Breaking the shackels of slavery III

Often we are burdended with the belief of slavery passed on to us most often by white  writers and historians and sometimes mis-educated negros.  For example our belief that Black people owned slaves because they were buying their relatives and friends.  This was passed down to us from the writings of Carter G. Woodson, yet there is ample information to debunk this, and shows how Blacks did in fact own other Black slaves to make a profit in their business.  Also, we've been handed down the belief that free Blacks were simply slaves without masters, due to the harsh Black Code type laws that were in effect.  This comes from a white university professor Ira Berlin.  Of course this fits into our mode of thinking, probably inspired by the tel-i-vision program Roots.  I present to you an excerpt from an essay entitled Borrowed Ground a University of Virginia essay.  Unfortunately, the author's name is not listed on my copy.

From the essay Borrowed Ground... 

Although great disparity existed between white and free African-American positions in Charleston society, it is incorrect to assume, as Ira Berlin does in Slaves Without Masters, that free African Americans had few privileges at all and were barely distinguishable from slaves. Berlin observes:

Throughout the South, free Negroes found their mobility curbed, their economic opportunities limited, and their civil rights all but obliterated. The separation and discrimination inherent in slavery continued into freedom; those free Negroes who measured their liberty against that of whites everywhere found it wanting.

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Free African Americans could not challenge whites politically and had to establish separate social structures, but to a great extent they could economically challenge the dividing lines between themselves and whites. Many free African Americans obtained substantial wealth as artisans and entrepreneurs. By 1820, many had become richer than most Charleston whites. Some owned real estate and even slaves. Despite facing political, social and economic limits in Charleston's white dominated society, free African Americans were not "slaves without masters," but masters of their own lives