Black Boston
African American Life and Culture in Urban America, 1750-1860
Routledge Library Editions: Urban History Series

Between the Revolution and the Civil War, non-slave black Americans existed in the no-man?s land between slavery and freedom. The two generations defined by these two titanic struggles for national survival saw black Bostonians struggle to make real the quintessential values of individual freedom and equality promised by the Revolution. Levesque?s richly detailed study fills a significant void in our understanding of the formative years of black life in urban America. Black culture Levesque argues was both more and less than separation and integration. Poised between an occasionally benevolent, sometimes hostile, frequently indifferent white world and their own community, black Americans were, in effect, suspended between two cultures.

List of Tables/Maps Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: The Social Composition 1. "They Cannot Thrive Among Us" 2. "Sustained Very Evidently by Means of Emigration Part II: The Color Line 3. "Is Boston Anti-Slavery?" 4. "Complexional Distinctions" 5. "The Cause of Equal School Privileges" 6. "That Separate Schools May Be Abolished" 7. "Privileges and Immunities of Citizens" Part III: Life in the Ghetto 8. "Colored Churches. Is There Any Necessity for Their Existence?" 9. "Colored People Assuming A Position Independent of Their Pale-Face Brethren" Part IV: Pathology of the Ghetto 10. "Crime is Not All Owing to One Cause" 11. "No Other Class Struggles for a Livelihood Under So Many Disadvantages" 12. "Facts of a Deeply Deadly Nature" Conclusion Appendices Abbreviations Bibliography Index