I know I posted this on another forum, but it deserves to be placed here:

Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South, Ira Berlin, The New Press, New York, 1974

This book won a National Historical Society Award, and documents the over quarter of a million free AA's in the South before the Civil War.

Berlin's work is particularly interesting in that he compares the status of FPOC in different southern regions - rather than assuming that their status was the same in every slave state.

Lots of important data compiled here - census tables, laws, codes, and other key references.

IMHO - another must read.

Denise