African American Sites in the Digital Collections

1815-1860: National Expansion and Reform

The Negro Woman's Appeal to Her White Sisters. [London]: Richard Barrett, [1850]. Broadside. Printed Ephemera Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division. (3-12)

Highlights

In some Northern cities, for brief periods of time, black property owners voted. A very small number of free blacks owned slaves. The slaves that most free blacks purchased were relatives whom they later manumitted. A few free blacks also owned slave holding plantations in Louisiana, Virginia, and South Carolina.
Blacks were also outspoken in print. Freedom's Journal, the first black-owned newspaper, appeared in 1827. This paper and other early writings by blacks fueled the attack against slavery and racist conceptions about the intellectual inferiority of African Americans.

• African American Odyssey:
  Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period
  
  Abolition and Anti-Slavery Movements
  
• African American Mosaic:
  Abolition
  

People, Places and Events

1. Harriet Powers (1837-1911): Folk artist of quilits 
   
   Quilts made by Powers
   
2. Harriet Ross Tubman: Moses of Her People (1820-1913): Runaway slave from Maryland and agent for the underground railroad
   
3. Nathaniel "Nat" Turner (1800-1831): Bondsman
   
   "Nat Turner's Rebellion, 1831"