Eva Sheppard Wolf uses the story of Samuel Johnson, a free black man from Virginia attempting to free his family, to add detail and depth to our understanding of the lives of free blacks in the South. Wolf argues that despite the many obstacles Johnson and others faced, race relations were more flexible during the early American republic than is commonly believed.

EVA SHEPPARD WOLF is an associate professor of history at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner's Rebellion.