Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South

Synthesizing local histories and individual stories, Milteer opens to interested readers a fresh vista of a more complicated history of the South and the position of people of color, with implications for the 21st century."-Library Journal

Milteer demonstrates how free people of color pursued and often achieved meaningful freedom in an oppressive society and provides a welcome update to the broader discussion of freedom and slavery in the antebellum American South."-Journal of Social History

Milteer . . . sheds light on a relatively unknown topic in the history of the United States. . . . His work is an important read to fill this gap in knowledge."-Civil War Book Review

Recommended . . . Milteer demonstrates important distinctions between the rhetoric and actual practice of regulating free people of color and how their experiences differed by location, whether in rural or urban areas, the upper or lower South, or former English or Spanish colonies."-CHOICE

A well-documented and written exploration of the free people of color in the southern United States."-Southwestern Historical Quarterly

[Milteer] masterfully combines a general synthesis with distinct local histories. What emerges is a comprehensive picture that stresses the diversity of the American experience."-Slavery & Abolition

An important book. . . . The payoff of this deep scholarship is a portrait of the South's free people of color that is complicated, nuanced, and attentive to individual and regional diversity."-H-Slavery

"[Milteer] skillfully reveals the sometimes-intersecting values of whites and free people of color . . . and then provides a framework for understanding them."-Journal of Southern History

A meticulously researched and insightful book that builds on the work of scholars of slavery, early American history, U.S. history, and the Civil War."-Journal of the Civil War Era