Description: Excavations at cities including New York and Philadelphia reveal that slavery was a crucial part of the expansion of urban life as late as the 1840s. The case studies in this book also show that enslaved African-descended people frequently staffed suburban manor houses and agricultural plantations. Moreover, for free blacks, racist laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 limited the experience of freedom in the region. Delle explains how members of the African diaspora created rural communities of their own and worked in active resistance against the institution of slavery.
Brief description: James A. Delle, associate provost for academic administration at Millersville University, is coeditor of Archaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean: Exploring the Spaces in Between and Out of Many, One People: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Jamaica.