Black Self-Emancipation, Gradual Emancipation, and the Underground Railroad in the Northern Colonies and States, 1763–1804

2018 ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Graham Russell Gao Hodges
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
State Level ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Atlantic Seaboard ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Individual Actions

This chapter explores the extent, meaning, and impact of enslaved African-American flight during the era of the American Revolution. Its temporal boundaries range roughly from 1763, the onset of Revolutionary activities and discourses, to state-level “First Emancipation,” to the last act of Gradual Emancipation in New Jersey in 1804. Geographically, the article covers the Atlantic seaboard colonies and later states. The chapter argues that black self-emancipation via flight—including individual actions but also the mass movements of the Revolutionary Black Loyalists—was the single greatest method for enslaved people to gain freedom in this rapidly changing political landscape. Slave flight indeed had a profound impact on that landscape and affected American construction of slave laws during the Revolutionary Era.

Preserving the Innovative Legacy of John P. Parker

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-68
Author(s):  
Jason Krupar
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Railroad Network ◽  
University Of Cincinnati ◽  
Business Acumen ◽  
The University

John P. Parker played a prominent role in the Underground Railroad network that operated in southwest Ohio. Additionally, Parker held three known patents and displayed his products at regional/national industrial expositions. Parker’s engineering skills and business acumen, however, have largely been overlooked. A coalition comprised of faculty and students from the University of Cincinnati, members of the John P. Parker Historical Society, and corporate donors formed in 2006 to preserve the industrial legacy of this African American entrepreneur. This project demonstrates some of the benefits and pitfalls of such complicated undertakings.

The Health of Refugees

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Age Groups ◽  
Refugee Health ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Displaced Populations ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Media ◽  
Multidisciplinary Perspective ◽  
The Impact

There have been significant changes in the numbers, patterns, and circumstances of refugees and in the political landscape to support humanitarianism since the publication of the first edition of this collection. Like the first edition, this volume provides a multidisciplinary perspective on refugee health, tracing the health repercussions on individuals and populations from the drivers of forced mass movements of populations from situations of conflict and other disasters through to the process of resettlement in countries other than their countries of origin. Drawing on the expertise of academics, practitioners, and UN frontline experts, the collection covers three main aspects of refugee health: the concepts, definitions, and context from a human rights, humanitarianism, and social determinants of health perspective; the intersection of vulnerabilities across age groups and settings; and the ethical challenges for practitioners and researchers working with forcibly displaced populations seeking to resettle. The collection concludes with an analysis of the role of the media in shaping our perceptions of refugees and the impact on policy and access to care.

scholarly journals The Neo-Gothic Imaginary and the Rhetoric of Loss in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

2019 ◽  
pp. 271-279
Author(s):  
Patrycja Antoszek
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
Black Subjectivity

The aim of my paper will be to discuss the African-American reworking of the Gothic tradition in Colson Whitehead’s neo-slave narrative. I want to argue that the figure of the protagonist Cora may be seen as the embodiment of losses that span over generations of black women. Cora’s melancholia is a strategy of dealing with the horrors of slavery and a sign of a black woman’s failed entry into the Symbolic. While the novel’s narrative technique is a symbol of the ever-present past that haunts black subjectivity, the underground railroad may be read as a metaphor for the repressed content of American national unconscious.

Post-Black Satire

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-140
Author(s):  
Yogita Goyal
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
Paul Beatty ◽  
Distinct Body

This chapter collides the idiom of post-blackness with the dominant genre of the neo-slave narrative in contemporary African American literature. This distinct body of work—post-black neo-slave narratives—mines the historical scene of slavery in the mode of satire. Through absurd juxtapositions, surreal analogies, and farcical adventures, post-black satirists expose the contradictions of the insistence on the unending history of slavery amid declarations of a break from previous racial regimes. Viewing satire as the lens through which debates about race and postracialism articulate, the chapter explores how fictions by Paul Beatty and Mat Johnson combat the sentimental template of abolition and neo-abolition by refusing to collapse past and present. The chapter concludes with a look at what might be termed a post-black post-satire, as Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016) stretches time and space to transform the slave narrative into a flexible portal to practices of exploitation worldwide.

Malaysia’s political landscape will fragment further

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Opposition Party

Significance Mahathir Mohamad, whom Muhyiddin replaced as premier earlier this year, has formed a new opposition party that stands apart from the main opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliance. Mistrust among political elites is growing ahead of a snap election in eastern Malaysia’s Sabah state. Impacts UMNO will quickly turn attention to negotiations with partners over seat allocations for the next parliamentary poll. Mahathir’s new party will erode support for the PPBM, especially at state level. Corruption trials will continue to blight both government and opposition leaders.

“A Constitutional Conveyance of Intelligence, Public and Private”: The Post Office, the Business of Printing, and the American Revolution

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-752
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Adelman
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Political Support ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postal Service ◽  
Post Office ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Revolutionary Era

This essay argues that American printers motivated by a deep commercial interest in fast and effective communication worked to overturn the British imperial postal service in 1774 and 1775. Printers enlisted merchants and members of the revolutionary elite, who also relied on long-distance communication through the post office for their own commercial and political purposes, to provide financial and political support. In making their case, printers mobilized a broad array of political ideology and imagery already familiar to colonists during the decade-long imperial crisis, emphasizing the political necessity of replacing the imperial institution. At the same time, they uncontroversially asserted that a new American post office would safeguard their precarious commercial ventures. The essay therefore demonstrates that printers were not “mere mechanics” but actively shaped the political debates leading to the American Revolution as part of a process that scholars have recently highlighted in a work on the economic and commercial influences on the Revolution. Furthermore, it grants the post office its due as part of the Habermasian public sphere; although understudied, the post office—both as a physical space and as a network through which information could travel—was a crucial means by which Americans developed a national infrastructure for political communications. Exploring the overthrow of the British post office, and the creation of an American post office, reveals an understudied but crucial episode to explain the symbiosis between politics and commerce during the American Revolutionary era.

The Dustbin of History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitch Kachun
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Rightful Place ◽  
The Revolution ◽  
Boston Massacre

Between 1771 and 1850 the Boston Massacre itself remained a part of the nation’s collective memory of the American Revolution. Some characterized it as a key event in forging colonial unity while others preferred to distance the Revolution from what they considered a disorderly riot. In either case, Attucks’s role and racial identity remained largely ignored, even among African Americans. A few scattered references to Attucks appeared during the first half of the nineteenth century, but he did not become a focal point for African American arguments for citizenship, inclusion, and equality until the 1850s, when African American activists recognized the central role Attucks might play in establishing blacks’ rightful place in the nation.

Family, Church, Community

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Church And Community ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
American Churches ◽  
Church Organizations

This chapter explores the roles played by family, church, and community in the Black Underground Railroad movement. By mapping Black settlements, it clarifies and exposes the relationship between African American churches, settlements, and historic Underground Railroad routes. It shows how Black families sustained an important family organizational structure that drove the Underground Railroad. It explains how African American communities connected through family relations and intermarriage, church organizations, benevolent societies, and the fraternal structure of the Prince Hall Masons. It considers how maintaining family connections motivated escape from slavery, particularly when imminent sale threatened to break up the family. Finally, it highlights the ways that Black churches and their ministers helped free Blacks, or self-liberated men and women, to succeed in winning freedom for themselves and their loved ones.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document