Black freedom in the age of slavery: race, status, and identity in the urban Americas

"Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery examines the intersection of race and identity among free people of African descent in the urban Americas during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The manuscript uses the Atlantic port cities of Charleston and Cartagena as illustrative case studies in constructing a broad comparative framework that examines the experiences of free people of African descent in both the English and the Iberian Atlantic World.

It argues that the efforts of free people of color throughout the urban Americas fought to improve their immediate social and material conditions, in the process challenging the logic of white racial hierarchies while also dividing communities of color along lines of class, color, and ancestry.

The manuscript explores how free people of color across the urban Americas used labor, institutional ties, religious rites, and engagement with the intellectual and cultural currents of th