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Freedom's mirage : Virgil Bennehan's odyssey from emancipation to exile / Sydney Nathans.
Van Pelt Library E185.97.B3327 N38 2024
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Nathans, Sydney, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Bennehan, Virgil, 1808-1850.
- Bennehan, Virgil.
- African American physicians--History--19th century--Biography.
- African American physicians.
- Free African Americans--History--19th century--Biography.
- Free African Americans.
- United States--Race relations--19th century.
- United States.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- 185 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2024]
- Summary:
- " Freedom's Mirage traces the exceptional life of Virgil Bennehan, born in bondage in 1808 in Piedmont North Carolina, who rose to become an enslaved doctor on one of the South's largest plantations and to view himself as a friend to Blacks and whites alike. Emancipated in 1848 but required to leave the state to be free, he was sent to Liberia. Though richly endowed and royally welcomed, he found himself subject to new rulers and mired in the worst medical catastrophe in Liberian history. Recrossing the Atlantic, he boldly returned to North Carolina to warn slave owners that Liberia was a death trap. Yet again exiled from his native state, he declared in March 1849 his intention to go to gold-rush California, the one place at midcentury that seemed to offer an open field, even to a man of color. Intrepidly researched and grippingly told, Virgil Bennehan's story reveals the complexity and fragility of human relationships within bondage. Once liberated, Bennehan led a tumultuous life that dramatized the fleeting promise and pervasive limits of Black freedom in the era of slavery-and foreshadowed the future for generations that followed"-- Provided by publisher.
- Contents:
- The exception
- Toxic terrain, medical calling
- The best judges
- Freedom bound
- Patrons galore
- I am not certain
- The height of folly
- The messenger
- A broken bond
- The certainty of uncertainty
- Outcasts.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 9781469682648
- 1469682648
- 9781469682655
- 1469682656
- OCLC:
- 1429887068
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