Abstract
This essay offers an introduction to the Race, Slavery and Free Blacks: Petitions to Southern Legislatures and County Courts microfilm collection, edited and published by Professor Loren Schweninger and the Race and Slavery Petitions Project at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In 2003–04 the author joined the RSPP staff as the National Historical and Public Records Commission's Fellow in Documentary Editing. This essay identifies how the petition testimonies included in this unusual microfilm collection can inform our understanding of African-American freedom before emancipation. More specifically, it examines petition testimonies filed with county courts and legislatures for evidence of how slaves, slaveholders and free African-Americans experienced the legal process of manumission. It argues for petition testimonies as a unique form of African-American narrative.
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