Virtual Book Club - Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery with author John Marks

Event Details

Join author John Garrison Marks on Thursday, November 18, 2021 virtually at 5:30 pm as he discusses his book Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas.

John Garrison Marks works for the American Association for State and Local History and holds a Ph.D. in history from Rice University. He is the coeditor of Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations: An Atlantic World Anthology and his work has appeared in Southwestern Historical Quarterly and Atlantic Studies.

About the Book:

Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference challenged the foundations of white authority"”and linked the Americas together.

In Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery John Garrison Marks examines how these individuals built lives in freedom for themselves and their families in two of the Atlantic World's most important urban centers: Cartagena, along the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, and Charleston, in the lowcountry of North America's Atlantic coast. Marks reveals how skills, knowledge, reputation, and personal relationships helped free people of color improve their fortunes and achieve social distinction in ways that undermined whites' claims to racial superiority.