There is a subtle but significant French heritage in North Carolina. Towns such as Bath, Beaufort, New Bern, and La Grange are testimony to the settlements of French Huguenots in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The city of Fayetteville is named after the Marquis de Lafayette, a French ally during the American Revolution. The first European explorers to the North Carolina region were, in fact, French (1524). French Huguenots migrated to the state as early as 1690 and many North Carolinians have last names of French origin. North Carolina has many other place names and remnants of French presence since the early colonial period. This book traces the historical presence of the French in NC from the state's origins to the present and tells the story of a little-known part of the state's cultural heritage. (Color photos and images).

There is a significant French heritage in North Carolina. The first European explorers to the North Carolina region were, in fact, French (1524). French Huguenots migrated to the state as early as 1690, and many North Carolinians have family names of French origin. Towns such as Bath, Beaufort, New Bern, and La Grange are a testimony to French settlers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the city of Fayetteville is named after the Marquis de Lafayette, a French ally during the American Revolution. Beyond names, North Carolina has many other remnants of the French presence. With materials gathered from archives, libraries, interviews, and photographs, this book traces the French heritage in North Carolina from its origins to the present, an important part of North Carolina's cultural history.

The Haitian Revolution may have galvanized subjects of French empire in the Americas and Africa struggling to define freedom and 'Frenchness' for themselves, but Lorelle Semley reveals that this event was just one moment in a longer struggle of women and men of color for rights under the French colonial regime. Through political activism ranging from armed struggle to literary expression, these colonial subjects challenged and exploited promises in French Republican rhetoric that should have contradicted the continued use of slavery in the Americas and the introduction of exploitative labor in the colonization of Africa. They defined an alternative French citizenship, which recognized difference, particularly race, as part of a 'universal' French identity. Spanning Atlantic port cities in Haiti, Senegal, Martinique, Benin, and France, this book is a major contribution to scholarship on citizenship, race, empire, and gender, and it sheds new light on debates around human rights and immigration in contemporary France.

The New Black History anthology presents cutting-edge scholarship on key issues that define African American politics, life, and culture, especially during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras. The volume includes articles by both established scholars and a rising generation of young scholars.