Some of the largest and wealthiest plantations in the South are located in Louisiana. While certainly not the largest, the Goldpoint Plantation in Bossier Parish, over 1,000 acres prior to the war, was worked by dozens of slaves. Like many slaveowners, Goldpoint’s owner sent his slaves to a nearby church, the Red River Baptist Church…
During the South Carolina constitutional convention this month, white leaders legislate the first of the post-war South “black codes.” Laws designed to circumvent federal legislation granting freedoms to freedmen, black codes are the means to regulate movements and activities of black citizens in crucial ways. On the one hand, South Carolina legalizes marriage between black…
Mary Richards Bowser (c. 1841 – ?), born into slavery and raised in Richmond, Virginia, has lived an amazing life. Elizabeth Van Lew, of the Van Lew family that owned Bowser, arranged for her education in the North and granted her much freedom prior to the war. From 1855 the young woman served as a…