The book quotes from Michael P. Johnson's & James L. Roark's book titled "Black Masters, A Free Family of Color in the Old South".

 

“Many free Negros owned black slaves, in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large.

 

In 1830, a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more."

 

According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negros in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states.

 

Of the blacks* residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, of African heritage, recorded that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negros owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negros in that city.