Event Date
Law School - AOKI Center/History Department colloquium on Free People of Color: Race, Law and Freedom in the 19th and 20th Century U.S.
On the Antebellum Fringe: Lumbee Indians, Slavery, and Removal
This essay illuminates how the Lumbee challenge the dominant narrative of antebellum southern history. It reminds readers that Natives did not simply depart the region in 1838, and that removal entailed metaphorical destruction as much as forced migration. It also shows how one Native community struggled to work through the South’s stilted racial binary and continue to shape regional culture. In addition, it demonstrates how the Lumbee survived the tumultuous changes by maintaining flexible ties to family, religion, and place. They persisted in an increasingly hostile environment by adapting some aspects of white culture, including apprenticeship and marriage, and by building literacy and practicing Christianity. Those Lumbee who participated in black market activities continued to maintain close ties to kin who endeavored to meet social challenges through legal channels. Their efforts provided a sense of social unity that defined their sense of belonging and drew boundaries around their community.
Professor Malinda Maynor Lowery; Director, Center for the Study of the American South
Malinda Maynor Lowery is a Professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill and Director of the Center for the Study of the American South. She is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Her second book, The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle, was published by UNC Press in September 2018. The book is a survey of Lumbee history from the eighteenth century to the present, written for a general audience.
Her first book, Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (UNC Press, 2010), won several awards, including Best First Book of 2010 in Native American and Indigenous Studies and the Labriola American Indian Center National Book Prize from Arizona State University.