Freeborn Men of Color: the Franck Brothers in Revolutionary North America, 1755-1820
FREEBORN MEN OF COLOR: THE FRANCK BROTHERS IN REVOLUTIONARY NORTH AMERICA, 1755-1820 Shirley L. Green A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2011 Committee: Ruth Wallis Herndon, Advisor Radhika Gajjala Graduate Faculty Representative Lillian Ashcraft-Eason Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina Rebecca Mancuso © 2011 Shirley Louise Swan Green All Rights Reserved iii Abstract Ruth Wallis Herndon, Advisor This dissertation examines the lives of William and Ben Franck, freeborn men of color, who used military service as a means to assert their manhood, gain standing in their community, and help to create free African American and African Canadian communities during the Revolutionary Era. It focuses on the lives and experiences of the Franck family from the 1750s, when Rufus Franck served in the French and Indian War, until the 1820s, when his younger son, Ben Franck, settled in Nova Scotia. At each step of the story, this study analyzes the communities of free people of color with whom the Franck brothers interacted. In doing so, this project challenges traditional narratives and stereotypes of African Americans during the Colonial and Revolutionary Eras. The Franck brothers’ individual histories, closely analyzed, have the power to expand the prism through which we view early American people of color, so that we see their reality more sharply in three ways. 1. The establishment of free families of color and communities throughout North America, from the pre-Revolutionary period until postwar America, was limited by social prejudices and legal prohibitions.
[Show full text]