This book is relevant to the history of the U.S. because of its detailed, up-close portrait of one city--Natchez, Mississippi--in the antebellum period. Further enhancing the books value is that the barber, William Johnson, was a free Negro. And while Johnson had enough education to create an extensive, if not acute, sixteen-year chronicle, he could not foresee the impending cataclysm of Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. Johnson's diary, therefore, is important because of its unvarnished, unintellectualized objectivity.

Johnson was scrupulously honest, but his integrity, while known by many, could not change the color of his skin. Neither would industry or imagination, both of which he possessed. He ultimately would dwell in a sort of nether-world between white society and slavery. And his disdain for the local white trash of Natchez reaffirmed his status as a man with no true place in the world. From birth he was banished.

In antebellum Mississippi true freedom was contingent upon skin color, although a modicum of freedom would be acccorded to a mulatto who aspired to live as a white man. It was this limited acceptance that Johnson pursued relentlessly throughout his short life. And his murder in 1851 was committed with naked impunity, as if Johnson had never been free at all.

Organized thematically by chapters covering every facet of Johnson's existence, The Barber of Natchez paints a vivid picture of everyday life in the Old South. While supplemented occaisonally with other primary sources, the book relies first and foremost on the diary of William Johnson, which is recreated with its imperfect grammar, spelling errors, and archiac slang. A daguerreotype of the diariest is reproduced and there are no maps or diagrams of any kind.