Street Diplomacy

"A significant achievement. The history reconstructed in this book is characterized by dramatic struggles over individual liberty and family security; interracial conflict and cooperation; and hard-won victories and agonizing defeats in political contests. Street Diplomacy does a fine job of decentering the familiar white leaders of the region's antislavery movement and instead positioning African Americans as pivotal actors. I was often dazzled by what Drago has been able to find in archival sources and reconstruct from woefully incomplete records."

"Drago's concept of street diplomacy and how it played out on the streets, courts, and activist circles is paradigm shifting. Street Diplomacy also connects Philadelphia to state and national politics over issues of personal liberty laws, free and self-liberating African Americans' rights, and abolition. This book deftly brings attention to issues taking place across the antebellum North and will encourage a broader scholarly reexamination of street diplomacy during this time period."

"At last, a penetrating analysis of the ways personal struggles over freedom and slavery linked local, state, and national politics. It sets the standard for all of us interested in a broader interpretation of the politics of slavery centered on Black community resistance. Street Diplomacy is thoroughly convincing."

"At the heart of this powerful study is both the fragility of Black freedom in the City of Brotherly Love and the courage and tenacity of those, Black and white, who struggled to defend that freedom."

"In this engaging book, the streets of Philadelphia teem with ordinary people engaging in battles over freedom and slavery. The stakes were high in these confrontations, for both the Black Philadelphians, many of them children, who were kidnapped and sold into slavery, and for the nation, as their street diplomacy reverberated outward to the halls of Congress."