Gathered in this book are the most recent insights into lives of African-Americans - slave and free - in the antebellum South from leading scholars in the fields of history, folklore, anthropology, material culture, and archaeology.
Before Freedom Came
is the companion volume for a landmark exhibition which brings together the largest collection of materials ever assembled interpreting the lives of antebellum African-Americans. The text is enhanced by more than 150 black-and-white and 25 colour photographs. The exhibition, sponsored by the Museum of the Confederacy, one of the oldest museums in the South, will be shown in three sites in the United States. In 6 original essays the contributors convey to the general reader and student alike a thorough, multi-dimensional picture of the lives of African-Americans in the South before the Civil War. Drew Gilpin Faust surveys the historiography of American slavery and race relations and the problems they have posed for American values. John Michael Vlach describes the physical setting - the natural and built environments - of the antebellum South and how the plantation landscape shaped the daily routines of plantation slaves. Building on this, Charles Joyner offers a wide-ranging view of
The World of the Plantation Slaves , analyzing the entire slave South as he did the South Carolina low country in his acclaimed book
Down by the Riverside , while Deborah Gray White summarizes her pathbreaking work on the lives of slave women
Ar'n’t I a Woman? . In contrast, David R.Goldfield analyzes the lives of slaves and free blacks in urban settings and focuses on the changing relationships between blacks and whites in southern cities during the 1850s. The book concludes with a pioneering essay by Theresa A.Singleton that presents the significant findings of a decade of archaeological investigation of slave sites across the South. This project is made possible with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities.