illing to testify on his behalf.

On several occasions white hostility erupted into violence. Black
workmen were harassed, abolitionists beaten, and entire communities
terrorized. One of the worst of these events occurred in Cincinnati in
1829. With the rapid growth of "Little Africa," that city's black
ghetto, the local citizens decided to enforce the state's
anti-integration legislation. Some twenty years before, the state had
passed a law requiring blacks entering the state to provide proof of
their freedom and to post a bond as guarantee of their good behavior.
When the inhabitants of "Little Africa" obtained an extension of the
30-day time limit within which they were to comply with the law, the
citizens of Cincinnati were outraged, and they took matters into their
own hands. White mobs ransacked the area, indiscriminately and
mercilessly beating women and children, looting stores and burning
houses. It was estimated that half of the two thousand inhabitants of
the area left the city. Many of them emigrated to Canada, and the local
paper, which had helped to inflame the mob, lamented that the respectable
black citizens had left and only derelicts remained.

At the very point in American history when democracy was sinking its
roots deeper into the national soil, the status of the Afro-American was
being clearly defined as an inferior one. The Jacksonian Era brought the
common man into new prominence, but the same privileges were not extended
to the blacks. In the South, society was strengthening the institution
of slavery against any possible recurrences of slave insurrections. The
activities of the slaves, especially those of Negro preachers, were being
watched even more closely than before. In the North, both state and
federal laws denied blacks many of the rights of citizenship.

PART TWO Emancipation Without Freedom

Chapter 5

A Nation Divided

Black Moderates And Black Militants

On the eve of the Revolution there was justification for assuming that
slavery in the Northern states was withering away. By 1800 most of the
Northern states had either done away with slavery or had made provision
for its gradual abolition. Although this might not change the status of
an adult slave, he knew his children, when they reached maturity, would
be free. This meant that the important issue in the North was that of
identity. What would be the place of Negroes who were not fully accepted
as Am