What tax lists, census records, and court minutes tell us about a community that wasn’t supposed to exist.

When Isaac Richmond came for Barbara Day, three men stopped him — and two of them were free men of color.

A bound-out girl and a self-emancipated man build a life on the Virginia-Tennessee border.

A mother, a stepfather, and seven children navigating freedom in Virginia and Tennessee.

How a petty lawsuit over a few dollars cracked open the story of a free Black family network in antebellum Virginia.

The records are out there. Sometimes you just have to look sideways to find them.