By Daniel J. Thomas III Originally from Macon, Alabama, Julien Sidney Devereux, Sr (1805-1856) moved to east Texas where he eventually purchased land in Rusk County. This plat would eventually become Monte Verdi, one of the highest producing cotton plantations in the state, where over fifty Africans were enslaved. The Devereux family papers and the […]
Rage and Resistance at Ashbel Smith’s Evergreen Plantation
by Candice D. Lyons In the spring of 1852, Benjamin Roper, overseer to Galveston area plantations Evergreen and Headquarters, wrote a short letter to his employer to inform him that “on the night of [April] 30 I cut Lewis [an enslaved man] with a knife…He is now and has been since his misfortune at Dr. […]
2019 History PhDs on Not Even Past
This month on Not Even Past we are celebrating the accomplishments of seventeen students who completed their doctoral dissertations and received their PhDs in History in 2018-2019. Above you see some of them pictured. Below you will find each of their names and the title of their dissertations. Many of these students were also contributors […]
US History at the Movies
Films about historical events have enormous power to affect us, both to enlighten and to mislead. Historical films are perennially popular, often because they tell history through individual lives, because they invent characters and add personal, emotional drama to events that we want to learn about. Those same fictionalizing qualities make them great tools for […]
The Public Archive: The Paperwork of Slavery
Millions of tweets and millions of state documents. Intimate oral histories and international radio addresses. Ancient pottery and yesterday’s memes. Historians have access to this immense store of online material for doing research, but what else can we do with it? In Spring 2018, graduate students in the Public and Digital History Seminar at UT […]
Longfellow’s Great Liberators: Abraham Lincoln and Dante Alighieri
By Guy Raffa “We breathe freer. The country will be saved.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s response to the reelection of Abraham Lincoln in 1864 is a timely reminder of how, while they all matter, some presidential elections matter much more than others. Five years earlier Longfellow was one of many who believed the time for peace […]
Historical Perspectives on The Birth of a Nation (2016)
“They killing people everywhere for no reason at all but being black.” —Cherry (the wife of Nat Turner played by Aja Naomi King) By Ronald Davis The number of books, novels, articles, plays and movies committed to the life and times of Nat Turner is vast. None of these sources is without controversy. It should […]
Slavery and its legacy in the USA
Not Even Past has published many feature articles, book and film reviews, and podcasts on slavery in the American South, brought together on this page. Approaching this topic from different angles, this body of work provides an overview of key issues important for anyone wanting to understand slavery and its lasting legacy.
Mapping The Slave Trade: The New Archive (No. 10)
by Henry Wiencek Roughly 12 million Africans were forcibly transported to Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas. It’s hard to conceptualize so many men and women being uprooted from their homes. But Emory University’s Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database helps users understand the vast proportions of this perverse exodus. The site pieces together historical data […]
Black Loyalists and “The Book of Negroes”
The Book of Negroes is an extraordinary historical resource, a meticulous list drawn up by the British authorities between May and November 1783, in which they recorded the personal details of some 3,000 African Americans evacuated from New York.