Road, Virginia Beach, Virginia
>> 22932  €  Voice:  757.422.4549
>> 
>> 
>> 
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