Now revised and significantly expanded, this time-honored work revisits Cane River's "forgotten people" and incorporates new findings and insight gleaned across thirty-five years of further research. This new edition provides a nuanced portrayal of the lives of Creole slaves and the roles allowed to freed people of color, tackling issues of race, gender, and slave holding by former slaves. The Forgotten People corrects misassumptions about the origin of key properties in the Cane River National Heritage Area and demonstrates how historians reconstruct the lives of the enslaved, the impoverished, and the disenfranchised.

Gary B. Mills (1944-2002) grew up on a rice plantation in the Mississippi Delta but visited Cane River often in his youth and adopted it personally and professionally in adulthood. From 1976 until his death, he was a professor of history at the University of Alabama.

 

Elizabeth Shown Mills is an independent scholar and the author of numerous works on Louisiana history and research methodology, including Isle of Canes and Evidence Explained, named by Library Journal as a 2007 Best Reference book.

 

 

ISBN: 9780807137130

Paperback

480 pages

6 x 9

LSU Press, 2013