Although it was neither subterranean nor a mechanized means of travel, this network of routes and hiding places was known as the “underground railroad.” Some free blacks were active “conductors” on the underground railroad while others simply harbored runaways in their homes. Enslaved blacks and their white sympathizers planned secret flight strategies and escape routes for runaways to make their way to freedom. This paper and other early writings by blacks fueled the attack against slavery and racist conceptions about the intellectual inferiority of African Americans.Īfrican Americans also engaged in achieving freedom for others, which was a complex and dangerous undertaking. Freedom's Journal, the first black-owned newspaper, appeared in 1827.
A few free blacks also owned slave holding plantations in Louisiana, Virginia, and South Carolina.įree African American Christians founded their own churches which became the hub of the economic, social, and intellectual lives of blacks in many areas of the fledgling nation.
The slaves that most free blacks purchased were relatives whom they later manumitted. A very small number of free blacks owned slaves. In some Northern cities, for brief periods of time, black property owners voted. Some owned land, homes, businesses, and paid taxes. Black men enlisted as soldiers and fought in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. It was also more difficult for them to organize and sustain churches, schools, or fraternal orders such as the Masons.Īlthough their lives were circumscribed by numerous discriminatory laws even in the colonial period, freed African Americans, especially in the North, were active participants in American society. Free Southern blacks continued to live under the shadow of slavery, unable to travel or assemble as freely as those in the North. Their ability to express themselves, however, was determined by whether they lived in the North or the South. Free blacks in the antebellum period-those years from the formation of the Union until the Civil War-were quite outspoken about the injustice of slavery.
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