Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840

by Nash

This book is the first to trace the good and bad fortunes, over more than a century, of the earliest large free black community in the United States. Gary Nash shows how, from colonial times through the Revolution and into the turbulent 1830s, blacks in the City of Brotherly Love struggled to shape a family life, gain occupational competence, organize churches, establish neighborhoods and social networks, advance cultural institutions, educate their children in schools, forge a political consciousness, and train black leaders who would help abolish slavery. These early generations of urban blacks―many of them newly emancipated―constructed a rich and varied community life.

Nash’s account includes elements of both poignant triumph and profound tragedy. Keeping in focus both the internal life of the black community and race relations in Philadelphia generally, he portrays first the remarkable vibrancy of black institution-building, ordinary life, and relatively amicable race relations, and then rising racial antagonism. The promise of a racially harmonious society that took form in the postrevolutionary era, involving the integration into the white republic of African people brutalized under slavery, was ultimately unfulfilled. Such hopes collapsed amid racial conflict and intensifying racial discrimination by the 1820s. This failure of the great and much-watched “Philadelphia experiment” prefigured the course of race relations in America in our own century, an enduringly tragic part of this country’s past.

Genres: History, American History

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gary B. Nash is a prolific and well-respected historian of early America with a particular focus on impoverished, African American, and more radical and/or "progressive" persons and groups. In this book, Professor Nash delivers on the study's title with a detailed and nuanced portrait on the development and efforts to secure freedom, family stability, economic opportunity, and an independent community by free African Americans from the colonial era though about 1840.

Given my own interest in free Africans in pre-Civil War America and particularly the southern colonies and states, this book proved particularly illuminating

One interesting topic is the scope and limits of white Pennsylvanians' objections to racial enslavement and limited commitment to anything resembling autonomy of equality. We have a more fully developed understanding of the challenges free African Americans faced in the post-Revolutionary War northern and middle Atlantic states based on this book. I often find my students assume a more robust freedom and much less racism in this section of early America than actually exits.

You will come away rather impressed with the institution-building and self-improvement efforts of black Philadelphians in this period especially after the American Revolution. Nash pays careful attention to African American Christianity in various denominations. The reader might be surprised that, while Quakers were prominent abolitionists, they did not welcome African Americans with open arms as equals. African Americans did find Baptist and Methodist denominations' theology and worship styles more amenable. Yet, I will mention that, like most scholars, Nash focuses on what might seem more of a functionalist approach to religion than any clear theological focus that takes religious belief seriously on its own terms.

Perhaps at least as important is Nash's discussion of the efforts of African American religious believers to obtain independence. We learn more details about how white Christians' unwillingness to allow African Americans to take leadership roles and otherwise be treated equally led to the necessary formation of the AME and other African American denominations, as African Americans rightly concluded that this separation was necessary for their community's spiritual health.

Finally, we see the negative trend of white American's attitudes towards African Americans accelerate over time. Thus, white Pennsylvanians would join other states in forbidding free African Americans from voting by amending the state's constitution in the 1830s. In this regard, we can begin to appreciate the fact of African Americans in Philadelphia deciding to stick it out and fight for their rights in the only nation that they knew despite the retrenchment in their rights in the antebellum period.

[Mike Anastasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote my master's thesis on Nativism in Philadelphia during the Antebellum period and this book was totally invaluable to me. I focused far less on African-American life, as I focused chiefly on Irish, Italian, German and Polish hate crimes throughout the city, but this is effectively the African-American version of my thesis.

Nash's book is all about African-American family life, evangelical activism and political inequality throughout most of the Antebellum period. He focuses on church life and the importance of family but he also speaks to the strained relationship between immigrants and blacks.

While I wouldn't ever say white immigrants faced the same issues blacks did through this period, I will say that both sets of people were heavily ghettoized and only given the opportunity to work menial jobs that were tantamount to slave labor. Both groups of people were forced to live to the east and south of what was then the City of Philadelphia (what we currently know to be the city hadn't yet formed; see Consolidation Act) so it's pretty clear to see that things haven't changed much. The same areas of the city today that suffer from mass crime and a complete lack of moral hygiene are the same ones that these people were forced to populate during the time Nash evaluates.

An awesome book for anyone interested in Philadelphia's un-brotherly love and a great addition to the plethora of well-off vs not-so-well-off relations books out there today.

[Lori Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an eye opener for me, one I always bring up in conversations on race issue in Philadelphia. It traces the roots of Philadelphia's African American community from the promise of the "Philadelphia Experiment," to the reality of racial division that still exists to this day. Professor Nash delivers historical facts in a compelling and interesting way. The information on the formation of the African American Church as a community stronghold was particularly interesting, I also found his recounting of the impact that the influx of Irish immigrants on the African American community quite compelling. I would recommend this to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the historical roots of racism in Philadelphia and other northern cities.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the back: This book is the first to trace the good and bad fortunes, over more than a century, of the earliest large free black community in the United States. Gary Nash shows how, from the colonial times through the Revolution, and into the turbulent 1830s, blacks in the City of Brotherly Love struggled to shape a family life, gain occupational competence, forge a political consciousness, and train black leaders who would help abolish slavery.

I really enjoyed this book. Sections I particularly liked included the process of naming for newly manumitted individuals and the development of independent Black churches.

[Jackie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for a history workshop. It was ok.