Before Freedom Came
African-American Life in the Antebellum South

This volume of essays provides a portrait of antebellum slave life in the American South. Contributions from historians such as Drew Gilpin Faust, Charles Joyner and Theresa A. Singleton reveal the everyday horrors and inspiring stories of survival that characterized slave life.

Building on this, Charles Joyner offers a wide-ranging view of "The World of the Plantation Slaves", analyzing the entire slave South as he did the South Carolina low country in his acclaimed book "Down by the Riverside", while Deborah Gray White summarizes her pathbreaking work on the lives of slave women "Ar'n't I a Woman?". In contrast, David R.Goldfield analyzes the lives of slaves and free blacks in urban settings and focuses on the changing relationships between blacks and whites in southern cities during the 1850s. The book concludes with a pioneering essay by Theresa A.Singleton that presents the significant findings of a decade of archaeological investigation of slave sites across the South. This project is made possible with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities.