Madison County, Mississippi (Black America Series) Book

Fantastic look at the history of African Americans in Eastern North Carolina from colonial times through Reconstruction and a bit beyond. What Cecelski does so well is to examine the particular in such a way that illuminates and enriches the whole. He deftly connects geography, the environment, vocations, folk ways, etc. to the devolopment of politics, economics, and the central organizing principle of race as it manifested itself in Jim Crow repression. By examining the margins of the slave system in coastal North Carolina, Cecelski reveals the potential fluidity of race and the incredible courage and agency of so many average and extraordinary people. One of those great historical reads that is so grounded in its time and subject matter that it is timeless and profound.