Published Primary Records Relating to Free Blacks in Natchez

Fitzpatrick, John. The Merchant of Manchac: The Letterbooks of John Fitzpatrick, 1768–1790. Edited by Margaret Fisher Dalrymple. Baton Rouge: Louisiana                  State University Press, 1978.

Gould, Virginia Meacham. Chained to the Rock of Adversity: To Be Free, Black, & Female in the Old South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998.

Hayden, William. Narrative of William Hayden, Containing a Faithful Account of  His Travels for a Number of Years, Whilst a Slave, in the South, Written by                    Himself. Cincinnati: William Hayden, 1846. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/hayden/hayden.html.

Johnson, William. William Johnson’s Natchez: The Ante-Bellum Diary of a Free Negro. Edited by William Ransom Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis. Baton Rouge:               Louisiana State University Press, 1951.

Littlefield, Daniel F. The Life of Okah Tubbee. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

Natchez Court Records 1767–1805. Edited by May Wilson McBee. The May Wilson McBee Collection. Ann Arbor, Michigan : Edwards Brothers, Inc., 1953.

Secondary Sources

 Relating to Free Blacks in Natchez

Alford, Terry L. Prince among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South. 30th anniversary ed. Oxford: Oxford                                   University Press, 2007.

———. “Some Manumissions Recorded in the Adams County Deed Books in Chancery Clerk’s Office, Natchez, Mississippi, 1795–1835,” Journal of  Mississippi                       History 33 (February 1971): 39–50.

Andrews, William L. “William Johnson’s Diary: The Text and the Man Behind It,” Southern Quarterly 43, No. 2 (Winter 2006): 18-34.

Berlin, Ira. “Southern Free People of Color in the Age of William Johnson,” Southern Quarterly 43, No. 2 (Winter 2006): 9-17.

Broussard, Joyce. “Stepping Lively in Place: The Free Black Women of Antebellum Natchez.” In Mississippi   Women: Their Histories, Their Lives, vol. 2, edited                        by Elizabeth Anne Payne, Martha H. Swain, and Marjorie Julian Spruill, 23–38. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.

———. Stepping Lively in Place: The Not-Married, Free Women of Civil War-Era Natchez, Mississippi. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016.

Buckner, Timothy R.  The Barber of Natchez Reconsidered: William Johnson and Black Masculinity in the Antebellum South. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2023.

Clark, Emily. “Felicite Girodeau (1791-1860): Racial and Religious Identity in Antebellum Natchez” in Swain, Martha H., Elizabeth Anne Payne, and Marjorie                         Julian Spruill, eds. Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their  Lives. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Davis, Edwin Adams, and William Ransom Hogan. The Barber of Natchez. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954.

Davis, Ronald L. F. The Black Experience in Natchez, 1720-1880. Denver: National Park Service, 1999.

Hudson, Angela Pulley. Real Native Genius: How an Ex-slave and a White Mormon Became Famous Indians. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,                           2015.

Inglis, G. Douglas. “Searching for Free People of Color in Colonial Natchez,” Southern Quarterly 43, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 97–112.

Ribianszky, Nik. “‘She Appeared to be Mistress of Her Own Actions, Free from the Control of Anyone:’” Property Holding Free Women of Color in Natchez,                              Mississippi, 1779-1865,” The Journal of Mississippi History LXVII, No. 3 (Fall 2005): 217-245.

_____________. “‘Tell Them that My Dayly Thoughts are with Them as Though I was Amidst Them All’: Friendship among the Enslaved and Free People of                           Color in Natchez, Mississippi, 1779-1870,” Journal of Social History 50, No. 4 (June 2017): 701-719.

Sullivan, Lester. “A History of the William T. Johnson and Family Memorial Papers,” Southern Quarterly 43, No. 2 (Winter 2006): 113-136.

Sydnor, Charles. “The Free Negro in Mississippi Before the Civil War,” American Historical Review 32 (1927): 769–88.

Welch, Kimberly M. Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

Relating to Free Blacks Elsewhere:

Adams, Catherine and Elizabeth H. Pleck. Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Alexander, Adele Logan. Ambiguous Lives: Free Women of Color in Rural Georgia,1789-1879. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991.

Berlin, Ira. Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South. New York: Vintage Books, 1971.

Bethel, Elizabeth Rauh. The Roots of African-American Identity: Memory and History in Free Antebellum Communities. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Bogger, Tommy L. Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860: The Darker Side of Freedom. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997.

Bolster, W. Jeffrey. Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Bracey, John H., August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, eds. Free Blacks in America, 1800-1860. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1971.

Brana-Shute, Rosemary and Randy J. Sparks, eds. Paths to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press,                          2009.

Brown, Letitia Woods. Free Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1790-1846. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Buchanan, Thomas C. Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,                          2004.

Burton, Orville Vernon.  In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North                             Carolina Press, 1995.

Clamorgan, Cyprian. The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis, ed. Julie Winch. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.

Clark, Emily. Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834. Chapel Hill: University of North                            Carolina Press, 2007.

__________. The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of  Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North                          Carolina Press, 2013.

Cottrol, Robert. The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Ante-Bellum Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.

Curry, Leonard. The Free Black in Urban America, 1800-1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

de la Fuente, Alejandro, and Ariela Gross. Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana. Cambridge: Cambridge                    University Press, 2020.

Dunbar, Erica Armstrong. A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

Ely, Melvin Patrick. Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from 1790s through the Civil War. New York: Knopf: Distributed by                          Random House, 2004.

Fiske, David. Solomon Northup’s Kindred: The Kidnapping of Free Citizens before the Civil War. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2016.

Follett, Richard. The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2005.

Franklin, John Hope. The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943.

Frazier, E. Franklin. The Free Negro Family: A Study of Family Origins before the Civil War. New York, NY: Arno, 1968, c1932.

Gaspar, David Barry and Darlene Clark Hine, eds. Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Gehman, Mary. The Free People of Color of New Orleans: An Introduction. New Orleans: Margaret Media, 1994.

Grant, John Wess. The Limitations of Free Black Communities and Post-Colonial Nationalism: A Comparative History of the Richmond, Virginia and  Monrovia,                 Liberia Black Communities, 1817–1870. East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2006.

Hanger, Kimberly. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.

Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African-Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Heinegg, Paul. Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to about 1820. Baltimore: Clearfield, 2001.

Higgins, Billy D. A Stranger and a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum Arkansas. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2004.

Hodges, Graham Russell. Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1665-1865. Madison: Madison House,                      1997.

Horton, James Oliver and Lois Horton. Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Ante-Bellum North. Rev. ed., New York, NY: Holmes &                      Meier, 1999.

Horton, James Oliver. Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.

Horton, James Oliver. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, And Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. New York, NY: Oxford University Press,                     1998.

Howington, Arthur F. What Sayeth the Law? The Treatment of Slaves and Free Blacks In the State and Local Courts of Tennessee. New York: Garland                                   Publishing, Inc., 1986.

Hunter, Tera W. Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017

Ingersoll, Thomas N. Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave   Society in the Deep South, 1718-1819. Knoxville: University of Tennessee                            Press, 1999.

Jackson, Luther P. Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830- 1860. New York, NY: Athenaeum, 1969, c1942.

Johnson, Franklin. The Development of State Legislation Concerning The Free Negro. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979, c1919.

Johnson, Jessica Marie. Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.

Johnson, Michael P. and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1984.

________________________________.  No Chariot Let Down: Charleston’s Free People of Color On the Eve of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of                         North Carolina Press,1984.

Johnson, Whittington B. Black Savannah 1788-1864. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996.

Kein, Sybil. Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Kendrick, Stephen and Paul Kendrick. Sarah’s Long Walk: the Free Blacks of  Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America. Boston: Beacon                        Press, 2004.

Kennington, Kelly M. In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America. Athens: University of                            Georgia Press, 2017

King, Wilma. The Essence of Liberty: Free Black Women During the Slave Era. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006.

Koger, Larry. Black Slaveholders: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina,1790-1860. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 1985.

Lebsock, Suzanne. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860.  New York: Norton, 1984.

Leslie, Kent Anderson. Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege: Amanda America Dickson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.

Litwack, Leon. North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1961.

Maris-Wolf, Ted. Family Bonds: Free Blacks and Re-Enslavement Law in Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Melish, Joanne Pope. Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.

Mills, Gary B. The Forgotten People: Cane River’s Creoles of Color.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.

Millward, Jessica. Finding Charity’s Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015.

Milteer, Warren E., Jr. Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021.

__________.  North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715-1885. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020.

Morgan, Lynda J. Emancipation in Virginia’s Tobacco Belt, 1850-1870. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992.

Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828-1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North                                 Carolina Press, 2002.

Myers, Amrita Chakrabarti. Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina                              Press, 2011.

Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Nathans, Sydney. To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Phillips, Christopher. Freedom’s Port: the African American Community of Baltimore,1790-1860.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Powers, Bernard E., Jr. Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1994.

Pryor, Elizabeth Stordeur. Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016

Rael, Patrick. Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Schafer, Daniel L. Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.

Schafer, Judith Kelleher. Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University,                       2003.

Schweninger, Loren. Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

———.  Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Shaw, Lacy, ed. Not a Slave!: Free People of Color in Antebellum America, 1790-1860. New York: American Heritage Custom Publishing Group, 1995.

Smith, Dale Edwyna. The Slaves of Liberty: Freedom in Amite County, Mississippi,1820-1868. New York: Garland Pub., 1999.

Sterkx, H.E. The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Louisiana.  Cranbury: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1972.

Stevenson, Brenda E.  Life in Black & White: Family and Community in the Slave South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Sumler-Edmond, Janice L. The Secret Trust of Aspasia Cruvellier Mirault: The Life and Trials of a Free Woman of Color in Antebellum Georgia. Fayetteville:                         The University of Arkansas Press, 2008.

Sweat, Edward F. Economic Status of Free Blacks in Antebellum Georgia. Atlanta, GA: Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy, Clark College, 1974.

Tate, Gayle T. Unknown Tongues: Black Women’s Political Activism in the Antebellum Era, 1830-1860. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2003.

Thompson, Shirley Elizabeth. Exiles at Home: The Struggle to Become American in Creole New Orleans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Thornbrough, Emma L. The Negro in Indiana before 1900: A Study of a Minority. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, c1957.

Vincent, Stephen. Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765-1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Warner, Lee H. Free Men in an Age of Servitude: Three Generations of a Black Family. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.

West, Emily. Family or Freedom: People of Color in the Antebellum South. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012.

Wharton, Vernon Lane. The Negro in Mississippi: 1865-1890.  New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

Wheeler, Peter, Chains and Freedom: Or, the Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man yet Living, a Slave in Chains, a Sailor on the Deep, and a                                Sinner at the Cross. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009

White, Shane. Staging Freedom in Black New York, 1820-1840. Bundoora, Victoria, Canada:   La Trobe University, 2008.

White, Shane. Stories of Freedom in Black New York. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Whitman, T. Stephen. The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Freedom in Baltimore and Early National Maryland. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

Wikramamayake, Marina. A World of Shadow: The Free Blacks in Antebellum South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973.

Wilson, Carol. Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America: 1780-1865. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994 (Paperback edition,                             2009).

Wilson, Carol.  The Two Lives of Sally Miller: A Case of Mistaken Identity in Antebellum New Orleans. Rutgers University Press, 2007.

Winch, Julie. Between Slavery and Freedom: Free People of Color in America from Settlement to the Civil War. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.

Wolf, Eva Sheppard. Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Baton Rouge: Louisiana                                University Press, 2006.

Wong, Edie L. Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Woodson, Carter G.  Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830; Together With Absentee Ownership of Slaves in the United States in 1830.                                   Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1924.