A new wave historian mines previously unexamined documents of the Amite county seat courthouse (Liberty, MS) in relating the lives of black Americans under and freed from slavery. Main foci are: slave law, gender issues, local churches, the troubles of 1861-65 as related in a slaveowner's diary wi

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The African American presence in St. Louis began in 1763 with the arrival of several free men of color who accompanied Pierre Laclede from New Orleans to set up a fur trading fort on the Mississippi. Within a few decades, the fort had become a prosperous commercial center whose proximity to the western frontier attracted a cosmopolitan community. African Americans in St. Louis--both slave and free--enjoyed greater autonomy and opportunity than those in urban areas of the South and East. Slaves in the city set legal precedent by filing hundreds of freedom suits, often based on the prohibition...