"Along with Julie Winch's Philadelphia’s Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787-1848 (Temple, 1988), Forging Freedom reorients our perspectives on Philadelphia and United States history, examining the roles played by the city’s African American communities, their ideological struggles, and their unstable social position."

Recommended by Samuel Otter, Professor of English and author of Philadelphia Stories: America's Literature of Race and Freedom.