Historical Source Material
The African American Experience
at Historic Smithfield
This recommended reading list was developed by the investigators
for Historic Smithfield's
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
grant researching the African American experience at Historic
Smithfield.
Recommendations by Dr. Phillip Troutman, principal investigator:
- Fox Genovese, Elizabeth.
Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South.
1988.
- Redford, Dorothy Spruill, with Michael D'orso
Somerset Homecoming: Recovering a Lost Heritage. 2000.
- Terry, Gail S. Sustaining the Bonds of Kinship in a Trans-Appalachian
Migration, 1790-1811: The Cabell-Breckinridge Slaves Move West,
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, v. 102, October 1994.
- Wiencek, Henry. The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White.
2000.
Recommendations by Leni Sorensen, consultant:
- Bancroft, Frederic. Slave Trading in the Old South.
Baltimore: J.H. Furst Company, 1931.
- Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community, Plantation Life in the
Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
- Bogger, Tommy Lee. The Slave and Free Black Community in Norfolk,
1775- 1865. University Press of Virginia, 1976.
- Breeden, James, ed. Advice Among Masters: The Ideal in Slave Management
in the Old South. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980.
- Bush, Barbara. Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
- Campbell, Edward D.C., Jr. and Kym S. Rice, eds. Before Freedom Came:
African-American Life in the Antebellum South.
University Press of Virginia, 1991.
- Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and
White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1988.
- Franklin, John Hope and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves:
Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925.
Vintage: Random House, 1976.
- Harris, J. William, ed. Society and Culture in the Slave South.
London: Routledge, 1992.
- Jones, Norrece T., Jr. Born a Child of Freedom, Yet a Slave:
Mechanisms of Control and Strategies of Resistance in Antebellum
South Carolina. Wesleyan University Press, 1990.
- Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of
Virginia and Cuba. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1989.
- Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom.
Belknap: Harvard University Press, 1987. ----- American Slavery 1619-1877.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.
- Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Mullin, Gerald W. Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in
Eighteenth-Century Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
- Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders.
Vintage: Random House, 1983.
- Perdue, Charles, Jr. Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with
Virginia Ex-Slaves. Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 1976.
- Prude, Jonathan. "To Look upon the "Lower Sort":
Runaway Ads and the Appearance of Unfree Laborers in America,
1750-1800." The Journal of American History.
Volume 78, Issue 1 (Jun., 1991), 124-159.
- Roberts, Robert. The House ServantÃs Directory: or a Monitor
for Private Families Comprising Hints on the Arrangement and
Performance of ServantÃs Work. (Originally published by Monroe
and Francis, 1827.) M. E. Sharpe, 1998.
- Schwarz, Philip J. Twice Condemned: Slaves and the Criminal Laws
of Virginia. LSU Press, 1988.
- Seigel, Frederick F. Southern Distinctiveness: Tobacco and Society
in Danville, Virginia, 1780-1865.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.
- Smith, Billy G. and Richard Wojtowicz. Black Who Stole Themselves:
Advertisements for Runaways in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1790.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
- Stampp, Kenneth, M. Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the
Ante-Bellum South. Vintage: Random House, 1956.
- Tadman, Michael. Speculators and Slaves: masters, Traders,
and Slaves in the Old South. University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
- Vlach, John Michael. Back of the Big House: The Architecture
of Plantation Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1993.
- Windley, Lathan A. Runaway Slave Advertisements: A Documentary
History from the 1730s to 1790. Volume 1: Virginia and
North Carolina. Greenwood Press, 1983.
