Over the long nineteenth century, African-descended peoples used the uncertainties and possibilities of emancipation to stake claims to freedom, equality, and c

With these essays, historians contend that emancipation was not something that simply happened to enslaved peoples but rather something in which they actively p

Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate th

In Union and Emancipation, seven leading historians offer new perspectives on the issues of race and politics in American Society from the antebellum era to the

This historical study examines how free people of color in Charleston and Cartagena challenged the foundations of racial hierarchies in the Americas. Prior to t