Andrea Miles Defends Dissertation, “Black Rebels”

My name is Andrea Miles, and I am thrilled to embark on the next phase following my exciting journey to earn my PhD. My dissertation, “Black Rebels” African American Revolutionaries from North Carolina During and After the American War for Independence,” examines the factors that motivated free men of color to overwhelmingly join American Revolutionaries, who sought to preserve slavery instead of British forces who offered freedom to the slaves. Through my research, free Blacks made individual and localized choices based on the privileges and obligations inherent to their status as members of North Carolina’s “class of freemen” who were born free. Therefore, my dissertation explores the intersectionality between race and class. It explores the impact of parliamentary taxation on free Black individuals’ daily lives, local political turmoil, and whether their struggles converged with those of enslaved individuals in a broader fight to abolish slavery during the American War for Independence. My dissertation illustrates how the American Revolution shifted North Carolina from fluid and ambiguous racial structures in the colonial era to more rigid racial categorizations in the early national period.

My research has been supported by the American Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the David Center for the American Revolution in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; the Louis Round Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois; the William L. Clements Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan; the Winterthur Library and Museum in Winterthur, Delaware, and the University of Louisville.