Share
Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture) (in English)
Crystal Lynn Webster
(Author)
·
University of North Carolina Press
· Paperback
Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture) (in English) - Webster, Crystal Lynn
$ 23.12
$ 24.95
You save: $ 1.83
Choose the list to add your product or create one New List
✓ Product added successfully to the Wishlist.
Go to My WishlistsIt will be shipped from our warehouse between
Friday, June 21 and
Monday, June 24.
You will receive it anywhere in United States between 1 and 3 business days after shipment.
Synopsis "Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture) (in English)"
For all that is known about the depth and breadth of African American history, we still understand surprisingly little about the lives of African American children, particularly those affected by northern emancipation. But hidden in institutional records, school primers and penmanship books, biographical sketches, and unpublished documents is a rich archive that reveals the social and affective worlds of northern Black children. Drawing evidence from the urban centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Crystal Webster's innovative research yields a powerful new history of African American childhood before the Civil War. Webster argues that young African Americans were frequently left outside the nineteenth century's emerging constructions of both race and childhood. They were marginalized in the development of schooling, ignored in debates over child labor, and presumed to lack the inherent innocence ascribed to white children. But Webster shows that Black children nevertheless carved out physical and social space for play, for learning, and for their own aspirations. Reading her sources against the grain, Webster reveals a complex reality for antebellum Black children. Lacking societal status, they nevertheless found meaningful agency as historical actors, making the most of the limited freedoms and possibilities they enjoyed.