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Antwain K. Hunter, "A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865" (UNC Press, 2025)
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The United States will never fully exercise slavery's ghost until it comes to term with its past and fully contextualizes its present. The institution's echoes reverberate in the present in several ways, including in some white people's efforts to manage black public actions. Plenty of Americans from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds engage in this kind of policing, but the dynamic is inextricable from its antebellum precedents of supervision and control. Many of these aggressions are not physically violent, and because of our technological advancements, there is a wide array of these instances wherein a white observer calls the police on black people or other persons of color for doing quotidian things like barbecuing, using hotel or public swimming pools, painting progressive messages on their own property, selling water, bird watching, or taking naps that are captured on video. An excerpt from A Precarious Balance, Firearms, Race and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865, by Assistant professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Antoine Hunter Antwan welcome to the New Books Network.
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Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
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As am I. As am I. So I did something. Normally when I open these episodes, I do read an excerpt from the book. With your book, though, I did something different, which is I actually read an excerpt from the epilogue rather than an excerpt from the introduction. And so I actually want to tie the epilogue to the genesis of the project. You wrote that these contemporary acts of policing that I just read were actually not part of the genesis of the book, but rather that the book's genesis came from a seminar with Bill Blair at Penn State in 2009, when you came across an 1831 legislative petition from white Delawareans who wanted to disarm their state's free and enslaved black people. Talk about this.
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Yes, I'm happy to. So it's interesting because I was, for the entire time I was working on this project, the background of it and for much of my life, beyond the boundaries of this project, the background of it is, of course, we've seen a number of episodes of violence against black folks, people calling the police on black folks for doing all sorts of just everyday things in this effort to kind of control black folks in public space. But the origin for this project really came out of that class. And so this was, I think, in the second year, my PhD program, maybe the first year. And Bill Blair had us go through some online databases of documents. And the idea was we're looking at primary sources that are put out by these online archives and try to get in a feel for how are they presenting the information, what's there? Are there images? And it really was that this is back in a day where there was a lot of stuff that was online, but not nearly as much as there is today. And so we were still kind of coming into it. And so I think it was his effort to kind of get us thinking about these collections of research resources that are available to scholars like us, and to really think about how you might best present that information to a public or to researchers. And so coming through this, I was looking at this webpage that had been put together by Lorne Schwinninger, who was at, I think, UNC Greensboro at the time. And Schrodinger had driven around the south collecting images from county courthouses that dealt with slavery, free people of color, and I think women as well. But it was a collection of things. There were legislative petitions, also some court records, and he was compiling them all in one place. And I was just kind of cruising around this website and looking at some of the documents and looking at some of the court cases that were there. And I got these legislative petitions from white folks in Delaware who were trying to disarm black folks in their community. And it sort of struck me like a ton of bricks because being a grad student who studies 19th century America, I was in a Civil War era center where Bill Blair was. And so we spent a fair amount of time thinking about firearms and masculinity and the American past and the ways that people use guns in a variety of capacities. But it had just never struck me to sort of think about this through a racial lens. And I was almost embarrassed that I hadn't thought about it because I am a black scholar. I also am a. I work on black history, on AFAM history. And so it just. I'm like, how have I never thought of this? And so I started poking around a little bit, and there was a little bit written, but not nearly. Not nearly enough. And so this was. It was sort of like the call to be like, this is what your dissertation is going to be on. This is what your first book practice is going to be on. There's something here, right. That needs to be further developed that's so interesting.
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The legislative petitions in the 19th century. I mean, there is. Right? It's an antecedent. It's the legal system. The same way with the legal system today. You go for. You file something, you don't like it. But yeah, there's something about those legislative petitions that feel maybe a little more personal.
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I don't know.
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I think in my head. Right. Because the communities were smaller.
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Yeah. And it's a really good point. And so oftentimes we think about petitions today, it's. You got thousands of people who are. Who are signing on to it. It's online, and you can. You have. People all over the country are doing it. It's not like that. Like, a lot of these. There are some bigger ones, but a lot of the ones that I've been looking at, and even these Delaware ones, it's their county level, Right. And so you might have a dozen dudes or 25 dudes, maybe 40 people who get together and say, this is the thing that we care about. Let's write a petition to the legislature. And we expect them to do something. Right. We expect them to respond to this. Right. There's a kind of connection with your representatives and with the state legislature in a way that I think that we're a little bit removed from now. And these guys spent a lot of time in their districts, in their counties, at home. And so people talk to them and wrote petitions into the government. And also petitions. A great way of trying to get at how people understand government's role and their relationship to it. Because you get these petitions from white voting males in this period, but you also get petitions from women who are not voters. I'm thinking of some in the wake of Nat Turner's reporting, Right. There are white women in Virginia who write to the governor, who write to the legislature. They're enslaved folks. Even in the Colonial Era who will petition the governor or petition the general Court in Massachusetts advocating for freedom and things like this. And so it's the way that people voice their opinions and views about what they think, what shape the country or colony or state should be. Should be taking. And that's a way to do it is to. Is to write in. I wish that we did. We still voice our opinions in different ways. But there's something, I think very beautiful that kind of. That petition. But I wish that we saw some element of that still.
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Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I agree. So, you know, I said that we sort of started at the end. Go back to the beginning of the book. The book's introduction is titled Reconsidering Historic Black Gun Use. I was really interested in the word reconsidering as part of the introduction. Talk about that word and how it relates to the project as a whole.
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Yeah. So what I was really trying to do with that is. Is to try and set up in the introduction like what I was. What I wanted to do with this project and sort of like what the. One of the big goals of it is. And so reconsidering, because I think that for a long time, if we were to just go out into the street right now, Chapel Hill or New York City or anywhere else, and just stop someone on the street and ask them about sort of firearms and slavery. Right. Or firearms in the period of slavery, most people would assume that black folks don't have any access to firearms. And when they do have them, it's because they're rebels and they're trying to stage a rebellion. And while, yes, that is true, it's. Yes. And there are a host of other ways in which people are armed, both legally and illegally, for a variety of other purposes. And. And so I really wanted to try and push us to, like, what would happen if we kind of move firearms. Because people write about firearms a little bit in other things, but it's usually, like, in the margins. Right. So a larger book about slavery, you get a couple points about it. What happens if we kind of shift it towards the center and sort of think about the wide range of applications for firearm use that black folks had access to illegally or legally. Right. But the ways that they were using these weapons. And the other piece of the piece that I hope sort of, like, shines through in this framework that I'm trying to bring about is that firearms are central to. Well, labor is central to firearm use. Right. And so we can argue about, well, how many folks are using guns. It kind of depends on the time and the place that we're at. But it's not an uncommon thing in Annabelle, North Carolina and in some other states to have enslaved people who are working with firearms like that. The gun is part of the labor that their enslavers are trying to extract from them. Right. They're also able to use it to their own benefit, to their own devices. And I think that that's a. That kind of that tension, that struggle is, is a, is a, is. Is one of the things that sits at the center of this. But really trying to drive home that point about like this is we're thinking about enslaved labor in this period. We're thinking about black people's labor. Guns are a part of that story.
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See if I can formulate this follow up question correctly. One of the things I found really interesting in this book is, you know, when we're reading a book in the, you know, contemporary times about the 19th century, there is a bit of this constant mind shift, right. Of. Of that, you know, then what was expected then, now kind of back and forth. And as it relates to slavery and enslavement, I feel like as someone who reads in the area, it's not that hard to do that switch of the mind, the guns was something different for me to do that a bit. And I'm sure it also has to do with the fact that where I live right now in New York City, nobody's hunting. There's not. There's point of view about where and why one sees a gun in New York City. That is not the case in the rest of the country, certainly. And I found myself having to. The book really opened my mind in new ways and exposed some of the, I think, biases and assumptions that I didn't know I had until I was reading the book. And so talk about you're in North Carolina, but talk about, you know, how much of this kind of like today, contemporary view versus then did you negotiate as you were reading, writing the book?
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It's a really good question. And it is something that I grappled with thinking. And I'm in North Carolina now. I was in Indiana for a while when I was working on this, which is another state that firearms people aren't shy about their guns. I started in Pennsylvania, of course, deer hunting and things are very popular, very big. But I will say that it's one of those things where I find myself trying to grapple with what does it mean to be armed and what are the sort of the pros and cons of this in Any given moment. Now, of course, there's always a kind of balance that has to be struck, or maybe balance is the wrong word. But there's always. There are dangers inherent in being armed, and there are benefits to being armed. And so we see this for enslaved folks and free people of color in the antebellum period, right, where if you're an enslaved person who has access to a weapon, you can provide food for yourself and for your community, you can defend yourselves, you can protect your crops and sort of like engage in farm work in a way that's hard otherwise. But it also, if you're someone who is outside the bounds of the law, it invites a whole other sort of host of challenges. Now, the gun also allows you to better fend off some of those challenges, but it creates a tension, right? And the same is true, I think, you know, when we think about the hosts of people who've been black gun owners or gun users who've been shot and killed while not engaged in any sort of criminality, sometimes responding to criminality and the visual right. Of armed black person for some folks sort of sets off an alarm. And so I think that there's that try to navigate that balance because on the one hand, I think that the gun is incredibly practical for many of my historical subjects. I also think that the gun at times is very practical people in the present day. But I think that there's tension is sort of like, what are the weighing the pros and cons. Right. In both instances, there still is the potential for misunderstanding and for a deadly response, whether it be from the state or from private citizens who feel as though they are reading a situation and need to address it, when sometimes that's not the case. And so it was hard at times, sort of see sawing back and forth of even trying to make sense of how I. How I felt about some of the incidences or the folks who are armed and engaged in things. And as a scholar, you try and keep your personal feelings at a distance. But I think also the people who are best at that are people who recognize what they are. And then rather than just pretend like, oh, I don't have any thoughts about this. Well, of course I have thoughts about this as a black person in the present day and someone who also is. Was a licensed gun owner in Indiana. It's a balance that we think about.
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You mentioned before, in doing the research, you mentioned images. And in fact, there's a lot of images in this book. I loved them. Really was one of the things I really loved about the book. Talk about the use of images as part of your research.
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Yeah, so there are. There are. One of the challenges that I face is that there are. There are a bunch of images of armed black folks in the period, but a lot of them are of rebellion. Right. So part of it was like trying to find things that weren't that. Because while armed rebellion is a part of the book or like military service, military service pops up occasionally, but it's not really the focus. A lot of stuff I'm trying to get at is sort of just the routine kind of everyday type of gun used at black hooks. Rank Asian.
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Right.
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And so I found there were some images that I really liked, but it was. It took some. Some scrambling around that to sort of. To pull them together. Because, like, a lot of the ones that immediately come to mind if, like, aren't black folks that come to mind, like, wow, that's not really the angle I'm trying to take. And so there's something I really liked, but. But the goal was to try and find ones that were a little bit more representative, just like the everyday. And so one of the ones I really like, there's a. This image of this. This is one of the first ones that I came across years ago. And it's. It's from, I think the 1850s, remember correctly, but it' written by this travelogue writer who's in Virginia. And he sees this maroon, this enslaved man who's living in the sort of wooded area named Osman. And he's kind of coming through this brush and the guns in his arms, and there's something about him that just feels like he is in his element. He is removed from being sort of harassed and harried by enslavers. And he's got his gun and he's out here living his life. And there's something about that I really like. And he got the beard. He seems like he's in his element. And the other one that I really, really like is. Well, there are two others I'll just briefly note. So the one that ended up being on the COVID is one where. It's from the 1870s. And it's just a. It's a black man who's out hunting. And there's something about that of just like the routine of this is how I feed my family, right. And also get a little bit of sport. Right. It's the way that I sometimes socialize with other family members or with friends. And there's something about that, that. That's the thing that I'm trying to drive at. Right. That there's a labor element to that, but it also is about sort of family and community. And it's not that he's burning down the courthouse and trying to. You know, there's a place for that, too. But I don't want that to be the tip of the spear when people think about armed black folks in the antebellum period. Right. And then the last one, I'll note, and I think it might be my favorite one altogether. There's this image of. This appears to be a small black family. They're outside of their little cabin, and there's a sort of an older black man, and he's shooting crows out of a tree. Right. The others are sort of standing around there. And the thing about it that I love is that again, it sort of cuts to this. This point about labor. Right. That people are working. It's about family and community. It's those kind of elements that I hope people take away because it is a. In some ways, it's a challenging book because, you know, you're writing about firearms. There's inherently going to be a great deal of violence. Guns are created for a particular purpose, and that's what they are. They are. They serve of multiple purposes, but the end result of it typically is that something on the end of it is going to get destroyed. Right. Whether that be people, animals, or even targets. Right. There is an inherent violence in the gun, and so there's a lot of that in the text. But I do hope that some of the elements of sort of like family and community and sort of like people working together and people just performing labor, that. That. That sticks as well.
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See full terms@mintmobile.com in were you able, in coming across these drawings and the drawing of Osmond from the. I think that was my favorite. Were you able to get any information about the artists at all through this?
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Very little.
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Yeah. That doesn't surprise me.
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Yeah, Osmond's written by this guy, Henry Strother, who, he's a travel writer. He does that kind of thing. Some of the others were harder to pin down. Alfred Waugh did the one that's on the COVID He drew a bunch of other sketches at various points. And so I know a little bit about some of them, but really mostly sort of like name and sort of like where they're up. But it wasn't. It would have been interesting to kind of. I'm like thinking about it now. I'm like, why do we have this conversation before the.
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Well, and I don't mean to surprise you with the. I don't mean to surprise you with a question either. I think the reason, I'm reflecting as you're talking through why you chose the photo, the, the drawings and not photographs, drawings, why you chose the drawing illustrations that you chose. And then I'm thinking, okay, the artist, you know, was the artist black, was the artist white? Was the artist free or enslaved? And then also, you know, the artist made a decision of all the things I could sketch at this moment, I'm sketching this. And so I'm just reflecting as you're talking about, you know, why this.
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It's a great question. I wish I had thought of it when I started the project, but I'm going to write it down for the next book. But I do think that there is. I mean, it's a good question, right? Because it would have been interesting to sort of like take an examination and maybe it's a chapter, maybe it's not a chapter, maybe it's just part of chapter or if it's in the epilogue. But to really think about that. Right. It's a good question. Why is it that someone decides to create this image in this moment? Right. And the same thing could be said of a, of some of the other images that didn't make this, this cut. Right? So the other images of black gun use, that might be rebellion or something along those lines. Who creates this image and for what, for what ends? Right. It's. It's an interesting question. Yeah.
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Yeah. This is for now we're going to give it for whether it's you or for a PhD student out there. Go out and, and, and, and figure this out. Because, you know, in. And this goes back to your discussion about the petitions and because I'm, I'm looking now again at this drawing of Osmond, which came from Harper's, Harper's Monthly, which was the most widely circulated illustrated newspaper of the time, 1856. And it says, you know, it's. He's a fugitive. And so I know, you know, Harper's was an abolitionist newspaper. Okay. But to put the drawing of a fugitive is dangerous to the fugitive, and not just a fugitive, but with a gun.
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Yeah, but that's, that's one of the things that I, One of my. There are a lot of these sort of like, episodes of sort of like, defense that pop up in the text. And so one of them, that one of my favorite episodes of sort of like black folks sort of defending themselves. And Osman kind of factors into this. It's that thing of like, even if you know that he's in the Great Dismal Swamp, right? It's a huge swamp. He is. No one's going in there to get him out. But even these efforts to kind of clear some of the smaller swamps in, in. In North Carolina counties, that sometimes you'll get these ad hoc groups of men who will say, of white men who will say, you know, they're maroons that are in swamp. They've been coming out and stealing hogs or robbing our corn cribs and things like this. Let's go flush them out. Right? And so you get a bunch of guys together, you get your guns, you go in the swamp and you try and drive them out. That is a, That's a. Okay if you show up, but they also have guns. It's not clear that you're just going to push them and they're going to leave. And so there's a, there's an episode is a. It's Green Swamp. I forget which county it's in, but his episode in the book where this group of men tries to do this. The, the, the maroons fire on them. They kill one dude, and then they're. They're yelling and cursing at the men, at the white men and telling them to come on, right? And the white guy said, get the w. He's. I think he's either wounded and dying, or he's already dead at this point. But they take him and they hightail it out of there, and then they Write to the governor. And they're like, hey, can you offer a reward or something to induce people to go get these guys out of the swamp? And so it's that thing where if they are armed and in a swamp, it's not easy to necessarily get them out. Now, it still happens sometimes, but you gotta. You're taking your life in your hands. If you're gonna go, if you're gonna make the effort. Yeah.
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So the. The book does focus on North Carolina. Talk about why North Carolina.
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So initially, when I was first starting this project, this was back in grad school, I was thinking about this, and my initial thought was that I was going to do the entire South. And of course, like many young scholars, you have these ambitious plans and goals. And it's like, my advisor was just like, we need to be here for the next 30 years. If you try and do the entire south, why don't we find a more manageable piece? And so what I ended up doing was I initially thought that I might try and do a comparative piece between the Deep south and the Upper south or the west, know, like in Arkansas versus Georgia or something. And then it was just like, just pick one state. And so I boil it down to basically Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. And the reason being they have a long colonial history, so you can kind of dig into that a little bit. But they also have very large populations of free people of color, large slave populations. And they are, to give you that run from sort of colonial all the way through to the end of the war, ended up settling on North Carolina for a couple reasons. One, I think that Virginia and South Carolina typically get more coverage than North Carolina does. There are people in the 19th century who comment about it, that North Carolina is this sort of like, you know, this valley of humility between two mounds of conceit, basically. But there's something about North Carolina as a. It's a very rural state, even by 19th century standards. People talk about is that like the Rip Van Winkle state, that it fell asleep while everything else continued to progress. But there's something about that rural aspect of it that I thought might lead to greater numbers of free people of color who are armed, because there's a, you know, I need a gun for farm work. Right. And so I thought that would be the case. And so it ended up working. Well. The one drawback I think, of North Carolina is that there aren't really any cities like you have Wilmington, but by 1860, I don't even think there are 10,000 people in Wilmington. Right. Compared to other cities in the country that are much larger. Right. So a Charleston or Richmond or New Orleans would have been a, a better site to get that kind of like urban dynamic. But you get a little bit of a taste of it with, with Wilmington and like New Bern. But these are really like large towns and newborn's not even large, but willing is a large town. Right. So that's the one drawback. But I do think that the, the last thing I'll say about North Carolina and one of the benefits of, of working here, I didn't know I was going to end up working here when I, when I started this book. But there's an embarrassment of riches in the research triangle. And so between the state archives in Raleigh, I did a lot of research. The Southern historical collection here at the Wilson Library at UNC's campus is also fantastic. And then Duke's, they have the Rubenstein Library over there. All three are within like a 40 minute sort of like loop. And you could come down here for research and hit a lot of, lot of great material in hours. Right. That would take you versus driving around the state or that kind of thing. And so North Carolina, it's a great place to do 19th century research, Southern research, Afam history sort of 19th century research. We have a really, really great set of resources all in a pretty tight circle.
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I'm always interested in the relationship between the historian and like physically where they are versus where they're writing about. I write. Anyone can write about anything all the time. But I'm always really interested in, in that. Especially when their book has a very specific sense of place.
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Yes, yes. And it's, there's. So for me it was, you know, I started, I've worked on this when I was in Pennsylvania, I worked on it when I was in Indiana, I finished it when I was here in North Carolina. But there, I mean you're right about that, that there, there is, there's something. And it's hard to even, even quite put my finger on it, but I remember I've been working on this book for it for years. Right. Every time I came down here, there's something about like walking out of the, the archives downtown in Raleigh. The old, the old State house is like a block away. Right. And so you walk past the old State House, the bills that I'm talking about. Right? That's where they argued him at, right in that State House. And so then you walk down the old streets and it's just like there's something about being in a place that you're thinking about and they even be able to write. And you're looking up at the sky. It's the same sky that these folks are looking at. The, the, the, the vast sort of like pine forest, right? The sort of the swampy areas and then sort of the low lying spaces. These are all the, the towns, the, the, the, the rivers. These are places that the people that I'm writing about are intimately familiar with. Right There, many of them, their bones are here somewhere. Right. And so there's something about. And it's, it may be that I. And just sort of like romantic about this because, you know, as a historian, there's something about being in a place that you're writing about and being in a place where the people that you're writing about were also, you know, walk in the same city streets that they walked, being in the same parts of counties. Sort of like seeing the agricultural legacy that's still here. North Carolina is still a very rural state. It's easy to miss if you stay in the Triangle, but if you go outside it, not very far, it's pretty, pretty apparent we're still a very rural state. But like those. There is, there's something about that like historian in space and time that is, that is really interesting to me. And my next project I'm working on is in South Carolina. And I feel the same way when I'm like walking around Charleston, right. And it's like a lot of the street names, I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, there are a bunch of people that used to get in trouble on this street or whatever. Like it's still, it still stands out. It's easy to miss if you're not looking for. But it still stands out in a way that the past and the present kind of like collide in these spaces. It's interesting. It's very interesting.
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I feel like there has to be. Well, to do it well anyway, there has to be a, like this love in your bones for the place. And you don't have love in your bones for every place. Right. Like, but there has to be like the love in your bones for the place. I feel like.
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I think you're right. And it's funny because I'm. I'm not a native North Carolinian, but it does feel like in some ways that it is. It's a state that I feel intimately familiar with because of the, the time I've spent thinking about it and sort of writing about it and exploring its past. And now one of the, one of the benefits of like living here. One of the things I really like is that there are a lot of opportunities to talk to public audiences about stuff. Right? And so I do some workshops with K through 12 teachers through a couple different organizations and like, just like public talks at like museums and things. And it's great to talk to like North Carolinians about North Carolina history in North Carolina. Right. I mean, because I could talk about the book in other places, but there's about doing it in North Carolina to people who are like, oh yeah, we're from Kinston. And I'm like, oh yeah, let me tell you about, you know, this. And it's like a lot of stuff. People, they're, they know parts of the history that I haven't heard about before. Like, people always, oh, you think about this thing or think about this. Like, it's just incredible to be like sharing that sort of like space and sort of historical legacy with the people and like the descendants, sometimes literally, sometimes abstract. Right. Of the people that I, I'm writing about. It's a. It's a. It's cool. It's cool. My day kicks off with a refreshing Celsius energy drink, then straight to the gym, pre K pickup back home to meal prep. Time for my fire station shift. One more Celsius. Gotta keep the lights on when the three alarm hits. I'm ready. Celsius Live Fit. Go grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now@celsius.com your little one grew 3 inches overnight. Adorable. Also expensive. Sell their pint sized pieces on Depop and list them in minutes with no selling fees because somewhere a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kids will outgrow tomorrow. And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth. Bird budget secured. Start selling on Depop where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details.
- [31:52]
B
What if you could use your home to build more home? It's possible with a SOFI home Equity loan. A home equity loan allows you to leverage your home's equity at a typically lower rate than a personal loan with low fixed monthly payments and all without increasing your mortgage rate. Whether it's a new bathroom, updated kitchen deck or more, your home could help grow itself. View Your rate@sofi.com HomeUpgrade Today Mortgages originated by SoFi Bank NA member FDIC NMLS 696891 Terms and conditions apply Equal Housing Lender so you talked about one of the reasons why you settled on North Carolina was that there was a free black population. And the book covers free blacks also enslaved people. Talk about some of the differences or similarities that you found in your research between these two groups of people.
- [32:42]
A
Oh, yeah. So one of the things that I think is important is that, like, I started off as a book that I was thinking about slavery. Slavery, slavery. But of course, there are a large number of ag descended peoples who are free in this period. And like, they're a complicated group, in part because some of them are African descended. Some of them are. Many of them are mixed race in North Carolina. Some of them are indigenous. And so there's kind of a blurring of lines, I think at times that's hard to track. And so some people are people of color is sort of the law understands them. There also are free black folks. All free black people are free people of color, but not all free people of color are black folks. It gets complicated and messy, and there's some historians who are doing good work on it. War Milt here is doing some great stuff, but I think on the whole, free people of color is still like, we need more research on. One of my grad students is also working on free people of color in Virginia in his instance. But it's one of those things where they are in an interesting place in sort of like a slave society. Right. So on the one hand, one of the tenets of the slave society is that enslaved people, they need basically this rule in this regime to sort of keep them in line. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to take care of themselves. They'd just be running amok. Of course, that's nonsense. And one of the. I mean, the problem with free people of color is that they prove that's nonsense. They also, if you just leave them alone, they farm in North Carolina. I know a lot of really skilled craftspeople who are free people of color. Making furniture, doing carpentry work, brickwork, like all kinds of stuff. Right. Especially in places like New Bern. Right. There's a huge community of them where they're fine and some of them are doing quite well for themselves if you just leave them alone. But so the state kind of has this thing with them where they are not enslaved. They do have rights and privileges, which is important, but they also are not equal to white folks. Right. And so, for instance, they can vote in North Carolina until I think it's 1835 or thereabouts, sometime in the 1830s, which is later than many people would guess. But the state still says, no, we're not doing that anymore. Right. They were able to bear arms, but up until there's a legislative session in the winter of 4041 that creates a law to sort of to require them to have to get licenses for that. And this is in a period when gun licenses aren't a thing unless you're a free person of color, then you have to go get the state's permission. And so they're in this space where they are restricted in some ways. But I really do. I'm glad that I added the chapter on them in there, because they are. I think that thinking about their gun use is also probably very different than many people would imagine gun use to look like generally, but especially in this period. And one of the things about it that I really try to emphasize here is that it's kind of community based, right? And so if you're in our. If you're a person of color after the laws pass in 41 and you want to carry a gun, and it doesn't mean like that you want to carry a gun swaggering down the street and like, you know, brandishing it. It just means like, can you keep a shotgun at your house to shoot birds that are, you know, nuisances to your, to your crops? Can you use one to, to shoot ducks so that you can eat them and feed your family with them? Like this is what we're talking about, right? That people have a very practical need for these firearms, especially these rural counties. So you have to go through the state to get one, right? In a time when no one else is getting gun licenses. What's that look like? Well, what it requires is a kind of relationship with the community and with white benefactors particularly, who can vouch for you, right? And basically they say that you have good character, you've never caused any problems in a neighborhood, and they don't see any problem why you or any reason why you shouldn't be able to have a gun for a year, right? You have to go back every year and renew it. A lot of people don't do this, but that's what the law is, right? And so you have this, you need this. It relies on this kind of community connection, right, with white folks who can vouch for you in the court, but also with others in the community so that people can testify to your character. Yes, this person has been a good neighbor. Because frankly, whether or not someone is kind and friendly to their neighbors shouldn't be addictive. Whether or not they can use a gun to Protect their crops or to, you know, to use their armed labor to keep their farms productive. Right. But that's the way that it functions for free people of color. And so that kind of sits at the. At the center of this. The other thing that I think is interesting is that, you know, we think about the differences between free people of color and enslaved folks. Enslaved folks don't have the rights that free people of color do have, because there are some rights and privileges that are there. But free people of color can establish their family units and to a large extent, sort of protect them. There are some challenges with sort of like apprenticeships where black youth taken. But that's a sort of bigger conversation. But for a time, they can serve in the militia. Right. For a time, they can vote. But still, even through this, there's this nervousness among some white North Carolinians that free. Black North Carolinians or free people of color and enslaved folks are in cahoots with each other. Right. That they are free people of color are loaning them guns or giving them guns. They're hunting on Sundays, that they're creating a nuisance with this. And so there's that nervousness that the two together are a problem. And that is. It's something that is. There are elements where I'm like, yes, that seems that there's something happening here. And a lot of the time it's like there isn't. It's just sort of this nervousness that the state is putting out. And so there are material differences between the two. But the other thing, I would just sort of emphasize that for enslaved folks, their armed labor is. It's legal through their enslaver at times. That stops in the 1830s where they dispatch with it. And so after that, it's all essentially illegal, even when they're doing it at their enslaver's behest. But it's one of those things where that kind of control mechanism that you see. I think in some ways, that's what the state tries to do with the license law. And so while free people of color have their rights and privileges, I think there are elements where the restrictions kind of mirror pretty closely the. The enslaved.
- [38:53]
B
So this. This period of. Of tightening of the laws, the crack. The. The removal of. Of rights that before were granted to. To free people of color and enslaved, quite frankly. And the pulling back is, of course, bringing us up into the Civil War. The book's final chapter talks about the Civil War. And so talk about your decision. You know, the book is chronological. Well, I won't even say it's chronological.
- [39:29]
A
Loosely. Loosely chronological.
- [39:35]
B
Talk about how you came to the structure of the book. Because really, from a real estate standpoint, the Civil War is a very small part of the book. So talk about that.
- [39:47]
A
Yeah, it's interesting. When I was first trying to formulate out this project and thinking through it, there was a part of me that wanted to stop right before the war, because the war is big and there's a lot of stuff happening. But I'm glad that I ended up pushing through it. I had some good advice from some folks who were encouraging me to go further than just ending it at the war. Because the obvious question is, well, what happens during the war? But one of the things that I think, think is interesting about this is that the Civil War looms so large in kind of our popular history of the country. Right? And so if you stop random folks in the street talking about history, it's like American Revolution stuff, the Civil War, like World War II, or, like, things that people just knew off the top of their head. Right. But I think that it's an interesting part of this story, but I didn't want it to become like the whole story in large part, because a lot of the gun conversations in the war revolving around military service. And while I think that's. It's an important part of the history people have done that that's been done more than sort of just thinking about the gun as an object that people are using. The military service, there's been some good scholarship on it. So I didn't want to just kind of give that again. And so what I kind of thought was interesting is that the war kind of creates this moment of crisis, right? In a couple ways. And so one is that for enslavers in North Carolina who have been using armed enslaved labor for their entire lives and up to the Civil War, even when it's not legal, as far as the state's concerned, for them to continue to do so, they're still arming enslaved people and using their labor. And so an interesting point comes. Well, what do you do during the war? Do you continue to allow this, or do you shy away from it? And I think that there are a couple of interesting pieces that come up. So you have, of course, during the war, there are black folks who seize their own freedom, sometimes with arms, sometimes without. But just like this is an opportunity to make freedom real, and so they take the opportunity. There are others who do enlist in the Union army and that labor is important. And there's also this Debate in the Confederate government and in North Carolina amongst the white Confederates of should we try and arm black men to fight the Confederacy? Should we do this? And there are a lot of people who are like, absolutely not. There's some of them who say, almost literally, I would rather the Confederacy crumble apart than that we try something like this. Like, I just. I'm not in. I'm not here for it. And I think that part of the point is that I think there's a lot of these antebellum antecedents that kind of. Or precedents that. That. That kind of. That kind of layer into the war and to the way that people are understanding black gun use during the war. On the other hand, there are ways that some black folks continue to operate in the same way they did before the war. So I have this. This element in. In. In the chapter about this enslaved man named Roddenberg who was enslaved by this trip family in Beaufort County. And he is someone who appears to have access to a gun during the war. And the interesting thing about it is that the enslaver trip is not there. He's gone. He's in the army. So he's off at various coastal forts during the war, mostly down by Wilmington, and his family, his wife and his young children at home. And there's this enslaved man who not just has access to the gun, but is also overseeing the daily operations of the plantation to keep it running and productive it. And so it raises interesting questions too, of like, what does this armed labor mean in this context? And it appears that the enslavery expects Rodin, this enslaved, armed black man, to defend this plantation, not just from white folks who may be creeping through, but also black folks in a neighborhood who might also come through. And why are people coming? It's a long story. Basically, a lot of people are hungry during the war, and people are stealing stuff left and right off of farms and plantations. The Union army's doing it. The Confederate army's doing it. White folks are doing it. Free black folks are doing it. Enslaved folks. Everybody's doing it. And Tripp complains about white folks or low life white folks route back the black folks from neighboring plantations, like the free black folks community, all of them. And it seems as though he expects Rodman to use this armed labor against those folks to protect the trip far if necessary. And so it raises all these interesting questions about gun use and who's harnessing or using it for their own benefit, how these things are changed by the war. And the thing about the war In North Carolina, especially in the eastern part of the state, it's not an abstract idea of like, oh, yes, the country is at war. The war is in their yards. Right. I mean, there are Union soldiers moving up. And especially if you live along the rivers, like Trip does, Union sailors and soldiers are moving up and down those rivers, engaging in raids and things like, the war is here. Right. And so there's something very immediate about that. But I love these. These moments of small crises, of how do you respond to this situation as far as gun use is concerned and enslaved people's gun use particularly is concerned. What everything else that's sort of swirling around during the war.
- [44:52]
B
So at the end of the book, you pose this question and you write, what is a right really if its very exercise can subject a citizen to a deadly response from the state, the ostensible guarantor of those rights. Is that a question you could answer?
- [45:12]
A
It is a question that I have an answer to, though I don't know that it's a good one, but I think it's a very good question.
- [45:19]
B
It's such a good question. It's such a good question.
- [45:22]
A
I think it's one that I posited because I hope that people kind of grapple with it for a moment, at least. Right. And so if we look at a broader. So if we're looking at the context of this book. Right. Or sort of the epilogue, sort of thinking about the Second Amendment, what does it mean to have a Second Amendment? If you can be exercising your Second Amendment rights and then be killed not because you're committing a crime, but because you're armed and some other person has read you the wrong way, and this is how they're responding to it. Right. Or they're nervous about your very presence. And so this is how they're responding to it. That's hard. What does it mean? Do you have a Second Amendment right? I use. Trevor Noah basically says it's not for black folks. Right. It's not for you guys. Sorry to tell you, but I think that there's something about that that's not just isolated to the Second Amendment. Right. I mean, I think if you do a survey of sort of like African American history or black history in this country, it's one of those things where at multiple points, you could look at. Go back to Reconstruction. Right. People have voting rights, ostensibly, and we have literal terrorist violence in parts of the south with the Klan and Knights of White Camellia and these other groups that are terrorists. Right.
- [46:36]
B
That are.
- [46:36]
A
That are trying to Prevent people from exercising that right. You have states that are. That are trying to find ways to undercut that right and try and pass, like, poll taxes or literacy tests or whatever. It is like trying to just find a way to gain the system to deprive people that right. Who's the guarantor of those rights? Some people say, well, those are federal right versus the state. It gets complicated because they're also on the d. We talk about free speech, right? First amendment rights, who are the guarantor of those rights? And I think that it's one of those things where sometimes people say, well, that's an issue for black folks or black history as an example that I'm using. That's because that's the field that I work in. But it doesn't take. It's not that hard to sort of, like, stretch out to other people who've had their. Whether it's speech infringed upon or their right to assembly infringed upon or their right to bear arms infringed upon. Like, it's the story of. It's part of the story of sort of the black experience in the country, but it's not exclusively a story of the black experience in this country. There are a lot of groups at various points in times that, whether it be the state or national governments, have kind of tried to clamp down on. And so I think it's one of those. I mean, you could even bring it into the present day, right? Which, you know, folks are able to do that, I think, without too much thought. It's that question of, like, who is the guarantor of the rights that we lay claim to, right, that we're told that are part of our heritage, right? As Americans, part of our legacy, right? From our founding fathers, this all the way to the present, Right? Who's the guarantor of those things? Is it the state? Is it the state in the broad sense? Right? The national government, federal government, the federal government? Is it state governments? Is it the courts? Because they all have not done what I think they need to do at various points in time. But it's tricky. It's tricky, but it's one of those evergreen questions. Who's the guarantor of our rights? I guess that's as close as I think I have to an answer. But it's as I. As I say it, I'm like, that's not really an answer, but it's an incredibly important question. I challenge everybody. Just grapple with that for a little while.
- [48:36]
B
Yeah. Yes, Important question. Great question. Great book. An important book. The book is a Precarious Firearms, Race and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865, by Assistant professor of history at the University of North Carol Chapel Hill, Antoine Hunter. And I'm your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me online at SullivanSummer.com on Instagram at the SullivanSummer, and over on Substack, SullivanSummer, where Antoine and I are headed right now to continue our conversation. Thank you for listening to the new.