The University of North Carolina Press has released
Family Bonds: Free Blacks and Re-enslavement Law in Antebellum Virginia (April 2015), by
Ted Maris-Wolf (the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation). A description from the Press:
Between 1854 and 1864, more than a hundred free African
Americans in Virginia proposed to enslave themselves and, in some cases,
their children. Ted Maris-Wolf explains this phenomenon as a
response to state legislation that forced free African Americans to make
a terrible choice: leave enslaved loved ones behind for freedom
elsewhere or seek a way to remain in their communities, even by
renouncing legal freedom. Maris-Wolf paints an intimate portrait of
these people whose lives, liberty, and use of Virginia law offer new
understandings of race and place in the upper South. Maris-Wolf shows
how free African Americans quietly challenged prevailing notions of
racial restriction and exclusion, weaving themselves into the social and
economic fabric of their neighborhoods and claiming, through
unconventional or counterintuitive means, certain basic rights of
residency and family. Employing records from nearly every Virginia
county, he pieces together the remarkable lives of Watkins Love, Jane
Payne, and other African Americans who made themselves essential parts
of their communities and, in some cases, gave up their legal freedom in
order to maintain family and community ties.
A blurb of particular note:
"Maris-Wolf breaks new ground in the study of free African
Americans in the antebellum South, challenging previous scholars’
interpretations of why, at the height of pre–Civil War repression, free
black Americans chose to enslave themselves. His style is smart,
engaging, and grounded in social history, making Family Bonds a pleasure to read."--Martha S. Jones
More information is available
here.
