| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 133.1

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 133.1 | The History Cooperative

BOOK REVIEWS

A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. By Erica Armstrong Dunbar. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. xvi, 196 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $55.)
Among the many dramatic changes of the 1960s was a new focus in American historical writing, a focus that initiated a narrative that was more inclusive of the variety of Americans' backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. But that inclusiveness was often lurching and fragmented; as Gloria T. Hull noted in her review of black women's studies, "all the women are white, all the blacks are men." Erica Armstrong Dunbar's A Fragile Freedom is among the best and richest of the number of new historical works that aim to meld the "sub-topical" groups of the American narrative. It offers readers a more well-rounded synthesis of some of the social dynamics of antebellum America.	1
Dunbar's work does several things well. First, it helps add specifics to what historians know intuitively: that African Americans in antebellum "free" states made conscious decisions to remain in a sort of demimonde of emancipation. This ranged from indenturing themselves and/or their children to remaining in service to protective former masters in order to avoid kidnapping. They also did so to seek the umbrella of "belonging" that was so crucial in a society with no public version of social security.	. . .

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