xxviii, 664 p. : ill., genealogical tables ; 24 cm.
Notes
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
African American Resources at Lancaster County Historical Society.
Summary
"Herbert G. Gutman uses quantitative records from the United States census intermixed with qualitative materials such as letters slaves wrote each other, testimony given to Government Commissions, and observations of foreign travelers to assure us that the black family was never disorganized by slavery. He aptly refutes the theory that the slave experience resulted in broken black families. He insists that the black family has always been an effective means for transmitting a black cultural heritage...The volume was stimulated by the public and academic controversy surrounding Daniel P. Moynihan's The Negro Family in America: The Case for National Actions (1965). Moynihan argued that American blacks were caught in a "tangle of pathology" resulting from the deterioration of the black family." [from Endnotes.com]
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society & the Pennsylvania Black : two hundredth anniversary exhibition, April 17, 1974-July 17, 1974, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania : from its collections, those of Charles L. Blockson, and others
African American Resources at Lancaster County Historical Society.
Summary
The book details the events leading up to and following the " Christiana Riot " in 1851. African Americans in Christiana, Pennsylvania, repulsed the efforts of a Maryland slave owner to capture escaped slaves. The encounter resulted in the death of the slave owner and the trial for treason of several men. The charges were based on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which required citizens to assist in the return of escaped slaves to their owners. No one was convicted in the trial. The book states that "the Christiana resistance ranks with the Nat Turner uprising as one of the major episodes in black American history and the history of black-white relations. Along with John Brown's raid it was a harbinger of the Civil War. "
