Langston, Anita has opened my eyes as well, as to the living conditions of free blacks in Virginia and in Pennsylvania. I grew up in PA, near where Anita's family was, and, like you, I had no idea what was going on. My eyes were opened when I moved to Virginia in the mid-sixties. I had had no idea what it meant to be black in the south. I was dismayed at the attitudes and the legal strangleholds that supported them. When I did research for a civil war battle for a website, I learned for the first time how blacks were involved on both sides of the civil war. It was an eye-opener, and I remember the disdain that my new information was recieved with by my Virginia husband's family. They were sure that it was merely "lies" taught in my schools in PA. Anita's book is another good eye-opener. I am reading it slowly to take it all in. My web site for education has a lot of material on blacks on it. I am doing a survey of the use of the site, and greatly heartened by the amount of use of the black information on the site. The link is http://www.educationalsynthesis.org ... We need to keep up the effort to put the whole story of history together. Our future generations deserve to know the whole truth. Anne Anne Pemberton [log in to unmask] http://www.erols.com/stevepem http://www.erols.com/apembert http://www.educationalsynthesis.org To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html