Freedom’s Grand Lab: Abolition, Race, and Black Freedom Struggles in Recent Pennsylvania Historiography

While often marginalized in Atlantic world studies of slavery and freedom, Pennsylvania’s civil rights past has attracted a new round of scholarly scrutiny. Whether examining the rise of Atlantic abolitionism or documenting the longstanding struggles of African Americans to achieve freedom, justice and equality, historians have over the past fifteen years reimagined Pennsylvania as a most ramifying place. Indeed, building on the work of Gary Nash, Emma Jones Lapsansky, Jean Soderlund and others, scholars have reintegrated Pennsylvania into the Atlantic world. What happened in the colony and the state was potent—anything but hidebound in the world of slavery and freedom. This essay highlights some of the main historical trends.