By Peter T. Leeson
Eighteenth-century pirate features, from skull-emblazed flags to wooden legs, pervade popular culture. One important pirate feature that doesn’t appear in most pop-culture treatments, however, is the fact that upward of a quarter of the average early 18th-century pirate crew was black.
Historical evidence on the free vs. slave status [...]
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by Martha A. Sandweiss
In Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, I unravel the hidden life of Clarence King, the celebrated western American explorer, who crossed the color line from white to black to marry the woman he loved. For thirteen years, from his marriage in 1888 [...]
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