Jim Crow New York

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title (2004)
In 1821, New York's political leaders met for over two months to rewrite the state's constitution. The new document secured the right to vote for the great mass of white men while denying all but the wealthiest African-American men access to the polls.
Jim Crow New York introduces students and scholars alike to this watershed event in American political life. This action crystallized the paradoxes of free black citizenship, not only in the North but throughout the nation: African Americans living in New York would no longer be slaves. But would they be citizens?
Jim Crow New York provides readers with both scholarly analysis and access to a series of extraordinary documents, including extensive excerpts from the resonant speeches made at New York's 1821 constitutional convention and additional documents which recover a diversity of voices, from lawmakers to African-American community leaders, from newspaper editors to activists. The text is further enhanced by extensive introductory essays and headnotes, maps, illustrations, and a detailed bibliographic essay.

David N. Gellman is Associate Professor of History at DePauw University.
David Quigley is Associate Professor of History at Boston College.

"A superb combination of documents, commentary, and narrative history. Gellman and Quigley explore the complex world of race and citizenship in New York State where the long history of conflict, accommodation, reversal, and progress foreshadowed the national debate on racial equality. Jim Crow New York is equally valuable for a scholar's reference and for the classroom." - Lois E. Horton, coauthor of In Hope of Liberty and Hard Road to Freedom "With so many document collections aimed at teaching scholars and students about slavery and race relations in the nineteenth-century South, it is refreshing and enlightening to read a collection that reminds us of the northern side of the story." - Michael Vorenberg, author of Final Freedom "Gellman and Quigley provide a unique perspective. While invaluable for scholars of slavery and NYC, most importantly, students will find an invaluable window onto democracy's history in the US." - Choice "It would require a tremendous amount of time and expense to collect all the primary source material the authors have assembled and reprinted in this book. This in and of itself makes it a valuable resource for researchers." - New York History "The documents (the editors) have assembled give us many voices, both white and black. Among whites there are pioneers, men of very good will and demagogues worthy of Jim Crow Mississippi. The black voices they present are not the predictable Frederick Douglass and, perhaps, Henry Highland Garnet. Without asserting the point, they demonstrate that many black people were trying to speak for themselves." - Slavery and Abolition