"A remarkably fine work of creative scholarship." —C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books In 1860, when four million African Americans were enslaved, a quarter-million others, including William Ellison, were "free people of color." But Ellison was remarkable. Born a slave, his experience spans the history of the South from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. In a day when most Americans, black and white, worked the soil, barely scraping together a living, Ellison was a cotton-gin maker—a master craftsman. When nearly all free blacks were destitute, Ellison was wealthy and well-established. He owned a large plantation and more slaves than all but the richest white planters. While Ellison was exceptional in many respects, the story of his life sheds light on the collective experience of African Americans in the antebellum South to whom he remained bound by race. His family history emphasizes the fine line separating freedom from slavery.

Drawing on the federal census, wills, mortgage bills of sale, tax returns, and newspaper advertisements, this authoritative study describes the nature of African-American slaveholding, its complexity, and its rationales. It reveals how some African-American slave masters had earned their freedom and how some free Blacks purchased slaves for their own use. The book provides a fresh perspective on slavery in the antebellum South and underscores the importance of African Americans in the history of American slavery. The book also paints a picture of the complex social dynamics between free and enslaved Blacks, and between Black and white slaveowners. It illuminates the motivations behind African-American slaveholding--including attempts to create or maintain independence, to accumulate wealth, and to protect family members--and sheds light on the harsh realities of slavery for both Black masters and Black slaves. • BLACK SLAVEOWNERS--Shows how some African Americans became slave masters • MOTIVATIONS FOR SLAVEHOLDING--Highlights the motivations behind African-American slaveholding • SOCIAL DYNAMICS--Sheds light on the complex social dynamics between free and enslaved Blacks • ANEBELLUM SOUTH--Provides a perspective on slavery in the antebellum South

These thirty-four letters, written by members of the William Ellison family, comprise the only sustained correspondence by a free Afro-American family in the late antebellum South. Born a slave, Ellison was freed in 1816, set up a cotton gin business, and by his death in 1861, he owned sixty-three slaves and was the wealthiest free black in South Carolina. Although the early letters are indistinguishable from those of white contemporaries, the later correspondence is preoccupied with proof of their free status.

Property ownership has been a traditional means for African Americans to gain recognition and enter the mainstream of American life. This landmark study documents this significant, but often overlooked, aspect of the black experience from the late eighteenth century to World War I.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

"Wilson finds that there were about 6,200 colored slave-holders in the days of yore, and that these 'Black Masters' owned some 18,000 slaves." - The African Abroad (1913) "An extremely interesting article." -Albany Law Journal (1905) "While doing research on black slaveholders early in this century, Calvin Dill Wilson discovered further evidence of William Ellison's reputation for harshness." Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (1984) "In rural Virginia and Maryland also there were free colored slaveholders in considerable numbers." -American Negro Slavery (2013) "Calvin Dill Wilson is a writer of prominence for magazines." -Harry Probasco, U.S. House of Representatives Hearing, 1918 It is a fact that African-Americans owned slaves in the South before the Civil War, but few people seem to know it. From Calvin Dill Wilson's short 19-page book "Black Masters" we learn that wealthy free African-Americans bought and sold members of their own race just as did the Southern white planter; African-Americans, once slaves and freed by their white masters, became slave-owners, themselves. "To judge from all that is known on the subject, we may assume that the only thing that prevented the great majority of colored people from buying and trading in one another, was, in addition to the law in some States, their lack of means," according to Watson's Magazine (1913). In introducing his short work, Wilson writes: "The most singular and dramatic aspect of slavery in the United States was the occasional ownership of bondsmen by free blacks. Historically, the facts are obscure, little known and difficult to trace; this phase is overlooked by historians, so far as I am aware, and is lost from the memories of most people of this generation..."

A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.