Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida (New Black Studies Series)

This gripping study examines slave resistance and protest in antebellum Florida and its local and national impact from 1821 to 1865. Using a variety of sources, Larry Eugene Rivers discusses Florida's unique historical significance as a runaway slave haven dating back to the seventeenth century. In moving detail, Rivers illustrates what life was like for enslaved blacks whose families were pulled asunder as they relocated and how they fought back any way they could to control small parts of their own lives. Identifying slave rebellions such as the Stono, Louisiana, Denmark (Telemaque) Vesey, Gabriel, and the Nat Turner insurrections, Rivers argues persuasively that the size, scope, and intensity of black resistance in the Second Seminole War makes it the largest sustained slave insurrection in American history.

History

Rivers, Larry Eugene

Americas

University of Illinois Press

Winner of: • The Black Caucus of the American Library Association Nonfiction Book Award • The Tampa Bay Historical Society's D. B. McKay Award • The Florida Historical Society's Rembert Patrick Award for Best Book in Florida History
"This is the definitive account of slavery in Florida. It covers all aspects of the institution and the lives of those who were its victims. Especially revealing are its thorough examination of the slave family and its detailed account of the relations between black slaves and Seminole Indians. I know of no other state study that does as much so well."--George M. Fredrickson, Edgar E. Robinson Professor, Stanford University
"Applying the results of extensive research in the primary and secondary sources to a broad conceptual framework, Larry E. Rivers has written a comprehensive social history of slavery in Florida."--Jerrell H. Shofner, Professor of History Emeritus, University of Central Florida
"A highly significant study. . . . Rivers has brought Florida up to date in the field of American slavery. This study, well-written and based on a variety of sources, is balanced and informative."—William W. Rogers, professor emeritus of history, Florida State University
"Rivers has filled a tragically neglected gap in Florida’s published history. The evolution and complexities of slavery unfold from an easily readable narrative in a manner that will move the reader and shed new light on a key element of southern and African American history."—Canter Brown, Jr., historian in residence, Tampa Bay History Center
 This important illustrated social history of slavery tells what life was like for bond servants in Florida from 1821 to 1865, offering new insights from the perspective of both slave and master.
 Starting with an overview of the institution as it evolved during the Spanish and English periods, Larry E. Rivers looks in detail and in depth at the slave experience, noting the characteristics of slavery in the Middle Florida plantation belt (the more traditional slave-based, cotton-growing economy and society) as distinct from East and West Florida (which maintained some attitudes and traditions of Spain). He examines the slave family, religion, resistance activity, slaves’ participation in the Civil War, and their social interactions with whites, Indians, other slaves, and masters.
Rivers also provides a dramatic account of the hundreds of armed free blacks and runaways among the Seminole, Creek, and Mikasuki Indians on the peninsula, whose presence created tensions leading to the great slave rebellion, the Second Seminole War (1835-42).
Slavery in Florida is built upon painstaking research into virtually every source available on the subject--a wealth of historic documents, personal papers, slave testimonies, and census and newspaper reports. This serious critical work strikes a balance between the factual and the interpretive. It will be significant to all readers interested in slavery, the Civil War, the African American experience, and Florida and southern U.S. history, and it could serve as a comprehensive resource for secondary school teachers and students.
Larry Eugene Rivers, President of Fort Valley State College and professor of history, is the author of numerous works, and the recipient of the Arthur W. Thompson Award from the Florida Historical Society and the Carter G. Woodson Award from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation

University Press of Florida

"Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord is church history without the halo. Yet, it is respectful of the nuances peculiar to the AMEC fellowship. It is church history in painstaking detail, but not in isolation to the social, economic, and political dynamics of the period. This is good writing, good research, and good scholarship."--Bishop Adam J. Richardson, Jr., 19th Episcopal District, AME Church, Johannesburg, South Africa "This study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Florida makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of African American, Florida, and Southern History. It treats far more than just religion -- it illuminates the entire post-Civil War era in Florida."--Joe M. Richardson, Florida State University
 "A brilliant and lively work that brings alive black Methodism in the late 19th century. This is an extremely important and original contribution to the history of Reconstruction in Florida, filled with fresh insights." -- Stephen W. Angell, Florida A&amp;M University
"Describes the complicated relationship between black church development and black political participation during the Reconstruction era and its aftermath. The authors persuasively demonstrate how black religion extended its protection to freedmen in both sacred and secular settings." -- Dennis C. Dickerson, Vanderbilt University
Written by two eminent historians, Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord examines the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Florida from the beginning of Reconstruction to the institution of Jim Crow segregation, a period when the AME Church played a crucial role in the religious, cultural, and political lives of black Floridians. The book begins with an overview of slave religion and the first stirrings of African Methodism before 1865 and culminates with the formidable challenges that faced the church by 1895.
Not only did the AME Church save lives for Christ, it emerged as a force to be reckoned with in politics. Men such as Charles H. Pearce and Robert Meacham became powerhouses in state and local affairs as well as in the church. They and their fellow ministers fought for the participation of blacks in the governing process and promoted education and employment for all blacks and poor whites. Numerous others staunchly supported the growing national phenomenon of the temperance movement. Drawing on primary sources such as church newspapers and previously overlooked records, the authors also relate the gripping drama of the inner dynamics of AME church life and examine the impact of personality interactions on its leadership.
This case study of an independent church that produced broad religious and civil freedoms for African Americans offers a detailed account of the successes and failures of one of the largest and most effective institutions in post-Civil War and late-19th-century Florida.
Larry Eugene Rivers is Distinguished Professor of History at Florida A&amp;M University, Tallahassee, and the author of Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation (UPF, 2000). His work has been recognized with the Florida Historical Society’s Arthur W. Thompson Prize and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s Carter G. Woodson Prize.
Canter Brown, Jr., is the author of many works on Florida history, including Florida’s Peace River Frontier (UPF, 1991); Ossian Bingley Hart, Florida’s Loyalist Reconstruction Governor; and Florida’s Black Public Officials, 1867-1924. He has received the Florida Historical Society’s Rembert W. Patrick Book Award and the American Association for State and Local History’s Certificate of Commendation. He has taught at Florida A&amp;M University.

Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord (The History of African-American Religions)

Brown Jr., Edgar Canter

Canter Brown, Jr.

Larry Eugene Rivers

This history of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church in Florida tells how dedicated members of one of the oldest and most prominent black religious institutions created a forceful presence within the African-American community--against innumerable odds and constant challenges. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination established an official presence in the state one year before its better-known cousin and rival, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. When Connecticut native Wilbur Garrison Strong arrived in Key West in 1864, he stood out as the first black ordained minister in all of peninsular Florida. He brought with him the northern Methodist tradition of joyful praise and preaching, an ethos of a plain and simple gospel that emphasized "righteous living" and an unbending commitment to emancipation and hope. With Key West under the control of Union forces during much of the Civil War, slaves and free blacks were able to express their desire for independence from white churches more easily there than throughout the rest of the state, and they gravitated to the church that Strong established. During its formative years, the AMEZ became one of the first mainline churches to ordain women to full clerical status. Its ministers commanded great strength in certain cities, and its membership included more of the urban and middle-class population than was typical for southern religious organizations, which were predominantly rural. At its zenith, the AMEZ was one of the largest African-American churches in the state. But it faced difficulties--gender issues, idiosyncratic leadership, rivalries between local ministers and Episcopal authorities, and political dissension at a point when the church was attempting to address larger social issues. In addition, the scourge of hurricanes and yellow fever and citrus crop freezes affected church fortunes. By 1905, when the governor urged the expulsion of all African-Americans from Florida and when state laws mandated racial segregation on public transportation, the era of lynching, discrimination, and disfranchisement already had begun and the period of AMEZ decline had commenced. In this remarkable yet virtually unknown story, the coauthors capture the mood of the post-Civil-War period in Florida, when blacks faced the obstacles and the opportunities that accompanied their new freedom. This work adds significantly to the growing body of literature on African-Americans in Florida and offers keen insights into the nature of institution building within the black community and the greater society.

For a Great and Grand Purpose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864-1905 (History of African-American Religions)

Winner of: • The Black Caucus of the American Library Association Nonfiction Book Award • The Tampa Bay Historical Society's D. B. McKay Award • The Florida Historical Society's Rembert Patrick Award for Best Book in Florida History "A thoroughly researched and balanced account of the slave experience in Florida."--Journal of American History "The greater social and economic freedom born of Spanish influence and close relationships between rebellious blacks and Seminoles set the stage for the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history. A fascinating account of a variant experience of an institution too often viewed from a single perspective."--Booklist "Rivers takes a very close look at slave society from various angles, as he evaluates not only slave life but the interaction of whites, blacks, and Indians. . . . Makes for a rich and multi-layered history."--Southern Historian "Shows how slavery differed dramatically in different regions of the state and how, in fact, it evolved over the years in those areas."--Tallahassee Democrat "Addresses how Florida’s history and geography produced conditions unlike those elsewhere in the American South."--Journal of Southern History

“Sheds new light on one of the nineteenth century South’s most accomplished yet understudied writers. Brown and River’s study of Mary Edwards Bryan presents some of her best writings within the context of her time.”—James M. Denham, coeditor of Echoes from a Distant Frontier: The Brown Sisters’ Correspondence from Antebellum Florida “A lost writer of the nineteenth century returns to the page with vigor. Her extreme personal trials were hidden by the ‘moonlight and magnolias’ persona she assumed as her public image. This book allows the real Mary Edwards Bryan to emerge from behind her mask of Southern gentility.”—Tracy J. Revels, author of Sunshine Paradise: A History of Florida Tourism The publication of Manch in 1880 marked the beginning of Mary Edwards Bryan’s rise to prominence as one of nineteenth-century America’s best-known writers of mass-market fiction. At a time when women were discouraged from having jobs of their own, she made a name for herself as a thoughtful—and well-paid—editor. Despite her cultivated image as editor of Fashion Bazar and Sunny South, Bryan’s early life was fraught with obstacles. In this finely crafted literary biography, Canter Brown Jr. and Larry Eugene Rivers examine Bryan’s formative years in Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana, pairing historical insights with selections of her best writing to illustrate how the obstacles she overcame shaped what she wrote. She grew up on a frontier plantation and later lived through the upheavals of secession and war, disruptive affairs with authors and politicians, the tensions of emancipation, and pervading post-war economic disorder. Despite the oppressive men in her life—her abusive father and husband—as well as unabashed limitations regarding the role of women, Bryan ultimately achieved extraordinary literary accomplishments in New York and Atlanta. A story of celebrity amid scandal, success amid disaster, ambition amid despair, this book reintroduces to the world a courageous and creative talent who yearned to express herself while navigating the restrictive morals and conventions of Victorian society.

Mary Edwards Bryan: Her Early Life and Works

Biographies & Memoirs

Brown Jr., Canter

Arts & Literature

This first-of-its-kind biography tells the story of Rev. James Page, who rose from slavery in the nineteenth century to become a religious and political leader among African Americans as well as an international spokesperson for the cause of racial equality. James Page spent the majority of his life enslaved--during which time he experienced the death of his free father, witnessed his mother and brother being sold on the auction block, and was forcibly moved 700 miles south from Richmond, VA, to Tallahassee, FL, by his enslaver, John Parkhill. Page would go on to become Parkhill's chief aide on his plantation and, unusually, a religious leader who was widely respected by enslaved men and women as well as by white clergy, educators, and politicians. Rare for enslaved people at the time, Page was literate--and left behind ten letters that focused on his philosophy as an enslaved preacher and, later, as a free minister, educator, politician, and social justice advocate. In Father James Page, Larry Eugene Rivers presents Page as a complex, conflicted man: neither a nonthreatening, accommodationist mouthpiece for white supremacy nor a calculating schemer fomenting rebellion. Rivers emphasizes Page's agency in pursuing a religious vocation, in seeking to exhibit "manliness" in the face of chattel slavery, and in pushing back against the overwhelming power of his enslaver. Post-emancipation, Page continued to preach and to advocate for black self-determination and independence through black land ownership, political participation, and business ownership. The church he founded--Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee--would go on to be a major political force not only during Reconstruction but through today. Based upon numerous archival sources and personal papers, as well as an in-depth interview of James Page and a reflection on his life by a contemporary, this deeply researched book brings to light a fascinating life filled with contradictions concerning gender, education, and the social interaction between the races. Rivers' biography of Page is an important addition, and corrective, to our understanding of black spirituality and religion, political organizing, and civic engagement.

Father James Page: An Enslaved Preacher's Climb to Freedom

Community & Culture

Johns Hopkins University Press

The beauty of John Willis Menard¹s poetry in Lays in Summer Lands stands out today just as it did when first published in 1879.Here, the weight of human experience and observation is transformed into lyrical delight and meaningful insights that continue to resonate generations after their creation.But, that is not all. Among the surprises that greet the reader of these poems is that their author was an African American and a Floridian who chose to offer his intimate thoughts, dreams, aspirations, and frustrations to a nation then entering the twilight years of its experience with social and political Reconstruction.The first African American elected to the United States Congress, Willis Menard turned his disappointment at rejection by his congressional peers into a fruitful career as a political advocate, public official, journalist, editor, and author. In the process, he influenced Florida¹s evolution while reaching a national and international audience.In these pages for the first time since their original publication, the poems of Lays in Summer Lands are reprinted in their entirety. Two noted historians of Florida and African American experience, Larry Eugene Rivers and Canter Brown Jr., have related Menard¹s story and examined the importance of poetry to his world, while award-winning literature professor Richard Mathews has contributed an intriguing essay on the profound depth and implications of the poet¹s work.Delight in these beautiful poems as you cast yourself back well over a century. At the same time, thrill to the enjoyment and insight they bring today.

Lays in Summer Lands

Literature & Fiction

Menard, John Willis

Mathews, Richard

Brown, Canter

History & Criticism

Univ of Tampa

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rivers, Larry Eugene. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rivers, Larry Eugene

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rivers, Larry Eugene. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida (New Black Studies Series)

Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida (New Black Studies Series)

Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation

Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord (The History of African-American Religions)

For a Great and Grand Purpose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864-1905 (History of African-American Religions)

Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation

Mary Edwards Bryan: Her Early Life and Works

Father James Page: An Enslaved Preacher's Climb to Freedom

Lays in Summer Lands