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Book Review
| Slavery in New York. Ed. by Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris. (New York: New Press, 2005. viii, 403 pp. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 1-56584-997-3.)
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| This superb collection reminds us that slavery was hardly a peripheral institution in the development of New York. African and African American labor helped build the city, and white New Yorkers were loath to dispense with a system that brought them so much prosperity. When New York finally abolished slavery, ties to the South continued to enrich the city. The determination not to see those ties severed combined with a long-standing distrust of free black people to make New York's African American population very much a population under siege. Nevertheless, black New Yorkers emerged from slavery intent on asserting their rights to share in the wealth and vitality of the city that was rapidly becoming the richest in the nation. |
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