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The New York Times: The ‘Terrible Intimacy’ of Black and White Americans Amid Slavery ’s Horror
Summary
The Times reviewed a new book by Melvin Patrick Ely, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Humanities, History.
Full Description
"Melvin Patrick Ely’s 'A Terrible Intimacy' brims with scenes like these as it unspools the complex lives of Black and white residents of Prince Edward County, Va., before the Civil War. Using records from six carefully selected criminal cases, each dissected in detail, Ely convincingly reveals how the antebellum social order was defined both by violent white supremacy and by a surprising variety of interracial relationships.
Ely, a historian at the College of William & Mary, has previously turned to local history to challenge our collective tendency to reduce the antebellum South to stereotypes and set pieces. In his Bancroft Prizewinning 'Israel on the Appomattox' (2004), he investigated a longstanding free Black community in Prince Edward County. Now he examines slavery itself."