The Precious Birthright
eBook - ePub

The Precious Birthright

Black Leaders and the Fight to Vote in Antebellum Rhode Island

  1. 288 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Precious Birthright

Black Leaders and the Fight to Vote in Antebellum Rhode Island

About this book

In 1842, Black Rhode Islanders secured a stunning victory, a success rarely seen in antebellum America: they won the right to vote. Amid heightened public discourse around shifting ideas of race, citizenship, and political rights, they methodically deconstructed the arguments against their enfranchisement, exposing the arbitrariness of the color line in delineating citizenship rights and choosing the perfect moments in which to act forcefully. At the head of this movement, a cohort of prominent business and community members formed an early example of a Black leadership class in the US.

CJ Martin draws upon a wealth of sources—including personal correspondences, government and organizational documents, tax records, and petitions—to argue that Black leaders employed a unique combination of agitation and accommodation to ensure the success of the movement. By investigating their tactics, Martin deepens the story of how race played a crucial role in American citizenship, and by focusing on Black leadership, he relates this history through the people who lived it—who thought, debated, petitioned, and enacted their own liberation. Telling the story of a fight that was as important to the pioneers of interracial democracy as it was for the civil rights activists of the twentieth century, The Precious Birthright provides new insight into the larger story of Black freedom. 

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Yes, you can access The Precious Birthright by CJ Martin in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & African American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover 
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents 
  6. Introduction
  7. Chapter 1: “To Promote One Common Good”: Black Leaders in Revolutionary Rhode Island
  8. Chapter 2: “Dignified Abeyance”: Evolving Black Leadership and Disfranchisement
  9. Chapter 3: “Forever and Hereafter a Body Politic”: New Leadership and Organization, 1819–1824
  10. Chapter 4: “The Clouds of Evil”: Survival and Organization, 1820–1831
  11. Chapter 5: “How Long Will the Lord Suffer Us to Remain as We Now Are?”: Activists and Citizenship in the 1830s
  12. Chapter 6: “The Mustard Seed”: Part 1: Black Leaders, Allies, and Escalation of the Suffrage Movement
  13. Chapter 7: “The Mustard Seed”: Part 2: Citizenship
  14. Epilogue: “Friends to Social Order, True to Our Fellow Man”
  15. Notes
  16. Bibliography
  17. Index
  18. Back Cover