Summary:[]
“Central to the story of slavery and freedom in New York City is the development of class relations and community among blacks.” (3) She thus argues that by using New York City as a case study, she demonstrates “the ways northern slavery and emancipation, southern slavery, and racial identities influenced the construction of class and community for blacks and whites in the pre-Civil War United States.” (4) The experiences with slavery and emancipation in early colonial New York and how those experiences were interpreted shaped labor relations and attitudes of black and whites to black labor. “The existence of slavery in New York,” she writes, “had an indelible effect on the political and economic institutions of the city.” Slaves came to symbolize, by the revolutionary war, the subordinate position whites felt as workers and citizens of the British Empire. “By the end of the period of emancipation in 1827, whites had legally, economically, and social designated black people as a separate, dependent and unequal group within the New York City community.” (5) She also argues that the formation of class distinctions with the black community was the result of different responses to racism. Looking at four distinct periods, In the Shadow of Slavery “focuses on the ways in which increasingly during the antebellum period class distinctions among blacks affected arguments about black community, particularly as expressed through political activism against racism and slavery.” (9)
Example: In response to the economic downturn after the War of 1812, many whites (working class and elites) saw black labor as a competition and limited their political rights (also linked blacks with poor public behavior, etc). Also, ideology of Manumission Society shaping black politics after 1812.
See also: WEB Dubois, Eugene Genovese, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Walter Johnson, David Roedegger,