![]() | Forging freedom: the formation of Philadelphia''s Black community, 1720-1840 This book is the first to trace the good and bad fortunes, over more than a century, of the earliest large free black community in the United States. Gary Nash shows how, from colonial times through the Revolution and into the turbulent 1830s, blacks in the City of Brotherly Love struggled to shape a family life, gain occupational competence, organize churches, establish neighborhoods and social networks, advance cultural institutions, educate their children in schools, forge a political consciousness, and train black leaders who would help abolish slavery. These early generations of urban blacks--many of them newly emancipated--constructed a rich and varied community life. Gary B. Nash was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 27, 1933. He received a B. A. in 1955 and a Ph.D. in 1964 from Princeton University. He has taught colonial and revolutionary American history at the University of California at Los Angeles since 1966. He won the University of California Distinguished Emeriti Award and the Defense of Academic Freedom Award from the National Council for Social Studies. He is the author of numerous books including Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681-1726; Red, White and Black: The Peoples of Early America; The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution; Forging Freedom: The Black Urban Experience in Philadelphia, 1720-1840; and The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution. (Bowker Author Biography) |
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