The Politics of Black Citizenship: Free African Americans in the Mid-Atlantic Borderland, 1817-1863 Contributor(s): Diemer, Andrew K. (Author) |
|
![]() |
ISBN: 0820349372 ISBN-13: 9780820349374 Publisher: University of Georgia Press OUR PRICE: $49.35 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 2016 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | African American - History | United States - State & Local - Middle Atlantic (dc, De, Md, Nj, Ny, Pa) - History | United States - 19th Century |
Dewey: 323.119 |
LCCN: 2015036979 |
Series: Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 |
Physical Information: 1" H x 6.4" W x 9.2" (1.19 lbs) 272 pages |
Themes: - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Cultural Region - Mid-Atlantic |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Considering Baltimore and Philadelphia as part of a larger, Mid-Atlantic borderland, The Politics of Black Citizenship shows that the antebellum effort to secure the rights of American citizenship was central to black politics--it was an effort that sought to exploit the ambiguities of citizenship and negotiate the complex national, state, and local politics in which that concept was determined. In the early nineteenth century, Baltimore and Philadelphia contained the largest two free black populations in the country, separated by a mere hundred miles. The counties that lie between them also contained large and vibrant freeblack populations in this period. In 1780, Pennsylvania had begun the process of outlawing slavery, while Maryland would cling desperately to the institution until the Civil War, and so these were also cities separated by the legal boundary between freedom and slavery. Despite the fact that slavery thrived in parts of the state of Maryland, in Baltimore the free black population outnumbered the enslaved so that on the eve of the Civil War there were ten times as many free blacks in the city of Baltimore as there were slaves. In this book Andrew Diemer examines the diverse tactics that free blacks employed in defense of their liberties--including violence and the building of autonomous black institutions--as well as African Americans' familiarity with the public policy and political struggles that helped shape those freedoms in the first place. |
Contributor Bio(s): Rael, Patrick: - PATRICK RAEL is a professor of history at Bowdoin College and one of the general editors of the Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 series. His books include Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North and African-American Activism before the Civil War: The Freedom Struggle in the Antebellum North. Rael is an Organization of American Historians distinguished lecturer, 2010-2015.Diemer, Andrew K.: - ANDREW K. DIEMER is associate professor of history at Towson University. His work has been published in the Journal of Military History, Slavery and Abolition, and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. |