Professor Malinda Maynor Lowery; Director, Center for the Study of the American South, UNC-Chapel Hill On the Antebellum Fringe: Lumbee Indians, Slavery, and Removal This essay illuminates how the Lumbee challenge the dominant narrative of antebellum southern history. It reminds readers that Natives did not simply depart the region in 1838, and that removal entailed metaphorical destruction as much as forced migration. It also shows how one Native community struggled to work through the South’s stilted racial binary and continue to shape regional culture. In addition, it demonstrates how the Lumbee survived the tumultuous changes by maintaining flexible ties to family, religion, and place. They persisted in an increasingly hostile environment by adapting some aspects of white culture, including apprenticeship and marriage, and by building literacy and practicing Christianity. Those Lumbee who participated in black market activities continued to maintain close ties to kin who endeavored to meet social challenges through legal channels. Their efforts provided a sense of social unity that defined their sense of belonging and drew boundaries around their community. Malinda Maynor Lowery is a historian and documentary film producer who is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She is a Professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill and Director of the Center for the Study of the American South. Her most recent book, The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle (UNC Press, 2018), is a survey of Lumbee history from the eighteenth century to the present, written for a general audience. Her first book, Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (UNC Press, 2010), won several awards, including Best First Book of 2010 in Native American and Indigenous Studies. She has written over twenty book chapters or articles, on topics including American Indian migration and identity, school desegregation, federal recognition, religious music, and foodways, and has published essays in The New York Times, Oxford American, The Washington Post, The Conversation, Daily Yonder, and Scalawag Magazine. She has won fellowships and grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, and others. Films she has produced include the Peabody Award-winning A Chef’s Life (PBS, 2013-2018), the Emmy-nominated Private Violence (broadcast on HBO in 2014), In the Light of Reverence (broadcast on PBS in 2001), and two short films, Real Indian (1996), and Sounds of Faith (1997), both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. ------------------------------------------------------ The Free People of Color Lecture Series is hosted by the Aoki Center at King Hall and the UC Davis Department of History to explore the rights of people of color in the United States following the Civil War and inquire how that history continues to shape our thinking today.