Project Title

Contested Liberty: Fugitive Women & the Shadow of Re-Enslavement and Displacement in Revolutionary Virginia

Project Description

“Contested Liberty” explores the politics of war for enslaved Afro-Virginian women who sought refuge behind British lines during the American Revolution. It argues that Afro-Virginian women’s gendered experience pursuing refuge behind British lines displays why only about 300 enslaved Afro-Virginian women sailed as free women at war’s end.