Mixed Race Studies

North Carolina Free People of Color, 1715-1885 with Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
2020-06-25

Bernice Bennett, Host

Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. examines the lives of free persons categorized by their communities as negroes, mulattoes, mustees, Indians, mixed-bloods, or simply free people of color. From the colonial period through Reconstruction, lawmakers passed legislation that curbed the rights and privileges of these non-enslaved residents, from prohibiting their testimony against whites to barring them from the ballot box. While such laws suggest that most white North Carolinians desired to limit the freedoms and civil liberties enjoyed by free people of color, Milteer reveals that the two groups often interacted—praying together, working the same land, and occasionally sharing households and starting families. Some free people of color also rose to prominence in their communities, becoming successful businesspeople and winning the respect of their white neighbors.

Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. is assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is the author of North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885.

Listen to the episode (00:45:57) here. Download the episode here.

The Half Has Never Been Told with Edward E. Baptist, Ph.D.

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2014-12-18 21:00 EST (Friday, 2014-12-19, 02:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Producer and Host

Historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Until the Civil War, Baptist explains, the most important American economic innovations were ways to make slavery ever more profitable. Through forced migration and torture, slave owners extracted continual increases in efficiency from enslaved African Americans. Thus the United States seized control of the world market for cotton, the key raw material of the Industrial Revolution, and became a wealthy nation with global influence.

Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history. It forces readers to reckon with the violence at the root of American supremacy, but also with the survival and resistance that brought about slavery’s end—and created a culture that sustains America’s deepest dreams of freedom.

Edward E. Baptist is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and House Professor and Dean at the Carl Becker House at Cornell University.

For more information, click here.

Go Stand Upon The Rock with Samuel Michael Lemon, Ed.D.

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2014-11-20, 21:00 EST (Friday, 2014-11-21, 02:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Go Stand Upon the Rock (2014) is a deeply moving Civil War-era novel based on stories handed down by Sam Lemon’s grandmother about the lives of her grandparents who were once runaway slaves from Virginia. It is a tale of unsettling plantation life, courageous women, dramatic Civil War battles, heroes, hoodoo, and the indomitable strength of the human spirit. The book is supported by historical and genealogical research, photographs, and documents from his doctoral dissertation. This is a compelling and emotionally engaging history that comes alive through the lives of real people and events.

Dr. Sam Lemon grew up in Media, Pennsylvania, where his maternal great-great grandparents arrived as runaway slaves during the Civil War. Given refuge and support by local Quakers, his ancestors prospered and became prominent members of the community. He is currently an assistant professor and the director of a graduate program at Neumann University in Pennsylvania, and formerly worked in the fields of social services, education, and public television at WHYY in Philadelphia.

For more information, click here.

A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life – Allyson Hobbs

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2014-11-06, 21:00 EST (Friday, 2014-11-07, 02:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Allyson Hobbs is an assistant professor in the history department at Stanford. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. She has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. Allyson teaches courses on American identity, African American history, African American women’s history, and twentieth century American history. She has won numerous teaching awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize. She has appeared on C-SPAN and National Public Radio and her work has been featured on CNN.com and Slate.com. Allyson’s first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, published by Harvard University Press, examines the phenomenon of racial passing in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present.

For more information, click here. Download the audio here.

Fatal Invention with Dorothy Roberts

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2014-07-24, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2014-07-25, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century

Dorothy Roberts, an acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law, joined the University of Pennsylvania as its 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the Law School where she also holds the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander chair. Her pathbreaking work in law and public policy focuses on urgent contemporary issues in health, social justice, and bioethics, especially as they impact the lives of women, children and African-Americans. Her major books include Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century (New Press, 2011); Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books, 2002), and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon, 1997). She is the author of more than 80 scholarly articles and book chapters, as well as a co-editor of six books on such topics as constitutional law and women and the law.

Download the episode here.

The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America – Daniel J. Sharfstein

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2014-06-26, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2014-06-27, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

Join author, Daniel J. Sharfstein for a discussion of his book and research – The Invisible Line – Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White.

Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, these families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolved—how the very meaning of black and white changed—over time. Cutting through centuries of myth, amnesia, and poisonous racial politics, The Invisible Line will change the way we talk about race, racism, and civil rights.

Daniel J. Sharfstein is a professor of law at Vanderbilt University. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, he has been awarded fellowships for his research on the legal history of race in the United States from Harvard, New York University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His book is available in paperback as The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America, and it has won three prizes: the J. Anthony Lukas Prize for narrative non-fiction, the Cromwell Book Prize from the American Society for Legal History, and the Hurst Prize from the Law and Society Association. Daniel has also spent the past year as a Guggenheim Fellow, working on a new book.

Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, these families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolved—how the very meaning of black and white changed—over time. Cutting through centuries of myth, amnesia, and poisonous racial politics, The Invisible Line will change the way we talk about race, racism, and civil rights.

Download the episode here.

Fathers of Conscience with Bernie D. Jones [Part 2]

Research at the National Archives & Beyond
Blogtalk Radio
2014-05-08, 21:00 EDT (2014-05-09, 02:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Bernie D. Jones, Associate Professor of Law
Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts

Join Author Bernie D. Jones for an engaging discussion about her book – Fathers of Conscience – Mixed-Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South.

Fathers of Conscience examines high-court decisions in the antebellum South that involved wills in which white male planters bequeathed property, freedom, or both to women of color and their mixed-race children. These men, whose wills were contested by their white relatives, had used trusts and estates law to give their slave partners and children official recognition and thus circumvent the law of slavery. The will contests that followed determined whether that elevated status would be approved or denied by courts of law.

For more information, click here.

The Robbins Family at War with Marvin Jones

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2014-04-03, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2014-04-04, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Marvin T. Jones, Executive Director
Chowan Discovery Group

“The Robbins Family at War” – it is about a Native American family who lived through colonial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, and finally emerged victorious in the Civil War as a part of the mixed-race community. Five members served in the U.S. Colored Troops. Three fought from Suffolk, Virginia to Richmond and helped enforce Juneteenth. Two served in Florida and South Carolina. After the war, they served in North Carolina legislature, invented and founded schools and churches.

Marvin T. Jones is the executive director of the Chowan Discovery Group, whose mission is to research, document, preserve and present the history of the mixed-race land-owning people of the Hertford County area in northeast North Carolina. The CDG has produced many articles, lectures, historical markers, a stage production and several video documentaries. Marvin lives in Washington, D.C. and is a native of Cofield, North Carolina.

For more information, click here.

“Slavery, Freedom and Reunion in a Colonial Connecticut Town” with Grant Hayter-Menzies, Daryl D’Angelo and Donald Roddy

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2013-10-03, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2013-10-04, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

In June 1759, Norwich, Connecticut businessman Benajah Bushnell sold Guy Drock, a slave of African ancestry, to Sarah Powers, the Caucasian woman Drock had possibly married. Ironically, this deed freed Drock from Bushnell’s control but not from slavery. In March 2012, descendants of Guy and Sarah Drock and of Benajah Bushnell came together in Norwich for the first time in over two centuries. Drock descendants Daryl D’Angelo and Donald Roddy—who when they began their research years earlier did not know they had African ancestry, and Bushnell descendant Grant Hayter-Menzies—who thought only his Southern ancestors were slave owners—met to try to understand a legacy they did not know they shared. In the town where their past began, they sought to explore the personal impact of their ancestors’ intertwined histories, how the past has shaped them, their research and their interactions with one another today, and the relatively unknown institution of slavery in early New England.

• Grant Hayter-Menzies is an internationally published biographer and journalist .
• Daryl D’Angelo is a wife and mother, photographer and writer, and lives in a small town [Amherst] in southern New Hampshire.
• Donald Roddy is a 78 year old retired Airline Pilot.

For more information, click here.

Black Coral: A Daughter’s Apology To Her Asian Island Mother

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2013-09-05, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2013-09-06, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

C. D. Holmes-Miller, Clergywoman, Theologian, Designer, Author

Mother with Clergywoman, Theologian, Communications Designer and author, The Rt. Reverend Dr. Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller aka Bishop Miller, M.S., MDiv.

She tells of her tumultuous, emotional teen agony of trying to accept her multiracial, multiethnic family as they struggle to fit in a “one box, one drop” racial category of being Negroes. Her coming of age story during the Civil Rights Movement leads to her back to the future 21st century revelations of her true heritage. Once taboo, her story is vogue and trending…her memoir is  a genuine catalyst for talking about race and culture, and those discussions start within the context of our families. She is the Senior Minister of The North Stamford Congregational Church in Stamford, Connecticut.

For more information, click here.