You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

Ben Franklin's world is a production of the

O'Mahandro Institute and is sponsored by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. and welcome to episode 328 of Ben Franklin's world.

The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our

early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.

The new United States was filled with many different kinds of people.

People with different races, ethnicities, nationalities.

You'd also find early Americans who had really strong identities based on their work,

religion, region, and state of residence.

Now we know from our study of early American history that not all Americans were treated equally or enjoyed the same freedoms and liberties that other Americans enjoyed.

And today we're going to explore the lives and experiences of some of these Americans.

Americans who were not at the top of the social hierarchy of early America,

but ranked somewhere in the middle or middle bottom of early American society.

And these Americans were free people of color. middle bottom of early American society.

And these Americans were free people of color.

Warren Miltier Jr.

an assistant professor of history

at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro

joins us to discuss the lives and experiences of free people of color

from the British colonial period of North America to the United States's Civil War and

he'll do this with details from his two books on the subject, North Carolina's free people of color and beyond slavery's shadow.

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