Description
Book SynopsisIn A Brotherhood of Liberty, Dennis Patrick Halpin shifts the focus of the black freedom struggle from the Deep South to argue that Baltimore is key to understanding the trajectory of civil rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1870s and early 1880s, a dynamic group of black political leaders migrated to Baltimore from rural Virginia and Maryland. These activists, mostly former slaves who subsequently trained in the ministry, pushed Baltimore to fulfill Reconstruction''s promise of racial equality. In doing so, they were part of a larger effort among African Americans to create new forms of black politics by founding churches, starting businesses, establishing community centers, and creating newspapers. Black Baltimoreans successfully challenged Jim Crow regulations on public transit, in the courts, in the voting booth, and on the streets of residential neighborhoods. They formed some of the nation''s earliest civil rights organizations, includin
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"In A Brotherhood of Liberty, Halpin describes how the African American community of Baltimore used activism to define citizenship and freedom after the Civil War. The book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of African American politics from the age of Emancipation through the hardening of Jim Crow to the law-and-order policies of the so-called Progressive Era." * Shawn Alexander, University of Kansas *
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. African Americans' Struggle to Define Freedom on the Border
Chapter 2. Rebuilding a Radical African American Activist Foundation
Chapter 3. The Mutual United Brotherhood of Liberty and New Directions in Black Activism
Chapter 4. The Creation of Baltimore's Racialized Criminal Justice System
Chapter 5. "The Wave of Disfranchising Deviltry Has Gone to Its Utmost Northern Limits"
Chapter 6. "The Struggle for Land and Liberty"
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
