 Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, DC, which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's conversation between Warren Eugene Miltear Jr. and Elena Roberts about Miltear's new book, Beyond Slavery's Shadow. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two programs coming up later this month on our YouTube channel. On Wednesday, January 19th at 1 p.m., Kevin Boyle will discuss his new book, The Shattering America in the 1960s, which focuses on the period's fierce conflicts, the civil rights movement rising black nationalism, Nixon-era politics of busing in the Supreme Court, and the Vietnam War. And on Wednesday, January 26th at 1 p.m., David McKean will tell us about his new book, Watching Darkness Fall, which recounts the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and the road to war from the perspective of four American ambassadors in key Western European capitals, London, Berlin, Rome, Paris, and Moscow. In his introduction to Beyond Slavery's Shadow, Warren Miltear Jr. tells us that in the social order of the antebellum South, free people of color were both privileged and victimized, both celebrated and despised. They experienced both financial success and economic exploitation. While they could own their own property, work their own land and engage in trade, they were still denied the full freedoms exercised by white citizens. Yet in the face of resistance and discrimination, they formed strong community institutions. Within the National Archives, there are a number of resources for researching the lives of free people of color in the United States. These records provide the names of all heads of households and all free members of the household. Military and pension records give valuable information about those who fought for the United States from the Revolutionary War onward. Free African Americans long served as seamen on merchant and wailing vessels, and their service is documented in the records of the U.S. Custom Service. There's an impressive list of manuscript collections Professor Miltear used in his research, including 20 different National Archives record groups. Beyond Slavery, Seattle reveals the diverse experiences of free people of color and how they functioned within the larger society of the antebellum South. Warren Miltear, Jr. is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the author of North Carolina's Free People of Color and From Indians to Colored People, the problem of racial categories and the persistence of the challenge in North Carolina. Elena Roberts is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. She's the author of When Black Lives Matter Meets Indian Country, and I've been here all the while, Black Freedom on Native Land. Now let's hear from Warren Miltear, Jr. and Elena Roberts. Thank you for joining us today. Hello to you, Warren, and to everyone watching. I am so happy to be here to talk about your book, Beyond Slavery, Shadow. I know the archivist showed it, but I'm going to show it again. Here it is. And this is actually your third book, which is amazing, considering, you know, you're an assistant professor, you know, you've written so much already, really kind of carrying through this, this body of work on free people of color. And so I really kind of wanted to start by asking you to tell us why you chose a focus that you did, free people of color, and how you see the trajectory of your work from prize-winning articles to your first two books and now this one. Yeah, so I want to thank everybody who's with us first off and thank you to the National Archives for this opportunity to speak. So my research on free people of color is very much inspired by my interest in my own family. So many, many years ago, I started working on my family history and learned about the fact that many of my ancestors during the period of slavery were actually free persons and not enslaved. And so in the process of learning about that became more curious about my family members, as well as other people who were around them and other people who lived similar lives. And that led me to start doing serious research as an undergraduate or free people of color. And from there, I went on to graduate school and continued to work on that topic and started writing books about free people of color, articles about free people of color. And so you mentioned I first started off with a local study of free people of color in a community in North Carolina and then moved on to a project about North Carolina more broadly. And after doing research on free people of color in North Carolina, I recognized that there was room for a much larger study of free people of color in the South. The last book that had been written about free people of color in the South was published in the 1970s. And I really thought there was need for an update of that book. And so I decided to write beyond slavery shadow. So that's how we got to where we are today. Well, that's something that we bonded over, like the importance of family history in our careers and in our lives. I think academia is kind of finally coming around to the fact that family history performed by scholars who are kind of researching their own ancestors is important and has a lot to tell us. So something that I've always found particularly interesting about your work is that you really insist on this categorization of free people of color. So meaning like scholars, like, you know, Leslie Harris, you write some free people in the North or I'm Rita Myers, they use free people of color, but then they also kind of interchangeably used African American or Native American or black. Whereas you, you get into this in your introduction, why you do this, you really are kind of just all about this category as really important to the people that you study. So could you tell us more about why you do not use other words interchangeably and why you think that this category is specifically important for the story you tell? Yeah. So I mean, I think there are several reasons that I use free people of color. Now, in the book, you'll see that if there's a reference to an individual using another term, I'll use that in quotations, but generally I do use the term free people of color or free persons of color. And one, that's the term that was most commonly used during the time period in which I'm studying. Also, it seems to be the most widely accepted term amongst the people that I'm studying. Other terms that were out there were not commonly accepted by those particular individuals, especially when we're looking at the 19th century, where free people of color is more often used. Also, I think where I'm trying to make an intervention in particular with this term, people of color is to show that people of color is very much, even in this time period, considered a broad term that encompasses a wide variety of people with different backgrounds. And so I explain in the book that there are some free people of color who are not people of African descent. There's this assumption that all free people of color, people of African descent, and that's not necessarily the case. And so out of respect for recognizing that and recognizing, in particular, the indigenous roots of many free people of color, I choose to use that term because the term in its own time was recognized as a term that could encompass other people besides people of African descent, including people of Native American descent. So it's a term that is both kind of important to the time period itself and also can encompass people of different races and a mixed race backgrounds who are many of the people that you talk about in the book. Do you feel that the fact that you use this term for people of color kind of plays a role in how your scholarship is categorized? It may be because you're looking at people who are black or mixed race or black and white or Native American or Native American and black and all these different things that you maybe don't fall kind of as neatly into these categories that we have for historical fields. Oh, yeah, definitely. Because I think there's the assumption of what I'm talking about is still there. So people pick up my book and they think they know right away who I'm writing about and what I'm talking about. And I think also that sometimes being recognized as a serious scholar of Native American history can be a challenge as well, because I'm using this term free people of color and many people who are interested in Native American history don't necessarily think of people of color as including Native American people. But in the time period in which I'm studying, it does include Native American people. And I think current discussions about the term people of color to makes the situation even messier because there's some embrace of the term people of color now. And it also in our current moment means this broad group of people of color. Whereas, you know, some people want to be more specific in the way that they talk about who they are or how they see other people. And they see that people of color is a word that challenges that. But in reality, if we look at the actual history of this concept of people of color, it's meant to be inclusive. But again, like you're saying, it's very difficult when you're trying to be inclusive, and then fit yourself into a box, when you're thinking about the study of history, because we do tend to separate ourselves as historians into different fields, whether it's African American history, Native American history, 19th century US history, early America, whatever. And I mean, all of those topics are covered in my book, I even have a chapter about the Civil War. So getting the message out that all of that material is encompassing this one little book is is a challenge for sure. But hopefully today, people will know a little bit more about what's going on with that book and its contents. When your bibliography like certainly cites historians of African American history, Native American history, Southern history, colonial history, you always kind of have a finger in all these different fields. And that's why I always learn a lot from your work and from our personal discussions. So let's dig in to slavery shadow. So one of the ways that you describe free people of color and your introduction, and in your back cover summary, as the archivist actually quoted in his introduction, is as people who are both privileged and victimized, both celebrated and despised. And so I think that's so really so well stated, so beautifully stated, because free people of color, as you bring out in the book, inhabit this really interesting space where they have access to freedoms and rights that enslave people do not. But also, their lives are not kind of entirely their own. And so when people today think of free people of color, like I've encountered this in my classes, and I'm sure you have, many people don't understand that this kind of freedom in the 18th century, and even the 19th century is not the freedom of today. So do you feel that historians have complicated the idea of freedom enough? Like, there's been an ongoing conversation about agency, for example, and what that term means, and how maybe it's a spectrum. Have we had the same conversations about the term and idea of freedom? Yeah, I think there's definitely room for work, number one, because, you know, there's only a limited number of texts that really engage the experiences of free people of color, in particular, in the South, free people color in the South, many of the books that were written about free people of color in the South, they're actually pretty old, especially the best known ones. And so I do think that there is a bit of room for us to have greater discussions about what does freedom mean? I think that sometimes freedom gets put placed into a binary, so you have slavery or you have freedom. And so you're either experiencing one situation or you're experiencing another situation. And I think what happens for some people is they see the discrimination that free people of color face, and they say, Well, this isn't actually freedom. And I think what I'm pushing for in the book is to suggest, Yeah, this is freedom, and that there's this, there's a spectrum within freedom, and that freedom is being impacted by other types of hierarchy in society, whether it's gender, or whether it's race, wealth, all these different ways that people are viewed and categorized can impact their life experiences. And so I'm trying to just, you know, push historians to think a little bit more carefully about these categories and the way that we think about them. And I think also it's really important for us to recognize that there's a spectrum within freedom in order to see some of the connections between the past and our present moment, that, you know, freedom for people today is not all the same either, right? You know, there are people who are poor in our society, people who are extremely rich, record rich, and what they can do in society, the actual privileges that they have, how the law interfaces with them is quite different, depending on who they are. Definitely. One of my kind of favorite examples to talk about freedom is Solomon Northup and 12 years a slave. So I have my students read his kind of autobiography that's available. And then they watch the film. And we talk about what it means to have, you know, white patrons, white friends who help you in your time of need after he's enslaved, what it means to be free, but to be potentially re enslaved or enslaved for the first time. And so I'm definitely looking forward to next time I teach my African American History Survey using parts of your block to also kind of hammer in these different circumstances with one's freedom. So what do you feel are kind of some of the most common misconceptions about free people of color that you encounter when like doing a talk or when you're teaching? Yeah, I mean, one major misconception is that they don't exist. You know, there are a lot of people who have no idea that there were free people of color and the colonial and at the Bellum periods. Also, I think where these people are located in the country is something that a lot of people don't know much about. So some people assume that most free people of color live in the north, when actually the majority of them live in the south. If they do recognize that they're free people of color in the south, they often assume that they are centralized in places like Louisiana and New Orleans, maybe Charleston, South Carolina, significant population of free people of color. And with, you know, Louisiana ends up actually being kind of an outlier when it comes to the deep south and free people of color, was most states in the deep south did not have significant populations of free people of color. And then I think maybe just to throw this out here. And I think there is there are some assumptions to about the appearance of free people of color and who they were related to who they were connected to. And so I think some people do assume that you know, free people of color are people who have close connections to slaveholding white elites, meaning family connections and that they tend to be physically lighter. And in reality, you have free people of color of all different shades and ancestral backgrounds living throughout the region. So it's not easy to stereotype free people of color and their backgrounds or their interests, their position in society, they're they're fitting across the spectrum. When I think some of the things you brought up further complicate the very essentialist understanding of like North equals free and South equals slave, because there are people in both of those spaces who are enslaved and or free, and in various parts of that spectrum. And I feel like that's something we're still very much working against with the general public like that idea that people learn still on K through 12, unfortunately. Right. So the circumstances under which a person became a free person of color or was born a free person of color varied. I think the most kind of familiar to many people is manumission. But I wanted to ask you to talk about two circumstances that our audience may be less familiar with, that involve when a person was born into the status because of their mother status. So the first is native women. And you mentioned a difference in the book between, I'm just going to quote, those whom colonists recognize as social insiders in their communities, and those with recognized ties to sovereign or tributary native nations. So can you talk a little about the distinction between those two categories? Because as you've said, native people are often not thought of in this category of free people of color at all. Right. Yeah. So it gets kind of messy when trying to break this down. But basically, what's happening is that you have some native people who say by the early 19th century, in the south, at least, are not recognized in their communities as Indians, and being people who are connected to sovereign nations. And often when we define Indian, we think about sovereignty and the importance of sovereignty in that story. But indeed, actually, there are indigenous people who are not being recognized in that in that way. And whether they're, you know, they're making that decision or other people are making that decision, I think it varies from case to case. But those people who are not being recognized as Indians are still in existence, and that they're contributing to the population of free people of color. And so this is where you end up with free people of color who trace their maternal heritage back to a quote unquote Indian woman. And that's how they claim their freedom, because their laws on the books in different parts of the South, with a few exceptions, suggesting that if your mother's free, you are free. And that indigenous women are generally considered to be free. And again, like I said, there are some exceptions because you have the Indian slave trade that is impacting what's going on in the colonial south in particular, but also in that post colonial period, there are families that are enslaved that sue for their freedom based on the fact that they have an indigenous woman ancestor. And there's often debate as to whether that woman was legitimately enslaved or illegally enslaved. And so yeah, I talked about that a little bit. But hopefully that that makes sense to people makes sense to people in the audience. It makes sense to me. But yes, it's more helpful to kind of read it, but at least just kind of introducing this idea of native people in this space, and that there are different kind of categories of native people in this time period. And I mean, still today, like there are native people who aren't citizens of tribes. And those are people are thought of differently. And they may or may not pass on that citizenship. Right, exactly. So the second circumstance that I wanted to ask you to elaborate on, which I actually wasn't even familiar with is one way that Andrew interracial sex was punished basically. So when a child was mixed race born of a white mother and a father of color, and therefore should have been free because of their mother status, but instead was made to work as a servant for a long period of time. Can you talk more about that? Yeah, so in many of the British colonies, in particular, the lawmakers, they are trying to dissuade white women from engaging in relationships with people of color, whether they're free or enslaved. And so the children that these women have when they do engage in relationships with people of color, end up being punished as long as well as the women through servitude. So children are being pushed into decades of servitude because of the actions of their parents, and particularly, specifically their mothers by having children out of wedlock, which is, in many cases, the only way that these children can be born because white women are not being allowed to marry men of color, even if they're free. And definitely if they're enslaved, there's no way they could do that under the law, at least. And so it's placing many of the early families of color in the colonial period in at least decades of servitude, if not generations of servitude. So I found examples where you'll see families stuck in servitude for two, three, four generations. So they might their servitude may start in the colonial period, and then continue on into the 19th century. And so basically, what is happening is that laws that regulate women having children out of wedlock punish women, whether they are white women having children with people of color or women of color, who are having children out of wedlock, they're being punished. And also their children are punished by being placed in the servitude. So they often become the servants of the people who are holding the mothers in servitude, the children. And so this is how you end up with this continuing pattern. And also the law plays a role in this by making it impossible for women who are in servitude to be married to the people that they're having children by. So therefore, they're by default illegitimate again. And because they're illegitimate, they're therefore under the control of the courts and the courts end up apprenticing them out or binding them out as service. I couldn't believe that I like didn't know that. I mean, I think like, I feel like that's the sign of reading a good book. I thought you're like, wow, like, I can't believe I didn't know that. And it gives a cruel meaning to you know, paying for the sins of the father, like or the mother. And so there were also, as you talk about fines related to this crime of interracial sex, there were punishments of various degrees taxation. How often do you see these various punishments being carried out? Like is this consistent? Does it depend? I mean, I think there are always some exceptions. But when we're thinking about the colonial period, and the attacks on women who are having children out of wedlock, it seems pretty commonplace, especially in places such as Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, where you seem to have the larger populations of free people of color. Yeah, these these cases pop up everywhere. And based on at least anecdotal evidence, it seems that this is that these relationships of white women have white women having children with men of color in the colonial period. They are the major source of free people of color during this time period. So most free people of color, whose origins trace back to the colonial period, if they don't have connections to Native American people, or the few people who were man emitted, they are descendants of these relationships between white women and either enslaved men or free men of color. This is an aside, but I think another reason this is interesting to me is because, I don't know, the early 2000s ish like, unwed mothers having children was like a really big like political thing, like look at this like horrible issue. And people didn't realize that this has been happening for a long, long time. And so you're kind of telling us about laws that kind of like force this into being these women into being unwed mothers, and release kind of illegitimacy. Yeah, definitely. And I, and I think too, just to add on to this, that this particular situation creates a, to some extent, permanent underclass of free people of color in certain parts of the South. This is why I think to some extent you see that although the upper South has the bulk of the free people of color in the region, those people tend to be poorer on average than free people of color living in the lower South, even if we're talking about somewhere like Mississippi, the average first free person of color in Mississippi is wealthier than the average free person of color in Virginia. And I would say at least part of that has to do with the origins of some of these families. It takes many, many generations, in some cases, for free people of color who descend from white servant women to get out of poverty, and be able to buy land and do other things that are allowed under their free status. It was contrary to the thought that mixed race people had easier like in this period, I think. Right, yeah, because, you know, I think what happens is we forget the gender aspect of the conversation, right? So, yeah, the free people of color who tend to be mixed and have wealth are people who are connected to white men, whereas those who are descendants of white women don't always have the same opportunity, generally don't have the same opportunities, because they're not going to be an they're not going to inherit significant wealth if their ancestors will serve it, right? And yet they can be just as mixed in their ancestry as those people who have white fathers or white grandfathers who are helping to boost their status. Okay, so you tell us that these punishments for unwed mothers for illegitimate children are relatively consistent, but one of the kind of inconsistencies that you talk about throughout the book is with the legal system, as well as kind of social and political life, which makes clear that law doesn't necessarily always translate to on the ground experience. An example that really kind of stuck with me from the introduction is a Maria Reed or is it a Mariah? Yeah, yeah, who is a free men of color who couldn't marry his white partner, but he could live with her. And that reminded me of some of the inconsistencies that Joshua Rothman talks about in notorious in the neighborhood regarding mixed race sex or interracial sex and marriage. You both discuss how there would be white people supporting colonization or supporting slavery or supporting segregationists or kind of horribly discriminatory laws. But at the same time, they are mixing socially with free people of color or marrying free people of color or complimenting their accomplishments, this world that kind of defies strict black and white characterization, so to speak. So in your conclusion, you hint at some of the modern day parallels to these white people who maybe don't fight as hard as they could for black equality, but have black friends or have a black partner. Could you kind of elaborate on the parallels that you see with our time? Yeah, so I think that the particular example that you brought up from the introduction is is somewhat telling. So I'm Mariah Reed, for those people who haven't read the book, as a free man of color, and he was in a relationship with a white woman named Betsy Skeeter. And so I actually have a personal connection to these people, they're my ancestors. And so they have a very interesting arrangement as far as where they fit in their community. So it seems when Mariah Reed, and this is not in the book, but I'll just tell you anyways, but when Mariah Reed obtains his land, he obtains land that is near Betsy's relatives. And so her white relatives are living next to this family of free people of color, and they're interacting and other people in the neighborhood are interacting and clearly, even though the law doesn't suggest, or doesn't not allow for Mariah Reed and Betsy Skeeter to be married, people in their community still look at them as married people and recognize their children as being their children, even though under the law these children are all illegitimate. And so today, just to make the connection to the current time, we have a similar arrangement where Betsy's white relatives actually live close to and next to people who don't consider themselves white in the same community. So that neighborly relationship is still there. So that's, you know, something that you may not expect to survive for 200 years, but indeed it has. And different people have different relationships with one another in those, those, you know, parts of the family. But yeah, I think that going to I guess, maybe the broader point that you're trying to get at is that we see that people of color and white people have this wide spectrum of relationships. And there are a variety of different reasons that people interact with one another. Sometimes it's just about business relationships. Sometimes kinship matters in these situations. And they still do today, of course, right? There are plenty of white parents of people of color who take care of their kids and love their children and want the best for their children. And so, you know, I think we shouldn't expect that people in the past didn't have the same feelings and the same ideas in their heads. And sometimes that can lead to some inconsistency in the way that people operate because, you know, they love the people who are close to them, but may not love people as a group or how they conceptualize them as a group. And so that creates a lot of challenges for us in our modern time, too, and makes it hard for us to move forward. But at the same time, those situations give us an opportunity to, for people to think outside of the black and white spectrum, if you have people in your family that don't easily fit in one box or another. Last fall, I had a student who is mixed race who's white and black. And she told me that her grandparents on her white father's side are very kind to her. They took care of her a lot when she was younger. They also call black people they see sometimes the N word. So, you know, things like that are I feel like kind of the core of your book like that kind of interesting dynamic. And also, I just feel like it really speaks to the way people can almost kind of like divide the way that they think about like a group of people as if like the people that they know don't really fit into that group, but then they're okay with these kind of stereotypes for those people outside of their nuclear family or extended family. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I think that for a lot of people, it's easy to hold those viewpoints, because they're just, you know, circulating throughout our society and have been for so long. And it's especially easy for people who don't know much about their history, because, you know, we're talking about examples of people who have like close relatives, who are, you know, different racial category fit in different racial categories. But also, of course, you know, there's this larger group of people in the United States who have very complicated ancestral backgrounds. And many of them are not aware of those backgrounds or don't take those backgrounds serious. And, you know, by learning about my own family history, early on, I learned that I had to take some of these things serious. So I think I've mentioned this before and other talks that I've given, but my last name comes from one of my white female ancestors. And so, you know, to recognize that, like, this is my, this is my name, like, this is my family name, you know, a lot of people assume, oh, well, you know, I can, I have ancestors who were enslaved. And so this is not actually my name. And I, of course, have ancestors who were enslaved to, but in the case of the name Miltier, this is my name. And this is a name that came from one of my ancestors. And she just happened to be a white person. And so when you recognize that and recognize who you are and where you fit in this history, then I think it at least pushed me to be more open-minded about the time period in which I'm studying, and also the time period in which we're currently living in. So the legal system is especially kind of interesting in your book, I think, because it's used by people in power to erect barriers for the economic and social success of people of color, and also to keep people of color from kind of forming alliances and connections with white people. But it also allows them to fight back against these in many instances. And so many scholars talk about like women and men, for instance, suing further freedom. But you use some interesting examples of free parents and grandparents who use the legal system to police and try to better the treatment of their loved ones that I hadn't seen before. Yeah, so I mean, free people of color, and I think the examples you're talking about are in the colonial period, but throughout the time period that I'm looking at, access the courts to defend themselves in a variety of different ways. And so in those particular examples, you have parents who feel that their children are being abused, they're in apprenticeships, and they want to make sure that their children's lives are secured and that they receive what they are supposed to, because ultimately an apprenticeship or being placed in servitude is an agreement, at least under the law. And so there are supposed to be certain rules that guide these interactions between people who are in servitude and those who are serving as their masters. And so, yeah, because the grandparents in those particular cases or parents are free people, they can go into the court and file a complaint, whereas an enslaved person doesn't have those rights to go and say, hey, the master of my child is abusing my child. They just have to take it or do something that does not fit within the legal system. They have to run away or take their child, and in that case, that's stealing. You're stealing your own kid, right? Now, of course, because there's these agreements between the parents or the children in the courts or the masters in the courts, if a free person of color goes and takes their child away, they're technically kidnapping their own child. But thinking about that, maybe in comparison to what we see today, it's more about issues of custody. And those parents can regain custody. They can petition on the behalf of their child in a way that other individuals would not be able to. And later on in the book, I also talk about how some free people of color use the courts to sue white people who owe the money or have committed crimes against them, like maybe physical attacks. Free people of color, of course, use the courts for divorce like anybody else would if they have a situation that's not working out. They go to the court and say, Hey, this person is cheating on me or this person's abusing me and they try to seek a remedy under the law. So yeah, I think that free people of color definitely see themselves as free persons who have certain rights and they seek to use those rights to the best of their ability. For the end of the book, as you get into the mid 1800s, you talk about how some free people of color are trying to change with the times with the kind of changing racial classifications, with the rights and privileges that come with these racial classifications. And we've talked about people who were native or who were part native, but there are people who increasingly start to claim native ancestry that they perhaps do not have in order to live a life with your restrictions. And this is something I've talked about with Melinda Maynard Lowry about people in the past who are denying their racial identity or fudging it. What do you as a historian think about these people and how do you talk about them to people today, like maybe doing historical research or genealogical research? Yeah, that's a really tricky situation that we have, because I do talk about a few examples of free people of color who are trying to enhance their rights by either claiming that they're quote unquote, not Negroes, which is a category in Virginia and some other places or claiming that they are Indians without any African ancestry. And so I know that many historians in the past who've looked at these records have been somewhat skeptical of the claims and I think rightfully so in certain cases. But at the same time, I think the way that I deal with it is one to recognize that people are making a claim. So like as a historian, I think it's important just to recognize that's what's going on. I'm not necessarily able to judge whether their claims are true or partially true. Often the historical record just does not allow me to do that. And of course, also the historical record is flawed and the way that terminology is used is complex as well. So, you know, going back to one of your earlier questions, there are people who are identified in records, say only as free people of color. That does not mean that they're not people of Native American heritage. Even if that's all you can find on them is that they are classified as free people of color because the term people of color is inclusive of people of Native ancestry. And so I know that some individuals will take records like that and say, Hey, these people are being classified as colored people, you know, throughout their lives or they're even referring to themselves as colored people. And so therefore they can't be people of Native American ancestry. And I say, I'd push back against that and say that that's not necessarily the case. So, I think that my approach to these types of records is to come with, come at them with an open mind and do my best to provide either readers or people that I'm talking to with as much context and primary source material as possible. And I just have to kind of leave it there because ultimately these questions we will never be able to answer in many cases as far as the origins of certain groups of people or their ancestral backgrounds. And I know some people are using DNA now trying to figure that out. And there's a whole lot of flaws when it comes to DNA and how people interpret DNA. I mean, race is not biological, but yet people are putting place in race on to DNA and trying to say, hey, these people are one thing or another. So, yeah, it's a really messy situation and I think we have to recognize today that indeed it's a messy situation and that all the answers are never going to be there for us as much as some of us may want them to be. Well, you saying it's a messy situation makes me kind of think of a somewhat messy question maybe. Okay, anyone who studies African Americans or is black themselves and has been in any black gathering, has black family members, has probably heard like, you know, grandmother, like was Cherokee or like, you know, there's someone who's Native American in our family. Do you feel like, is this a completely different situation than in the past? People claiming Native ancestry, like today, is it maybe to seem more interesting like versus in the past maybe to obtain certain rights? Like, what do you think of this kind of phenomenon? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that, you know, there are situations across the board because there are, you know, depending on what Native nation you're connected to or you're claiming a connection to, there are potentially certain rights that you have if, you know, you're a member of a federally recognized tribe or become a enrolled in a federally recognized tribe or state recognized tribe. So there, you know, are real opportunities or real connections that you can make by being connected to certain political entities or Native nations. And so, yeah, I mean, that's not completely gone, but then at the same time, yeah, what happens is I think, you know, people are telling these stories to explain what they don't understand about their families. I've always found it somewhat interesting how some people are more interested and knowing about the race of their ancestors than anything about their ancestors as far as how they lived, what their names were. They just want to have a set of percentages or fractions that they can say, hey, I'm one half this, I'm one third this, which I don't know how that happens, but as far as mathematically. But yeah, that's what I think a lot of people seem to be more focused on. And again, that's something that I wouldn't encourage. You know, I think that you need to understand the whole context as much as possible when you're looking at your family background and trying to understand who you are. Because some things, you know, easy to prove or disprove us, you know, when we hear claims of Cherokee ancestry, which are so common in the South in particular, and then you hear that they're coming from people where there were no Cherokees. Yeah, it's one of those things like, yeah, it's not impossible, but it doesn't seem likely because of course we do have a Native American slave trade that is moving people from all different regions of the Americas into the South. I mean, they're enslaved people who are indigenous coming from the Spanish colonies and the Caribbean or in South America who are being transported into North America and vice versa. So there's a whole lot of different possibilities if individuals actually have Native American ancestry. And I mean, that goes for African ancestry as well. People, you know, are coming from all over Africa from the slave trade and their people being moved within Africa and then ending up in the Americas. So you may have, you know, come from Central Africa, ended up in Western Africa and then end up in the Americas somewhere and, you know, it's again, like you said, it's a messy situation no matter how you look at it. And I think the best that most people can do is to just try to find out as much as possible about those individuals in their lives, you know, look for records, do these people ever say how they identify and try to respect how people looked at themselves. I think those are really great tips. And I'm always asked like for tips on doing genealogy, just as like you, I write about my family. I don't think anyone except my dad has read my book. But one or two people did kind of come out of the woodwork to be like, oh, we're Chickasaw and talk to like, you know, does that mean we get scholarships? Like where is the money? Instead of like, oh, let me read your book to learn about where they lived in the 1800s, things like that. It is disappointing but, you know, we're also historians and maybe we're just inclined to think differently. Yeah, no, I think it's really challenging to, you know, get people to care about people that they don't know and don't understand. I mean, you know, we're both historians and teach history and we know the lack of general understanding amongst the public in many cases about these very nuanced issues about race and how people are categorized and the history of how these categories developed. And so you can understand how people don't really know how to make sense of all of this. It takes years of research, years of engagement to really think about it in a careful and complex way. So now is the time that we're going to take some audience questions. If you're watching this and you have a question, please do put it on YouTube, I think, and then we'll get it. So one of the audience question is asking you, Warren, to tell us more about your genealogical journey. Yeah, well, I mean, I'll keep it brief because it's a quite long journey. So yeah, I started working on family history when I was a kid. I was around 12 years old when I got interested in family history and say, you know, I did what most people should do if they're interested in family history, talk to my elders, see what they know, talk to other family members who had also been interested in the topic of our family go to the library. Of course, now so much material is on the internet so you can find census records and even local community records right on the internet and pull that out and find more about your family background. So that's kind of what I did. I started off asking questions and thank goodness I did because, you know, many of those questions can't be answered anymore. The family members who I ask questions aren't not with us and so yeah, that's how I started and just, you know, as I got deeper into it, I went beyond just my immediate family lines to understand cousins and other people who are intermarried with our families or somehow connected to our families and of course that's how I ended up working on Free People of Color as a academic topic is that I was going beyond my own family looking at other communities and recognize that, you know, I have something to say about the experiences of Free People of Color from that. Yeah, I mean a lot of people are starting to be interested in genealogy but I think the difference is that historians are looking at a broader picture to kind of, you know, give us an idea, okay, what does this mean for this era or this geographical area? And as you say, I'm definitely jealous of people who started early because by the time I started in college, a lot of people had passed away. So good on you, good for you. Okay, there is a specific question about genealogy in the chat. The New York 1800 federal census has another category with note accept Indians non-taxed. Can you explain what that means? Yeah, so that's where you would put your Free People of Color in most cases. And so the idea of the Indian non-taxed is kind of interesting because it goes back to our earlier discussion about sovereignty. And so Native people who are at least recognized by their white neighbors or the federal government or state government is having sovereignty, those individuals who are members of the nations are not included in the census because they are those people who fit under the Indians non-taxed category. At least if they are people who live, say, on a reservation or on territory being held by Native people. Now, if those individuals have moved off, say, a reservation and gone into a city, they often are categorized as Free People of Color and are counted in the census records. Very great. One last question. What is the difference between legal and illegal enslavement? What's the difference between legal and illegal enslavement? Well, I guess it just in the context of Free People of Color enslaveing a free person of color, it would be considered illegal. Whereas if somebody is considered a slave in the context that we're talking about here, their enslavement is not illegal. I mean, I don't know what else we're getting at there. But yeah, there are people who are Free People of Color who are being held in bondage as if they are slaves. And that is not legal under the laws of most southern states and colonies. And so individuals have to go through a process of proving that they are indeed free and not enslaved people. So hopefully that helps to explain and get at what the person wanted. I think that was a good answer to kind of vague question. Thank you. I actually have a question that has come up in my head. Were there ways that Free People of Color in your opinion helped to uphold racial hierarchies in order to safeguard themselves and their communities? Yeah, that's a tricky question. I mean, I think you could say yes and no depending on who you're thinking about, right? So the early example we talked about where people are using these laws that allow them to be categorized as not Negroes or Indians clearly are trying to benefit from the existing hierarchy by simply moving themselves within it. And of course, you see that with individuals who take actions to be recategorized even as white. So, you know, they're free people of color who in their communities of origin are recognized as people of color, but they can go somewhere else and be recognized as white people. And so they're, you know, taking advantage of what exists at the time and the assumptions that people make about who is white and who is not. You know, how you want to judge that I think is really up to each individual. But you know, that's definitely how I think they're trying to navigate the situation. Okay, well, we are almost at two o'clock. So I will just end by saying that I learned a lot from reading your book, some of which I definitely am going to incorporate into my teaching. So thank you. I would encourage you all to buy it and read it. Here it is again. And thank you, Warren, for writing it and for talking to us today. All right, thank you so much, Elena.