1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910455077603321

Autore

Dunbar Erica Armstrong

Titolo

A Fragile Freedom : African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City / / Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, CT : , : Yale University Press, , [2008]

©2008

ISBN

9786612352355

1-282-35235-0

0-300-14506-3

1-282-08940-4

9786612089404

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (1 online resource (xvi, 196 p.) ) : ill

Collana

Society and the Sexes in the Modern World

Disciplina

973.7/1140974811

Soggetti

African American women - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - History - 19th century

African American women - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - Social conditions - 19th century

Free African Americans - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - History - 19th century

Free African Americans - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - Social conditions - 19th century

Slaves - Emancipation - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - History

Antislavery movements - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - History - 19th century

Slavery - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - History

Electronic books.

Philadelphia (Pa.) History 19th century

Philadelphia (Pa.) Social conditions 19th century

Philadelphia (Pa.) Race relations History 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-187) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Slavery and the "Holy Experiment" -- 2. Maneuvering Manumission in Philadelphia: African American Women and Indentured



Servitude -- 3. Creating Black Philadelphia: African American Women and Their Neighborhoods -- 4. Voices from the Margins: The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society 1833-1840 -- 5. Writing for Womanhood: African American Women and Print Culture -- 6. A Mental and Moral Feast: Reading, Writing, and Sentimentality in Black Philadelphia -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

This book is the first to chronicle the lives of African American women in the urban north during the early years of the republic. A Fragile Freedom investigates how African American women in Philadelphia journeyed from enslavement to the precarious status of "free persons" in the decades leading up to the Civil War and examines comparable developments in the cities of New York and Boston. Erica Armstrong Dunbar argues that early nineteenth-century Philadelphia, where most African Americans were free, enacted a kind of rehearsal for the national emancipation that followed in the post-Civil War years. She explores the lives of the "regular" women of antebellum Philadelphia, the free black institutions that took root there, and the previously unrecognized importance of African American women to the history of American cities.