Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North

Early black protest thought and its contribution to black self-definition; Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Martin Delany - these figures stand out in the annals of black protest for their vital antislavery efforts. But what of the rest of their generation, the thousands of other free blacks in the North? Patrick Rael explores the tradition of protest and sense of racial identity forged by both famous and lesser-known black leaders in antebellum America and illuminates the ideas that united these activists across a wide array of divisions. In so doing, he reveals the roots of the arguments that still resound in the struggle for justice today. Mining sources that include newspapers and pamphlets of the black national press, speeches and sermons, slave narratives and personal memoirs, Rael recovers the voices of an extraordinary range of black leaders in the first half of the nineteenth century. He traces how these activists constructed a black American identity through their participation in the discourse of the public sphere and how this identity in turn informed their critiques of a nation predicated on freedom but devoted to white supremacy. His analysis explains how their place in the industrializing, urbanizing antebellum North offered black leaders a unique opportunity to smooth over class and other tensions among themselves and successfully galvanize the race against slavery.

ISBN 0807849677   Pages 448 ISBN13 9780807849675 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher The University of North Carolina Press   Weight (grammes) 640 Imprint The University of North Carolina Press   Published in Chapel Hill Format Paperback   Series title John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture Publication date 30 Nov 2001   Height (mm) 235 Library of Congress 2001027124   Width (mm) 156 DEWEY 305.896073   Spine width (mm) 27 DEWEY edition DC21   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		Acknowledgments
		Introduction: Of Men, Lions, and History		1
1		A Different Measure of Oppression: Leadership and Identity in the Black North		12
2		Besieged by Freedom's Army: Antislavery Celebrations and Black Activism		54
3		The Sign of Things: The "Names Controversy" and Black Identity		82
4		Discipline of the Heart, Discipline of the Mind: The Sources of Black Social Thought		118
5		Slaves to a Wicked Public Sentiment: Black Respectability and the Response to Prejudice		157
6		A Nation Out of a Nation: Black Nationalism as Nationalism		209
7		This Temple of Liberty: Black Racialism and American Identity		237
		Conclusion: Black Protest and the Continuing Revolution		279
		Epilogue		291
		Notes		299
		Bibliography		351
		Index		409

In recent years so much attention has been given to African American slaves that we are all the more in need of a comprehensive book like Patrick Rael's "Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North," which serves as a prelude to post-emancipation black history. (David Brion Davis, Yale University)

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