Lecture: Antwain K. Hunter, A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race and Community in NC 1715-1865

Name: Lecture: Antwain K. Hunter, A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race and Community in NC 1715-1865
Start: 2026-04-04T16:00:00-04:00
Location: 2332 New Garden Rd, Greensboro, NC 27410

Schedule

Sat, 04 Apr, 2026 at 04:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

2332 New Garden Rd, Greensboro, NC 27410 | Greensboro, NC

Dr. Antwain K. Hunter will discuss his book, A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina 1715-1865.
Spanning the 1720s through the end of the Civil War, his book explores how free and enslaved Black North Carolinians accessed, possessed, and used firearms—both legal and otherwise—and how the state and white people responded. North Carolinians, whether free or enslaved, Black or white, had different stakes on the issue, all of which impacted the reality of Black people’s gun use.
Antwain K. Hunter reveals that armed Black people used firearms for a wide range of purposes. They hunted to feed their families and communities, guarded property, protected crops, and defended maroon communities from outsiders. Further, they resisted the institution of slavery and used guns both against white people and within their own community. Competing views of Black people’s firearm use created social, political, and legal points of contention for different demographics within North Carolina and left the general assembly and white civilians struggling to harness Black people’s armed labor for white people’s benefit. A Precarious Balance challenges readers to rethink how they understand race and firearms in the American past.
Antwain K. Hunter is a historian of slavery and freedom in North America, with a current focus on the Carolinas. He serves as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Hunter is also in the very early stages of another book project which delves into Black people’s alcohol use and healthiness in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina. He is also working on two article length projects, the first on free North Carolinians of color’s labor at the state’s Confederate forts and the other on role of the veterans of the 28th USCT—Indiana’s only Black Civil War regiment—in that state’s commemoration of the war.