Family Bonds: Free Blacks and Re-enslavement Law in Antebellum Virginia, by Ted Maris-Wolf

Between 1854 and 1864, more than a hundred free African Americans in Virginia proposed to enslave themselves and, in some cases, their children. Ted Maris-Wolf explains this phenomenon as a response to state legislation that forced free African Americans to make a terrible choice: leave enslaved loved ones behind for freedom elsewhere or seek a way to remain in their communities, even by renouncing legal freedom. Maris-Wolf paints an intimate portrait of these people whose lives, liberty, and use of Virginia law offer new understandings of race and place in the upper South. Visit the book page: Family Bonds: Free Blacks and Re-enslavement Law in Antebellum Virginia