This article shows how and why some free black families ended up living among the enslaved in the late antebellum era. Enslavers brought free people of colour into forms of informal quasi-slavery that differed little from enslavement despite their free legal status. Despite a lack of evidence, piecing together free blacks’ experiences through surviving sources reveals much about the porous boundary between slavery and freedom where enslavers manipulated marginality for financial gain. There was no sharp delineation between slavery and freedom but instead a continuum of oppression characterized by varying degrees of persecution and fragile freedoms.

中文翻译：

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“We Chilluns, Long wid Her, Wuz Lak de Udder Slaves”：战前晚期的自由黑人家庭和准奴隶制

这篇文章展示了一些自由的黑人家庭如何以及为什么最终生活在战前晚期的被奴役中。奴役者将自由的有色人种带入了非正式的准奴隶制形式，尽管他们具有自由的法律地位，但与奴役几乎没有区别。尽管缺乏证据，但通过幸存的消息来源将自由黑人的经历拼凑起来，揭示了奴隶制与自由之间存在漏洞的边界，在这种边界上，奴隶为了经济利益而操纵边缘化。奴隶制和自由之间没有明确的界限，而是以不同程度的迫害和脆弱的自由为特征的持续压迫。