Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1802-1868

Black Issues Book Review, Jan-Feb, 2005 by Andria Y. Carter

Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1802-1868 by Nikki M. Taylor Ohio University Press, February 2005 $55, ISBN 0-821-41579-4

Frontiers of Freedom is not just a story about the founding of Cincinnati's African American community, but a story of the attitudes, the culture, and the laws that took hold to shape this strategically placed river town and its black and white citizens for generations.

Taylor has captured the essence of Cincinnati's African American community, which has inherited the strength of character from former slaves who chose to stay, and withstood what the racially oppressive city gave and never gave up believing that things would get better.

As a native Cincinnatian, I always understood that Cincinnati had a hard time finding its identity, its Founding Fathers believing in freedom, but for whites only, not for those of a different hue. The historian Henry Louis Taylor Jr. contends that 19th-century Cincinnati had a "dual personality, a schizophrenic northern and southern personality occupying the same urban body."

Cincinnati's schizophrenic personality is understandable because its economy was dependent upon the slave trade. The city's business community was dependent upon the goods produced by Kentucky's plantations. Even when the federal government outlawed states doing business with slave states, Cincinnati continued to do business with Kentucky by going underground. Additionally, the city was known for allowing slave trackers to come into town looking for runaway slaves, allowing the slaves to be dragged back to their master or snatching someone off the street to replace those slaves that couldn't be found.

By 1850, Cincinnati had the largest African American population (3,237) in the entire Old Northwest. Between 1802 and 1868, African Americans fled to Cincinnati because the river town offered them greater economic opportunities than did other Ohio cities. Cincinnati was full of promise, but many hopes were dashed as many soon learned jobs were scarce. Those to be had were mainly on the steamboats, where African American men endured long separations from their families. Many chose to remain single because of the difficulties. Those who stayed on land had to fight with the Irish immigrants to find jobs.

Nikki M. Taylor's thirst for history and understanding comes out in the book, though at times she struggles to tell the story of a community that endured strife, riots, Ohio's Black Laws aim a lack of recognition as citizens. Taylor does communicate how the black community continued to redefine its vision of freedom, despite the attempts to stifle it.