A Focus on Black Cities Paper Discussion Panel

- Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASLAH) Conference.

1838 was a particularly pivotal year in Philadelphia, involving the decision to tun in the racial climate; one could almost call it a Black campaign. On the ground, mobs attacked and burned the abolitionist meeting hall, Pennsylvania Hall, days after it opened. In later attacks, prominent Black Philadelphian’s homes and families were attacked. In this climate, the legislature sought to remove the right of Black people to vote. To prove that Black people were stable, tax-paying, labor-providing, good people that should not lose that right, Free Black People in Philadelphia and their allies, The Pennsylvania Abolition Society, launched a campaign that resulted in three reports.

Now, almost 200 years later, these documents serve another purpose. They are one of the few concise historical reports of the remarkable breadth of the Free Black metropolis. This paper examines statistical facts from these reports to highlight areas that may have been overlooked or not examined by historiography.