Brunswick County resident, historian, and retired educator J. Christy Judah brings readers The Two Faces of Dixie: Politicians, Plantations and Slaves, unveiling the “peculiar institution” of involuntary servitude as it occurred in coastal North Carolina.
Brunswick County resident, historian, and retired educator J. Christy Judah brings readers The Two Faces of Dixie: Politicians, Plantations and Slaves, unveiling the “peculiar institution” of involuntary servitude as it occurred in coastal North Carolina.
Judah begins with the particulars of how slavery gained a toehold in the state, profiles of folks who were considered “big bugs” of the time, and a lengthy listing of dozens of plantations whose owners controlled not only the soil, but also the slaves who tilled it. One powerful section contains slave narratives, told in the words of those formerly held in bondage. Judah gleaned the narratives from more than 2,000 interviews with former slaves conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project from 1936-1938. These recollections are recorded in the tellers’ own words and dialect. They describe the complex and often contentious relationship between slave and master in North Carolina. Unscripted and recorded long before political correctness became a buzzword, these first-person narratives lay bare the soul of slavery.
Adding to the book’s depth, Judah includes an appendix with copies of last wills and testaments by masters and misses, where the goods up for grabs were not only fine china and silverware, but also human beings. Dozens of period photos depict the striking contrast between slave and slave owner.
An exhaustive and intriguing inspection of the days when as many as one in three North Carolinians was enslaved, The Two Faces of Dixie leaves little to the imagination concerning that troubling and turbulent time.
John F. Blair, Coastal Books. 2009, 363 pages, paperback, $28.95.
