At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C.

by Tamika Y. Nunley

Overview

The capital city of a nation founded on the premise of liberty, nineteenth-century Washington, D.C., was both an entrepot of urban slavery and the target of abolitionist ferment. The growing slave trade and the enactment of Black codes placed the city's Black women within the rigid confines of a social hierarchy ordered by race and gender. At the Threshold of Liberty reveals how these women—enslaved, fugitive, and free—imagined new identities and lives beyond the oppressive restrictions intended to prevent them from ever experiencing liberty, self-respect, and power.

Consulting newspapers, government documents, letters, abolitionist records, legislation, and memoirs, Tamika Y. Nunley traces how Black women navigated social and legal proscriptions to develop their own ideas about liberty as they escaped from slavery, initiated freedom suits, created entrepreneurial economies, pursued education, and participated in political work. In telling these stories, Nunley places Black women at the vanguard of the history of Washington, D.C., and the momentous transformations of nineteenth-century America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469662213
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/22/2021
Series:	The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Tamika Y. Nunley is associate professor of history at Cornell University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Tamika Nunley's wonderful book puts remarkable women at the center of African Americans' struggle for full freedom in the nation's capital.—Chris Myers Asch, co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital

Tamika Y. Nunley has written a nuanced, humane, and powerful history of Black women's freedom-making in Washington, D.C. At the Threshold of Liberty is a major contribution.—William G. Thomas III, author of A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War

Editorial Reviews

A focused study on the way that Black women have transcended slavery. . . . Well-researched."—Library Journal

Nunley makes an incredible contribution to the field of the study of African American women in the nineteenth century. She leaves her readers with an irrefutable understanding of the centrality of Black women in the establishment of the capital's reputation as a site of liberty and justice for all...[An] impressively cohesive study exemplifies the duality of Black women's and girls' lived experiences in the capital at a pivotal turning point in the political project of nation-making."—Black Perspectives

In this excellent book Nunley offers a roadmap for historians to take Black women's visions of freedom as seriously as their successes."—Washington History

Beautifully illustrates how individual desires for self-possession, family, and community, formed before the Civil War, pushed African American women to work toward a world that more closely resembled the ones they imagined."—Journal of Southern History

Extensively and impressively researched. . . . [At the Threshold of Liberty] is extremely rewarding, as the reader gains a sense of the social and cultural geography of Washington, D.C., and the crucial networks that African American women created and sustained as they made themselves on their own terms."—North Carolina Historical Review

A major achievement that makes critical contributions to historians' understandings of Black women's long-term battles for liberty in the
District of Columbia. It will be of great interest to scholars of slavery, race,
gender, and the Atlantic world . . . . Nunley expertly unpacks archival silences, fragments, and discursive violence in the existing records."—William and Mary Quarterly

From the Publisher

01/22/2021

With this debut, Nunley (history, comparative American studies, Oberlin Coll.) writes a focused study on the way that Black women have transcended slavery, including how they fought court battles in an attempt to earn their right to freedom and have sought to define themselves on their own terms. Focusing primarily on Washington, DC, this book by Nunley looks at previously undiscovered primary sources—from abolitionist records to legislation to letters—on women who were enslaved, as well as those who were free and the barriers they faced because of their gender and race. She notes myriad examples of such women not only seeking to navigate life around these obstacles but also uplifting other women in similar situations. Specifically, the author includes stories of Black women buying their freedom and later becoming involved in abolitionist movements, even hiding those who escaped bondage at great risk to themselves and their families. Overall, Nunley thoroughly explores the way these courageous women lived their lives and shaped history around them in the process. VERDICT Though well-researched, this compressive history reads more like a dissertation and the dense chapters and occasional jargon means it will likely appeal primarily to those in academia.—Stacy Shaw, Denver

Library Journal