Join historian Warren E. Milteer Jr., Ph.D., for a thought-provoking program exploring his new books, “Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom: Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era” and “Freedom in the Age of Slavery: A History of Free People of Color in Virginia,” which reframe how we understand freedom, race and citizenship in Virginia and the broader United States. Milteer will be joined by the Library of Virginia’s local records program manager, Vince Brooks, and Lydia Neuroth, project manager of Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative.
In “Freedom in the Age of Slavery,” Milteer illuminates the discriminatory policies and resulting hardships that free Virginians of color faced while also documenting the opportunities they created for themselves and the success they enjoyed against overwhelming odds. “Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom” brings the stories of free people of color to the forefront, revealing that freedom was not simply the absence of enslavement but a powerful foundation of identity, rights and belonging. These works challenge the notion that freedom began solely with the abolition of slavery. Instead, they present freedom as an evolving and contested process, shaped by the lived experiences and activism of free Black communities long before and after emancipation.
Milteer is an associate professor of history at George Washington University. His research interest is in early America, the nineteenth-century U.S., the U.S. South, free people of color, race, slavery and Native America. His publications include “Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South” and “North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715-1885” and many articles.
This is a free event, but registration is required. Limited free parking is available underneath the Library at 800 East Broad Street. For more information, contact education@lva.virginia.gov
