Secondary Sources

Enslavers, the Enslaved, and Free African Americans

Ribianszky, Nik. Generations of Freedom: Gender, Movement, and Violence in Natchez, 1779-1865. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2023. Nik Ribianszky writes on the history of Natchez, Mississippi, uncovering and making more visible the thriving free Black population that called the town home in the mid-19th century. She investigates the lives of several individual members and families, including the Johnsons, where readers can learn more about Ann Battles and Harriet Johnson’s lives in Natchez after their manumission. Ribianszky also writes on the sexual violence that saturated the American slave trade, providing important context and a useful framework for examining this history.

Salafia, Matthew. Slavery’s Borderlands: Freedom and Bondage Along the Ohio River. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2017. Salafia adds nuance and specificity to a topic that many are content to leave at the Northwest Ordinance: the matter of slavery in the newly absorbed territory. Although the Ordinance had forbidden slavery on paper, Salafia describes a number of ways that the borderlands of the Ohio River continued to perpetrate and benefit from exploitation of Black Americans. Especially salient is the chapter in which he illustrates the practice of slavery in Kentucky, indentured servitude in Ohio, and chattel servitude in Indiana.

Blocker, Jack S. “Building Networks: Cooperation and Communication Among African Americans in the Urban Midwest, 1860–1910.” Indiana Magazine of History 99, no. 4 (December 2003): 370–86. In this article, Dr. Jack S. Blocker Jr. explores the process of community building that occurred among Black Americans in Midwestern towns from 1860 to 1910. Blocker argues that African Americans in the Lower Midwest (Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois), founded networks of churches and other social organizations that were crucial for free African Americans to build community connections after migrating from the South. He also asserts that these institutions fostered a collective racial consciousness among free Black Americans. These sorts of institutions and social networks were important within free African American communities as they created spaces for political activism and resilience, and provided individuals with support systems.

Johnson, Yvonne. Feminist Frontiers: Women who Shaped the Midwest. Kirksville, Missouri, United States of America: Truman State Univ Press, 2010. Johnson centers women in the Midwest in this book, focusing on their contributions to shaping the Midwest rather than men by telling the story of one woman each chapter as she goes through the decades starting in the 1800s and ending in the 1960s. Only one Black woman’s story is told, but several other chapters mention abolition or the woman’s way that she interacted with racism/slavery. Consequently, this source doubles as an effective secondary resource on the actual subject matter that our exhibit covers, while also making evident the relative archival silences as they concern Black women, even within a book titled Feminist Frontiers.

Sutton, Jazma. 2024. "“Go to the Attics, the Closets, and the Basements”: Black Women’s Intergenerational Practices of Memory Keeping in Oxford, Ohio" Genealogy 8, no. 3: 102. This article examines the Jennie Elder Suel collection as an example of how generations of African American women have been unofficial record keepers for their families and the wider context of the archival challenges involved in recovering the stories of Antebellum Black women in the midwest. Suel’s collection is vital to our work on this project and would not have been possible without it. Our examination of the legacy of her family formed the backbone of this project.

Meyers, David, and Elise Meyers Walker. Historic Black Settlements of Ohio. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2020. This source shows patterns of what African-Americans went through as they established Black settlements in Ohio. These events provide context for what Black families went through in Oxford. This source also outlines the disparities in the treatment of race, even within a single, ostensibly “free” state.

McLoughlin, Alessandra A. Love and Dishonor: Miami University and Slavery in the Antebellum Era. Oxford, Ohio: Miami University, 2021. Love and Dishonor examines the historical connections between Miami University and systems of slavery in the early nineteenth century. It argues that, although the university was located in a free state, it was still shaped by pro-slavery attitudes, Southern students, and economic ties to slaveholding regions, using archival documents to support this claim. This source helps challenge the idea that Northern institutions were separate from slavery and instead reveals their involvement in broader national systems. It is especially useful for understanding the historical context of Oxford, Ohio, and interpreting how slavery influenced local communities and education.

Davis, Virgil E. Literary Societies in "Old Miami" from 1825 to 1873. Oxford, Ohio: Miami University, 1950. The Literary Societies takes an in-depth look into the Erodelphian and Union Literary Societies, from their inception to the substance of their debates, and even to their rivalries as student organizations. While providing fascinating insights into how the student body of Old Miami thought, it also reveals the culture of these student organizations, and how they built Miami University’s reputation as the “Yale of the West.”