In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. This item is unavailable.In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860

Prince Hall, a black veteran of the American Revolution, was insulted and disappointed but probably not surprised when white officials refused his offer of help. He had volunteered a troop of 700 Boston area blacks to help quell a rebellion of western Massachusetts farmers led by Daniel Shays during the economic turmoil in the uncertain period following independence. Many African Americans had fought for America's liberty and their own in the Revolution, but their place in the new nation was unresolved. As slavery was abolished in the North, free blacks gained greater opportunities, but still faced a long struggle against limits to their freedom, against discrimination, and against southern slavery. The lives of these men and women are vividly described in In Hope of Liberty, spanning the 200 years and eight generations from the colonial slave trade to the Civil War. In this marvelously peopled history, James and Lois Horton introduce us to a rich cast of characters. There are familiar historical figures such as Crispus Attucks, a leader of the Boston Massacre and one of the first casu

James Oliver Horton is the Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at the George Washington University, directs the African-American Communities Project at the Smithsonian Institution, and is the author of Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community. Lois E. Horton is Professor of Sociology and American Studies at George Mason University and the co-author of Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggles in the Antebellum North.