Richard S. Newman and Roy E. Finkenbine

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WMQ online. About 594 words from this article are provided below; about 5288 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase this article in PDF form for $10.00.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the William and Mary Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the William and Mary Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Richard S. Newman and Roy E. Finkenbine | Forum: Black Founders in the New Republic: Introduction | The William and Mary Quarterly, 64.1 | The History Cooperative

Forum

Black Founders in the New Republic: Introduction

THOUGH the 1990s witnessed a resurgence of scholarly and public interest in the elite white founding generation (a trend labeled "Founder's chic" in a revisionist study), black Founders still had no substantial literature focusing on their lives, worldviews, and legacy in matters of racial identity, reform politics, and early abolitionism. True, there were groundbreaking scholarly monographs and articles on black community building and slave rebellion.¹ Scholarly work on African American history and reform movements, however, continued to focus more intensively on either the colonial or antebellum eras.	1
Times have certainly changed. Black Founders, in fact, occupy a position of rising importance. Major biographies have been published on James Forten and Lemuel Haynes, and new studies will soon appear on Richard Allen and Paul Cuffe. A growing roster of books and articles also focuses on the significance of racial politics, black history writing, and African Americans' understanding of public discourse in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary eras, making the lives of black Founders much more than simply a prelude to seemingly more significant events of the antebellum period.²	2
The announcement of a major publishing venture—the Black Antislavery Writings Project, 1760–1829—underscores black Founders' new relevance. Based at the University of Detroit Mercy under the direction of Roy E. Finkenbine and John Saillant, the ambitious project aims to collect and publish black-authored texts from the revolutionary era and early Republic relating to slavery, race, and African American identity. A prequel to the five-volume Black Abolitionist Papers, originally hailed by David Brion Davis as one of the most significant publishing ventures of the past several decades, the project will furnish unprecedented depth of study on black writing and thought during the American founding era.³	3
The current Forum began as a conference panel with the Black Antislavery Writings Project in mind. Comprised of six pieces, each linked to a specific document written by a black Founder posted on the William and Mary Quarterly's Web site, the Forum focuses attention on a remarkable generation of early Americans.⁴ Three essays examine celebrated African American figures from a variety of new perspectives, and three illuminate less heralded but no less important black activists. Finkenbine examines the moving story of Belinda, a formerly enslaved woman from postrevolutionary New England whose remarkable memorial included perhaps the earliest call for some form of reparations in America. Peter P. Hinks analyzes the Masonic beliefs and New Divinity preaching of Atlantic world itinerant John Marrant, a free black activist who believed that racial uplift and antislavery sermonizing went hand in hand. Richard S. Newman considers the significance of black preacher Richard Allen's eulogy of George Washington, a printed appeal for abolitionism and interracial harmony in the Republic. Julie Winch focuses on the intellectual roots and ramifications of Forten's literary activism, finding links to eighteenth-century British oppositional thought as well as to radical state constitutionalism in Pennsylvania. Stephen G. Hall's essay illuminates the work of obscure but fascinating pamphleteer Jacob Oson of New York City, whose detailed examinations of African diasporic identities in America were crafted a decade prior to similar work by David Walker and Robert Alexander Young. Manisha Sinha focuses on the collective meaning of African American radicalism during the revolutionary era, finding in early black activism key foundations of later abolitionist thought and action. Finally, the Forum presents for the first time a recently discovered petition on early black emigration associated with a little-known black Founder, Afro-Philadelphian James Dexter.	. . .

There are about 5288 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.