Southern Dissent

This volume introduces a new way to study the experiences of runaway slaves by defining different “spaces of freedom” that fugitive slaves inhabited. It also provides a groundbreaking continental view of fugitive slave migration, moving beyond the usual regional or national approaches to explore locations in Canada, the U.S. South, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

This volume expands the chronology and geography of the black freedom struggle beyond the traditional emphasis on the old South and the years between 1954 and 1968. 

Karen Hawkins describes the founding of Craven Operation Progress in North Carolina, discusses the philosophies and tactics of its directors, and outlines the tensions that arose between local leadership and federal control. 

This volume closely examines the movement to resettle black Americans in Africa, an effort led by the American Colonization Society during the nineteenth century and a heavily debated part of American history. Some believe it was inspired by antislavery principles, but others think it was a proslavery reaction against the presence of free blacks in society.

This is the definitive account of a landmark event that spurred the South to secession.

In Show Thyself a Man, Gregory Mixon explores the ways in which African Americans in postbellum Georgia used militia service after the Civil War to define freedom and citizenship. Independent militias empowered them to get involved in politics, secure their own financial independence, and mobilize for self-defense.

Atlanta stands out among southern cities for many reasons, not least of which is the role African Americans have played in local politics. Black Power in Dixie offers the first comprehensive study of black politics in the city.

Jeff Strickland examines how German and Irish immigrants in Charleston were both agents of change during the transition from slavery to freedom, as well as embodiments of that change.

This examination of a Quaker community in northern Virginia, between its first settlement in 1730 and the end of the Civil War, explores how an antislavery, pacifist, and equalitarian religious minority maintained its ideals and campaigned for social justice in a society that violated those values on a daily basis.