This book is the manifestation of a long and serious effort to understand racial violence in America. I want to thank all of the wonderful scholars at Rutgers University who encouraged and supported me: Suzanne Lebsock, Nancy Hewitt, Mia Bay, and my outside reader, Walter Johnson. I also want to thank Carolyn Brown, Ann Fabian, Jan Lewis, Donna Murch, and Steve Lawson, who, knowingly or unknowingly, helped to shape how I approached this work. But I especially want to thank Deborah Gray White for her mentorship and unwavering belief in the value of this project.
I am eternally grateful for the generous support I received from the Virginia State Library; the Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship from the Virginia Historical Society; the summer research grant from the University of South Carolina; the staff at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History; the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition Postdoctoral Fellowship from Yale University; and the summer research grant from Norfolk State University.
My editor, Walter Biggins, has been a gift from God, and I deeply appreciate his support and guidance in this project. And finally, I want to thank my husband, William Lewis, and my children, Adina, Samantha, Victoria, and Marissa, for their love and unwavering generosity in allowing me to fulfill my dream of becoming a historian.