FREE BLACK RESISTANCE IN THE ANTEBELLUM ERA, 1830 TO 1860

This study examines the social construction of Northern free Black resistance in the antebellum era. Political protest, the mobi-lizing agent of early Black resistance, depended on three intercon-nected variables: (a) the material circumstances of Black existence; (b) Northern Black institutional formation undergirding emerging indigenous leadership and protest direction; and (c) the overt and covert operations of vigilantism, dramatic slave rescues, and the Underground Railroad, all of which operated in tandem to each other. Charles Tilly (1978) argues that when African Americans are politically excluded from the body politic, alienated from the rest of society, and chiefly operating in a hostile environment due to racism, that &dquo;defensive mobilization&dquo; occurs (p. 73). This politi-cal strategy, in effect, engenders a collective consciousness and a common social agenda and lays the basis for social change (Mor-rison, 1987, pp. 11-13). In the antebellum era, community con-sciousness fostered the connective tissue between early institutional formation and emerging leadership (McAdam, 1982, pp. 41-44). Collectively, the above three variables provided the critical politi-cal support and agitation in Black communities as they &dquo;defen-sively mobilized&dquo; around the twin objectives of slave abolition and freedom and equality for free African Americans (Quarles, 1969, p. 49). Political protest is defined not merely as a visionary quest for liberation but rather as a profound agitation and tremor of the body politic and is supported by the collective mobilization of the Black community in the transition of redefinition and social change