Our Freedom, Our Land: A Black Family’s Story of Slavery, Liberty, and Survival

Numerous books have been written about John Randolph of Roanoke, his eccentricities, and even his potential madness. But this is not his story. This is the story of the men, women, and children he exploited in life and granted liberty in death. This story begins in slavery and ends in freedom with all the complexities and racial barriers that accompanied Black liberty. This is an American story of a Black family manumitted in 1846 who subsequently worked to forge lives of freedom in a land of slavery. The project, therefore, examines how African Americans envisioned and actualized freedom in antebellum Virginia through their eyes. Dr. Michael Dickinson is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research interests include comparative slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and early African American history. Michael is the author of the award-winning book, Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, 1680–1807. Dr. Dickinson’s lecture comes out of his research in 2025 at the VMHC as the inaugural recipient of the Emily Winfree Fellowship for African and African American History in Virginia. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.