The Pre-Civil War Complicated Lives of People of African Descent

The Pre-Civil War Complicated Lives of People of African Descent

Join Professor Sherri Burr, the author of Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619-1865, for a discussion on how the arrival of Africans changed the Virginia colony and the country into a multi-racial community where legal rights were advanced and restricted. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Africans and Indians possessed rights to own land (which was never stripped) and to vote (up until 1723). Slavery evolved in convoluted legal manner that was challenged after the Revolutionary War as prominent slaveholders contemplated how they could continue to hold humans. Instead of slavery being eliminated following the colonists' successful fight for their liberty from Britain, several events increased its hold on the county, including the outlawing of the international slavery trade and the Louisiana Purchase. This brought pain to Native Americans who were dispossessed of their land and to enslaved Africans sold to the Deep South. This history of race progression and regression has repercussions for today.

Sherri Burr is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and Yale Law School. She has authored or co-authored 32 books and published hundreds of articles for the general public in newspapers and magazines. Burr has served as a columnist for several publications, including Editor and Writer, the Albuquerque Tribune, and the Southwest Sage. Her audio books, Sum & Substance on Entertainment Law and Sum & Substance on International Law, are part of Thomson West’s “Outstanding Professor” series, which purportedly “captures America’s best law professors on compact disc.”

As a highly sought after speaker, Burr has lectured throughout the United States and on five continents. She has received dozens of speaking and writing awards from the National Federation of Press Women and New Mexico Press Women, and two Southwest Writers awards.  In 2021, she was designated as both the New Mexico Press Women and National Federation of Press Women Communicator of Achievement. As a professor of law at the University of New Mexico, her legal scholarship has also been accorded numerous awards. 

In 2017, she transitioned from being a full-time law professor to becoming a full-time author. Her 27th book, Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619-1865 was published in 2019 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History.

Learn more about Sherri Burr at sherriburr.com.

This presentation is made possible thanks to the New Mexico Humanities Council’s Speaker’s Bureau.