GRS Visiting Scholar Workshop: Antwain Hunter on black gun ownership

The Gender, Race, and Sexuality Group has invited historian Antwain Hunter (Butler University) to campus this February to share his research on the history of black gun ownership.  We'll be reading both a paper and two complementary articles suggested by Dr. Hunter. Join us Friday, February 7 at 3:30pm in 320 LeConte Hall to workshop Dr. Hunter’s paper.

All are welcome! Please RSVP Annelle Brunson for the readings if you would like to attend. Accommodations available upon request.

This event was made possible by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts' Department-Invited Artist or Lecturer Grant and the Carl and Sally Gable Fund for Southern History.

This is a Department of History Black History Month event.

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Here is Dr. Hunter's topic and title:

"“A boy of tender years” or “a Felon of a character so hardened”?: Firearms, Slavery, & Manhood in Antebellum North Carolina"

     Many white men in the Antebellum South constructed their masculine identities around their control over nature, their subjugation and mastery of people whom they viewed as subordinate or inferior, and their membership in the body politic and resultant militia service.  These elements all relied on firearm use, at least in part.  White men did not, however, hold a monopoly on this firearms-based gender construction.  This paper explores an 1844 incident wherein Charles, a teenaged slave in Wilmington, North Carolina, shot his older brother in cold blood.  This fratricide highlights the conflicting ways that Charles, his master, and Wilmington’s authorities understood the teenager’s identity as a young, enslaved, black male living in a slave society.  Further, it demonstrates that Southerners of both races saw black men’s firearm use as an important expression of black manhood but how some white people were worried by this.  They rejected these gender constructions when armed black men acted on their own accord but were nevertheless more accepting of black firearm use when they could harness it to serve white people’s interests.