A Precarious Balance

Antwain K. Hunter is assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"A vital scholarly contribution that powerfully illuminates how Black North Carolinians, both free and enslaved, used firearms as tools of labor, survival, and community-making, even as their use was constantly contested by white citizens and lawmakers. Drawing on an impressive range of sources, the book reveals the layered tensions over armed Black labor and challenges dominant narratives by showing how central Black firearm use was to shaping life--and conflict--in early North Carolina."--Jennifer Tucker, director of the Center for the Study of Guns and Society at Wesleyan University "Powerful. . . . [A] vital and thought-provoking read on race, power and the politics of weaponry in early America."--Chapel Hill Magazine "No previous study has looked as carefully, thoroughly, or thoughtfully at the history of firearms in the South."--Randolph Roth, author of American Homicide "The scholarly effort that went into building A Precarious Balance is evident."--Sally Hadden, author of Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas