In this podcast I talk to
Kirt von Daacke about his 2012 work,
Freedom Has a Face:Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson's Virginia (University of Virginia Press, 2012)
. Professor von Daacke is Associate Professor of History and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. In this interview a few topics we discuss are:
- Sources and methods for piecing together a picture of life in Albemarle County and the use of legal documents as a window into a past society
- The relationship between law on the books and the actual behavior of the inhabitants of Albemarle County
- Free people of color's experiences with the legal system
- The possibilities and the pitfalls awaiting unmarried women of color in the rural antebellum South
- Some implications of Freedom Has a Face for future work on African American history