The Middle Peninsula African-American Genealogical and Historical Society will hold its monthly virtual meeting at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12. Historian Melvin Patrick Ely will discuss his latest book, “A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South.” Published in April of this year, this new account of slavery uncovers a surprising web of relationships between Black and white people that ranges far beyond the familiar template of “master-slave” dynamics, a release said. According to the release, “Contrary to our common assumption, fully half the enslaved people in the South lived not on sprawling plantations but on small properties. Cruelty was baked into the system, yet in households of five, 10, 15 or 20 people, exploiters and exploited knew each other well, sharing religious worship, folkways, and complex domestic dynamics. Slaves, slave owners, overseers, and poor whites drank, played, slept, and even committed crimes together. Yet whippings happened often, ens...