Beginning in 1803, and continuing for several decades, the Ohio
legislature enacted what came to be known as the Black Laws. These
laws instituted barriers to blacks entering the state and placed
limits on black testimony against whites. Stephen Middleton tells
the story of this racial oppression in Ohio and provides chilling
episodes of how blacks asserted their freedom from the enactment of
the Black Laws until the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. The
fastest-growing state in antebellum America and the destination of
whites from the north and the south, Ohio also became the
destination for thousands of southern blacks, free and fugitive.
Thus, nineteenth-century Ohio became a legal battleground for two
powerful and far-reaching impulses in the history of race and law
in America. One was the use of state power to further racial
discrimination and the other was the thirst of African Americans,
and their white allies, for equality under the law for all
Americans. The state could never stop the steady stream of blacks
crossing the Ohio River to freedom. In time, black and white
leaders arose to challenge the laws and by 1849 the firewall built
to separate the races began to collapse. The last vestiges of
Ohio's Black Laws were repealed in a bill written by a black
legislator in 1886. Written in a clear and compelling style, this
path-breaking study of Ohio's early racial experience will be
required reading for a broad audience of historians, legal
scholars, students, and those interested in the struggle for civil
rights in America.Stephen Middleton is a member of the history
department at North Carolina State University. He is the author of
Ohio and the Antislavery Activities ofSalmon P. Chase, The Black
Laws in the Old Northwest: A Documentary History, and Black
Congressmen During Reconstruction: A Documentary Sourcebook.
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