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In A Brotherhood of Liberty, Dennis Patrick Halpin shifts the focus
of the black freedom struggle from the Deep South to argue that
Baltimore is key to understanding the trajectory of civil rights in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1870s and
early 1880s, a dynamic group of black political leaders migrated to
Baltimore from rural Virginia and Maryland. These activists, mostly
former slaves who subsequently trained in the ministry, pushed
Baltimore to fulfill Reconstruction's promise of racial equality.
In doing so, they were part of a larger effort among African
Americans to create new forms of black politics by founding
churches, starting businesses, establishing community centers, and
creating newspapers. Black Baltimoreans successfully challenged Jim
Crow regulations on public transit, in the courts, in the voting
booth, and on the streets of residential neighborhoods. They formed
some of the nation's earliest civil rights organizations, including
the United Mutual Brotherhood of Liberty, to define their own
freedom in the period after the Civil War. Halpin shows how black
Baltimoreans' successes prompted segregationists to reformulate
their tactics. He examines how segregationists countered activists'
victories by using Progressive Era concerns over urban order and
corruption to criminalize and disenfranchise African Americans.
Indeed, he argues the Progressive Era was crucial in establishing
the racialized carceral state of the twentieth-century United
States. Tracing the civil rights victories scored by black
Baltimoreans that inspired activists throughout the nation and
subsequent generations, A Brotherhood of Liberty highlights the
strategies that can continue to be useful today, as well as the
challenges that may be faced.
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