Considering Baltimore and Philadelphia as part of a larger, Mid-Atlantic borderland, "The Politics of Black Citizenship" shows that the antebellum effort to secure the rights of American citizenship was central to black politics—it was an effort that sought to exploit the ambiguities of citizenship and negotiate the complex national, state, and local politics in which that concept was determined. In this book Andrew Diemer examines the diverse tactics that free blacks employed in defense of their liberties—including violence and the building of autonomous black institutions—as well as African Americans' familiarity with the public policy and political struggles that helped shape those freedoms in the first place.

Andrew K. Diemer is assistant professor of history at Towson University. His work has been published in the Journal of Military History, Slavery and Abolition, and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.

Description courtesy of University of Georgia Press.