William Johnson’s Natchez: The Ante-Bellum Diary of a Free Negro - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807118559 ISBN 13: 9780807118559

Publisher: LSU Press, 1993

Synopsis

The discovery in 1938 of the diary and personal papers of William Johnson (ca. 1809–1851), a free Black man who resided in Natchez, Mississippi, made possible the 1951 publication of this edited version of his journal. Johnson’s diary offers a firsthand account of a formerly enslaved man who rose from appalling circumstances to become a successful businessperson. It is also an intimate portrait of life and social relations in a southern town in the years leading up to the Civil War.

A barber by trade, Johnson was also a landlord, moneylender, enslaver, and small farmer, who, despite his status as a free Black man living in a stridently racist society, became a prominent, well-respected citizen of Natchez. Johnson kept a ledger on the various aspects of his thriving businesses, and in this journal, he also recorded his impressions of the daily occurrences of life around him. “I am always ready for Anything,” reads one of his entries for 1845. This dictum is borne out in his acutely observed accounts of births and deaths, weddings and elopements, political campaigns and conventions, races and cockfights, concerts and trials, balls and epidemics―all related with the private frankness of a person denied a public outlet for his opinions.

In a conversational voice, Johnson set down the whole of the Natchez scene for sixteen years. No other southern diary provides such a broad picture of numerous aspects of everyday life or provides such deep insight into the life of a free person of color. It is among the most remarkable documents of antebellum America.

About this title

About the Author

William Ransom Hogan was head of the Department of Archives at LSU and also served as chairman of the history department at Tulane University. He is the author of The Texas Republic: A Social and Economic History.

Edwin Adams Davis was the head of the Louisiana State University Department of Archives. He graduated from Kansas State Teachers College and received his advanced degrees at the State University of Iowa and LSU.

William L. Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt and To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Biography, 1760–1865.

From the Back Cover

The discovery in 1938 of the diary and personal papers of William Johnson (ca. 1809-1851), a free Negro of Natchez, Mississippi, made possible the publication of this fascinating volume. Johnson's diary offers a firsthand account of a former slave who rose from harsh circumstances to become a successful businessman. It is also an intimate portrait of life and social relations in a southern town in the years leading up to the Civil War.

Edition details

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807118559
• ISBN 13: 9780807118559
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 848
• Editor: Hogan William Ransom, Davis Edwin Adams