A Free Man Of Color And His Hotel

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A Free Man of Color and His Hotel

Author : Carol Gelderman
Publisher : Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1597978337
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (979 download)

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Book Synopsis A Free Man of Color and His Hotel by : Carol Gelderman

Download or read book A Free Man of Color and His Hotel written by Carol Gelderman and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Free Man of Color and His Hotel weaves the story of a uniquely successful black businessman into the burgeoning post–Civil War political struggle that pitted the federal government against the states’ desire to remain autonomous. Born in Washington, D.C., James Wormley worked as a hacker in his father’s livery stable there and as a steward on Mississippi River steamboats before establishing his own catering and boardinghouse businesses. During a period of limited opportunity for African Americans, he built and operated D.C.’s luxurious Wormley Hotel at a time when most financial and governmental business was conducted in hotels. Not only did a number of notable diplomats and politicians live at the hotel, but because of its location in the city’s commercial and political center, Wormley also hosted Washington’s movers and shakers. Wormley’s rise, however, occurred as three landmark decisions by the Supreme Court effectively dismantled Reconstruction and led to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that legalized segregation. This cautionary tale illustrates how key Supreme Court decisions hindered other African Americans’ potential successes after Reconstruction. By examining the issue of states’ rights in terms of one man’s against-the-odds success, Carol Gelderman shows how these same issues are still relevant in a postsegregation United States.

The Lost Southern Chefs

Author : Robert F. Moss
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820368733
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lost Southern Chefs by : Robert F. Moss

Download or read book The Lost Southern Chefs written by Robert F. Moss and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The White House's Unruly Neighborhood

Author : Edward P. Moser
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476636931
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis The White House's Unruly Neighborhood by : Edward P. Moser

Download or read book The White House's Unruly Neighborhood written by Edward P. Moser and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-12-09 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicling the sometimes outlandish, often tragic history of the environs of the White House, this book covers two centuries of assassinations, slave escapes, deadly duels, sex scandals, battles, brawls and spy intrigues that took place in the presidential neighborhood, Lafayette Square. The author recounts the triumphs and catastrophes of heroes and villains both famous and unsung, placing them in the context of contemporary world events of the day.

A Literary Guide to Washington, DC

Author : Kim Roberts
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813941180
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis A Literary Guide to Washington, DC by : Kim Roberts

Download or read book A Literary Guide to Washington, DC written by Kim Roberts and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The site of a thriving literary tradition, Washington, DC, has been the home to many of our nation’s most acclaimed writers. From the city’s founding to the beginnings of modernism, literary luminaries including Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Henry Adams, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston have lived and worked at their craft in our nation’s capital. In A Literary Guide to Washington, DC, Kim Roberts offers a guide to the city’s rich literary history. Part walking tour, part anthology, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC is organized into five sections, each corresponding to a particularly vibrant period in Washington’s literary community. Starting with the city’s earliest years, Roberts examines writers such as Hasty-Pudding poet Joel Barlow and "Star-Spangled Banner" lyricist Francis Scott Key before moving on to the Civil War and Reconstruction and touching on the lives of authors such as Charlotte Forten Grimké and James Weldon Johnson. She wraps up her tour with World War I and the Jazz Age, which brought to the city some writers at the forefront of modernism, including the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sinclair Lewis. The book’s stimulating tours cover downtown, the LeDroit Park and Shaw neighborhoods, Lafayette Square, and the historic U Street district, bringing the history of the city to life in surprising ways. Written for tourists, literary enthusiasts, amateur historians, and armchair travelers, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC offers a cultural tour of our nation's capital through a literary lens.

American Founders

Author : Christina Proenza-Coles
Publisher : NewSouth Books
ISBN 13 : 1603064389
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (3 download)

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Book Synopsis American Founders by : Christina Proenza-Coles

Download or read book American Founders written by Christina Proenza-Coles and published by NewSouth Books. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2019 Foreword INDIES Finalist American Founders reveals men and women of African descent as key protagonists in the story of American democracy. It chronicles how black people developed and defended New World settlements, undermined slavery, and championed freedom throughout the hemisphere from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. While conventional history tends to reduce the roles of African Americans to antebellum slavery and the civil rights movement, in reality African residents preceded the English by a century and arrived in the Americas in numbers that far exceeded European migrants up until 1820. Afro-Americans were omnipresent in the founding and advancement of the Americas, and recurrently outnumbered Europeans at many times and places, from colonial Peru to antebellum Virginia. African-descended people contributed to every facet of American history as explorers, conquistadores, settlers, soldiers, sailors, servants, slaves, rebels, leaders, lawyers, litigants, laborers, artisans, artists, activists, translators, teachers, doctors, nurses, inventors, investors, merchants, mathematicians, scientists, scholars, engineers, entrepreneurs, generals, cowboys, pirates, professors, politicians, priests, poets, and presidents. The multitude of events and mixed-race individuals included in the book underscores that black and white Americans share the same history, and in many cases, the same ancestry. American Foundersis meant to celebrate this shared heritage and strengthen these bonds.

The Frederick Douglass Papers

Author : Frederick Douglass
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300274491
Total Pages : 691 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis The Frederick Douglass Papers by : Frederick Douglass

Download or read book The Frederick Douglass Papers written by Frederick Douglass and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The selected correspondence of the great American abolitionist and reformer dating from the immediate post–Civil War years This third volume of Frederick Douglass’s Correspondence Series exhibits Douglass at the peak of his political influence. It chronicles his struggle to persuade the nation to fulfill its promises to the former slaves and all African Americans in the tempestuous years of Reconstruction. Douglass’s career changed dramatically with the end of the Civil War and the long-sought after emancipation of American slaves; the subsequent transformation in his public activities is reflected in his surviving correspondence. In these letters, from 1866 to 1880, Douglass continued to correspond with leading names in antislavery and other reform movements on both sides of the Atlantic, and political figures began to make up an even larger share of his correspondents. The Douglass Papers staff located 817 letters for this time period and selected 242, or just under 30 percent, of them for publication. The remaining 575 letters are summarized in the volume’s calendar.

Antoine of Oak Alley: The Unlikely Origin of Southern Pecans and the Enslaved Man Who Cultivated Them

Author : Katy Morlas Shannon
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1455625752
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (556 download)

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Book Synopsis Antoine of Oak Alley: The Unlikely Origin of Southern Pecans and the Enslaved Man Who Cultivated Them by : Katy Morlas Shannon

Download or read book Antoine of Oak Alley: The Unlikely Origin of Southern Pecans and the Enslaved Man Who Cultivated Them written by Katy Morlas Shannon and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Antoine is emblematic of countless enslaved people whose lives and contributions have been overlooked. Antoine, the enslaved gardener of Oak Alley Plantation, was the first person to successfully propagate the pecan tree yet he exists only as a footnote in the bigger story of Oak Alley Plantation. His pioneering work enabled large groves of trees to be planted creating a lucrative commercial crop and though his horticultural achievement has long been legend, virtually nothing is known about his life. Historian Katy Morales Shannon utilizes extensive research and period documents to expose his story and explore the lives of the enslaved community in which he lived. The life of this truly revolutionary enslaved man is revealed through the lives of his family and friends, the community they built, and the bonds they forged during their enslavement and their life as free people.

Heads in Beds

Author : Jacob Tomsky
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385535643
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Heads in Beds by : Jacob Tomsky

Download or read book Heads in Beds written by Jacob Tomsky and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Kitchen Confidential and Waiter Rant, a rollicking, eye-opening, fantastically indiscreet memoir of a life spent (and misspent) in the hotel industry. “Highly amusing."—New York Times Jacob Tomsky never intended to go into the hotel business. As a new college graduate, armed only with a philosophy degree and a singular lack of career direction, he became a valet parker for a large luxury hotel in New Orleans. Yet, rising fast through the ranks, he ended up working in “hospitality” for more than a decade, doing everything from supervising the housekeeping department to manning the front desk at an upscale Manhattan hotel. He’s checked you in, checked you out, separated your white panties from the white bed sheets, parked your car, tasted your room-service meals, cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&Ms out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. In Heads in Beds he pulls back the curtain to expose the crazy and compelling reality of a multi-billion-dollar industry we think we know. Heads in Beds is a funny, authentic, and irreverent chronicle of the highs and lows of hotel life, told by a keenly observant insider who’s seen it all. Prepare to be amused, shocked, and amazed as he spills the unwritten code of the bellhops, the antics that go on in the valet parking garage, the housekeeping department’s dirty little secrets—not to mention the shameless activities of the guests, who are rarely on their best behavior. Prepare to be moved, too, by his candor about what it’s like to toil in a highly demanding service industry at the luxury level, where people expect to get what they pay for (and often a whole lot more). Employees are poorly paid and frequently abused by coworkers and guests alike, and maintaining a semblance of sanity is a daily challenge. Along his journey Tomsky also reveals the secrets of the industry, offering easy ways to get what you need from your hotel without any hassle. This book (and a timely proffered twenty-dollar bill) will help you score late checkouts and upgrades, get free stuff galore, and make that pay-per-view charge magically disappear. Thanks to him you’ll know how to get the very best service from any business that makes its money from putting heads in beds. Or, at the very least, you will keep the bellmen from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and bashing it against the wall repeatedly.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Author : Jamie Ford
Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN 13 : 0345512502
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (455 download)

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Book Synopsis Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by : Jamie Ford

Download or read book Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet written by Jamie Ford and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-01-27 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sentimental, heartfelt….the exploration of Henry’s changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages...A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices."-- Kirkus Reviews “A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war--not the sweeping damage of the battlefield, but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. Especially relevant in today's world, this is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more importantly, it will make you feel." -- Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain “Jamie Ford's first novel explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle area during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love. An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut.” -- Lisa See, bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol. This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept. Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago. Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart. BONUS: This edition contains a Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet discussion guide and an excerpt from Jamie Ford's Love and Other Consolation Prizes.

God's Free-Man

Author : Ted Freeman
Publisher : Dorrance Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1649133413
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (491 download)

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Book Synopsis God's Free-Man by : Ted Freeman

Download or read book God's Free-Man written by Ted Freeman and published by Dorrance Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-24 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God’s Free-Man: An American Tale of Perseverance: A Life in Service By: Ted Freeman God’s Free-Man is a historical presentation guided by God that delineates the capture of Harry and Kate Freeman, who were the co-founders of the city of Auburn, New York. Taken and made slaves from Guinea, Africa, they were freed by the Mansfield Decree in England and came to the colonies as indentured servants, fought in the Revolutionary War, and created one of the most important stations and terminals during the Underground Railroad Movement. Further in, Freeman delves into how their sons played pivotal roles in one of the most tumultuous times in American history. From the pain and agony of their grandson’s murder spree that introduced the plea of insanity to America’s jurisprudence to the excitement of a grandson who worked closely with Secretary of State William Seward and Harriet Tubman, the story of the Freemans brings to light a segment of American history waiting to be heard.

Hartford's Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity

Author : Ron Welburn
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438455771
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Hartford's Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity by : Ron Welburn

Download or read book Hartford's Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity written by Ron Welburn and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2015-04-21 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Upholds Ann Plato as a noteworthy nineteenth-century writer, while reexamining her life and writing from an American Indian perspective. Who was Ann Plato? Apart from circumstantial evidence, theres little information about the author of Essays; Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, published in 1841. Plato lived in a milieu of colored Hartford, Connecticut, in the early nineteenth century. Although long believed to have been African American herself, she may also, Ron Welburn argues, have been American Indian, like the father in her poem The Natives of America. Combining literary criticism, ethnohistory, and social history, Welburn uses Plato as an example of how Indians in the Long Island Sound region adapted and prevailed despite the contemporary rhetoric of Indian disappearance. This study seeks to raise Platos profile as an author as well as to highlight the dynamics of Indian resistance and isolation that have contributed to her enigmatic status as a literary figure. Hartfords Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity is a brilliant and fascinatingly imaginative work of research and speculation. The research is forbiddingly wide, deep, learned, determined, and resourceful. The book is fascinating as a work of speculative scholarship not only about Ann Plato but also about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New England and Long Island American Indians, who continued to live more or less in the region of their ancestors, and often continued to uphold Indian culture, while at the same time disappearing from the written record. Welburns work will speak to audiences interested in American Indian studies, New England history, nineteenth-century African American history and literary studies, and the history of American poetry. Robert Dale Parker, editor of Changing Is Not Vanishing: A Collection of American Indian Poetry to 1930

Insatiable City

Author : Theresa McCulla
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022683381X
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

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Book Synopsis Insatiable City by : Theresa McCulla

Download or read book Insatiable City written by Theresa McCulla and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-05-10 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of food in the Crescent City that explores race, power, social status, and labor. In Insatiable City, Theresa McCulla probes the overt and covert ways that the production of food and the discourse about it both created and reinforced many strains of inequality in New Orleans, a city significantly defined by its foodways. Tracking the city’s economy from nineteenth-century chattel slavery to twentieth-century tourism, McCulla uses menus, cookbooks, newspapers, postcards, photography, and other material culture to limn the interplay among the production and reception of food, the inscription and reiteration of racial hierarchies, and the constant diminishment and exploitation of working-class people. The consumption of food and people, she shows, was mutually reinforced and deeply intertwined. Yet she also details how enslaved and free people of color in New Orleans used food and drink to carve paths of mobility, stability, autonomy, freedom, profit, and joy. A story of pain and pleasure, labor and leisure, Insatiable City goes far beyond the task of tracing New Orleans's culinary history to focus on how food suffuses culture and our understandings and constructions of race and power.

The Haunted South

Author : Alan Brown
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1439671036
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (396 download)

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Book Synopsis The Haunted South by : Alan Brown

Download or read book The Haunted South written by Alan Brown and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southerners love the South. And some souls never leave. Savannah, New Orleans and St. Augustine are among the most haunted places in America, and chilling stories abound nearly everywhere below the Mason-Dixon line. At Seaman's Bethel Theater in Mobile, Alabama, actors and staff are frightened by the unnerving sounds of a child's laughter. The ghost of Alfred Victor DuPont, a noted ladies' man, is said to harass female employees in the stairwell at DuPont Mansion in Louisville, Kentucky. The Café Vermilionville is housed in what is reputed to be Lafayette's first inn. A young girl in a yellow dress, thought to be a previous owner's daughter who died from polio around the time of the Civil War, startles patrons from the balcony of the restaurant. Join author Alan Brown as he traverses the supernatural legends of the American South.

The Color of Water

Author : James McBride
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1408832496
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis The Color of Water by : James McBride

Download or read book The Color of Water written by James McBride and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Deacon King Kong and The Good Lord Bird, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction: The modern classic that Oprah.com calls one of the best memoirs of a generation and that launched James McBride's literary career. More than two years on The New York Times bestseller list. As a boy in Brooklyn's Red Hook projects, James McBride knew his mother was different. But when he asked her about it, she'd simply say 'I'm light-skinned.' Later he wondered if he was different too, and asked his mother if he was black or white. 'You're a human being! Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!' she snapped back. And when James asked about God, she told him 'God is the color of water.' This is the remarkable story of an eccentric and determined woman: a rabbi's daughter, born in Poland and raised in the Deep South who fled to Harlem, married a black preacher, founded a Baptist church and put twelve children through college. A celebration of resilience, faith and forgiveness, The Color of Water is an eloquent exploration of what family really means.

Becoming Free, Remaining Free

Author : Judith Kelleher Schafer
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807128800
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (288 download)

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Book Synopsis Becoming Free, Remaining Free by : Judith Kelleher Schafer

Download or read book Becoming Free, Remaining Free written by Judith Kelleher Schafer and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louisiana state law was unique in allowing slaves to contract for their freedom and to initiate a lawsuit for liberty. Judith Kelleher Schafer describes the ingenious and remarkably sophisticated ways New Orleans slaves used the legal system to gain their independence and find a voice in a society that ordinarily gave them none. Showing that remaining free was often as challenging as becoming free, Schafer also recounts numerous cases in which free people of color were forced to use the courts to prove their status. She further documents seventeen free blacks who, when faced with deportation, amazingly sued to enslave themselves. Schafer’s impressive detective work achieves a rare feat in the historical profession—the unveiling of an entirely new facet of the slave experience in the American South.

Black Enterprise

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Black Enterprise by :

Download or read book Black Enterprise written by and published by . This book was released on 1976-06 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BLACK ENTERPRISE is the ultimate source for wealth creation for African American professionals, entrepreneurs and corporate executives. Every month, BLACK ENTERPRISE delivers timely, useful information on careers, small business and personal finance.

A Place to Live in Peace

Author : Evelyn L. Wilson
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496852184
Total Pages : 132 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis A Place to Live in Peace by : Evelyn L. Wilson

Download or read book A Place to Live in Peace written by Evelyn L. Wilson and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2024-06-17 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Place to Live in Peace: Free People of Color in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana reveals a community where free people of color lived harmoniously with white people even as slavery persisted. Author Evelyn L. Wilson documents the presence, land ownership, business development, and personal relationships of free people of color in this Louisiana parish. In the last decade before the Civil War, tensions over slavery in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, led to the separation of free people of color from their white counterparts. But until the 1850s, free people of color had lived and thrived there. The free people of color who inhabited West Feliciana Parish were not a settled population with a common background or a long history of freedom. Some entered the parish already free, others purchased their freedom, while others had been freed by slaveholders for differing reasons. Regardless of how they arrived in the parish, they found themselves in a community that valued the talents and skills they had to offer without regard to the color of their skin. These individuals were integrated into their community, lived among white neighbors, provided needed services, and owned successful businesses. Using extensive archival research, including court records, government documents, legal citations, and periodicals, Wilson interprets the lives, experiences, and contributions of free people of color in West Feliciana Parish. The integral role that these free people of color played in the parish complicates common understandings of the antebellum South.