Seeds of Rebellion in Plantation Fiction: Victor Séjour's "The Mulatto"
Introduction Cyrille Bissette (1795–1858). Print by François Le Villain originally published in Joseph Elzéar Morénas's Précis historique de la traite des noirs et de l'esclavage colonial, contenant l'origine de la traite, ses progrès,...
Unquiet Emmett Till
Review Emmett Till continues to torment our imaginations. How could two (and almost certainly more) grown men, veterans, over six feet tall, see a fourteen year old kid as such...
Reckoning with Enslavement
Excerpt Georgetown, April 2017 It was early morning when I crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge from Virginia into Georgetown. College spires loomed in the distance, gray in the dawn...
Haiti and the Fear of Insurrection: A Review of The Slaveholding Crisis
Review Warning the governor of Kentucky that the white South stood on the brink of destruction in 1860, secession commissioner Stephen F. Hale wrote that Lincoln's election "inaugurates all the...
Backcountry Legends of a Minister's Death
Introduction The True Image explores the history and output of Scotch-Irish stonecutters in the early backcountry of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. For none of them do we have any personal...
Three Black Towns: An Excerpt from Black Landscapes Matter
After the end of the Civil War, recently freed Black people endeavored to create their own communities. During Reconstruction, and with newfound access to political and economic power, Black towns...
Louisiana: Crossroads of the Atlantic World
Review In this impressive volume edited by Cécile Vidal a collection of historians seek to recover a "marginalized" past (16) within American history. Louisiana: Crossroads of the Atlantic World...
Putting the Hospital into Southern Hospitality
Review Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry, Cambridge University Press, 2011. In a few days, well before the first mosquito-killing frost reaches the South Carolina Lowcountry, I’ll head...
Carolina's Caribbean Origins: A Review of Hubs of Empire
Review Any historical account requires a framing device—temporal, thematic, or geographical—establishing the scope of enquiry. A Caribbean history typically invokes fairly settled geographical parameters that delimit the area to insular...
Toxic Knowledge: A Review of Baptized in PCBs
Review In 2001, lifelong Anniston, Alabama, resident Ruth Mims was called to testify in a lawsuit against the multinational corporation Monsanto. Monsanto had owned and operated a chemical manufacturing facility...