Mighty change, tall within : Black identity in the Hudson Valley / edited by Myra B. Young Armstead.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Armstead, Myra Beth Young, 1954-

Series:

SUNY series, an American region

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.)--History.

African Americans.

History.

African Americans--Race identity--Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.).

African Americans--Race identity.

Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.)--History.

Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.).

Physical Description:

x, 287 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2003]

Summary:

Using New York State's Hudson Valley as a backdrop, this book provides a regional perspective on black identity from the colonial period to the present. Through racialized struggles and varying experiences of black residents, a black presence in the region has persisted. Factors such as religious structures and cosmologies, ethnicity, legal systems, economic patterns, class, gender, family structures, and leaders have uniquely influenced black identity.

The religion-inspired metamorphosis of celebrated antebellum black resident Isabella Van Wagenen, later known as Sojourner Truth, illustrates how the abandonment of her slave identity and her refusal to call her new employer "master," was a liberation for blacks -- a "mighty change." Moving from the colonial period to the present, this book underscores the mighty change in the identity of blacks in the region over nearly a four hundredyear period -- from captive to slave, from slave to free, from northern-born to southern-influenced, from pre-industrial to post-industrial, from multiethnic to multi-national. Like Isabella, in her successful determination to reclaim her son who had been wrongfully forced into slavery, black people within the region have stood "tall within."

Contents:

Introduction: Conceptualizing Black Identity in the Hudson Valley / Myra B. Young Armstead 1

1. The Emergence of a New Black Religious Identity in New York City and Eastern New Jersey, 1624-1807 / Graham Russell Hodges 13

2. "Living in a Material World": African Americans and Economic Identity in Colonial Albany / Aileen B. Agnew 41

3. Laboring for Freedom in Dutchess County / Michael E. Groth 58

4. A Geography of Slavery and Freedom in Antebellum Ulster County and New York City: Isabella Van Wagenen and Her Family / Myra B. Young Armstead 80

5. The Kinship System in The Hills, An African American Community in Westchester, New York, in the Mid-Nineteenth Century / Edythe Ann Quinn 95

6. The Rise and Fall of Skunk Hollow / Joan H. Geismar 121

7. Stepladder to Community / Irma Watkins-Owens 136

8. Black Neighborhood Formation in Poughkeepsie during the Great Migration, 1950-1970 / Denise Love Johnson 163

9. Race and Class Politics in a Black Middle-Class Suburb / Bruce D. Haynes 175

10. Representations of Racial Identity in a Contemporary Pinkster Celebration / Linda Pershing 190

11. Spaces, Places, and Fields: The Politics of West African Trading in New York City's Informal Economy / Paul Stoller 210

12. Something in Between: Locating Identity among Second-Generation West Indians in New York City / Sherri-Ann P. Butterfield 232

Appendix The Black Presence in the Hudson River Valley, 1790 to 2000: A Demographic Overview / Andrew A. Beveridge, Michael McMenemy 263.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0791456714

0791456722

OCLC:

50425149