Rethinking the Early Black City

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, historians have made significant advances in researching and analyzing the Black urban experience in the early nineteenth century. This scholarship been especially effective in considering two central threads. One strand explores how free Black people sought to forge community in intensely racially hostile environments. The other examines how, often in response to racial advancement, white Americans unleashed angry anti-Black repression legally, politically, and even in violent riots. This paper builds upon these previous discussions to ask; how might our understanding of Black political consciousness and community creation be enhanced if we viewed Black communities as a form of urban marronage?