Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York

Abstract

zying array of many different kinds of Northern areas scattered across the country—some suburban, many urban, and others in what would be more accurately described as the West or Midwest—a distinction she is careful to note. This is a critical contribution to literature on movements outside of the South and the attendant many dilemmas therein. This book is a needed addition to the work on Northern movements. By adding complexity to the debate, it further elucidates much of the groundwork laid by scholars such as Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard and Brian Purnell. But the stubborn issue of racism has always managed to surface in the North, and most often manifests itself in schooling. The tell of the deep-seated brand of racism that exists in the North—what jurists have called de facto segregation— often comes up in education. As Burkholder points out in example after example, particularly in suburban areas, Black students were often restricted to the one or two schools that were sometimes (although not always) in the Black parts of town. This also brings the question of periodization into the conversation. Any study that depicts Black separation will by necessity have to analyze struggles that predate Brown vs. Board. For instance, Burkholder spends a good part of the book talking about Boston, and for good reason. The bookends of Boston’s experiences with school desegregation take place not only in the 20th century, after Brown vs. Education, but began there in the 19th century. It is here where this study particularly shines, in its brilliant perception of the fact that there is never just one side to the school desegregation struggle, but was more often comprised of two sides and a differing philosophy—one that pushed for integration—and one that also saw the wisdom and practicality of working with the opportunity of building up Black education within an otherwise imperfect system. The book has five chapters, which are composed chronologically. One of the most interesting chapters is the one on school separation and Black Power which does an exceptionally good job of explaining how parents, children and families engaged in these campaigns, and incorporated older traditions of Black nationalism in the era of Black Power. The author carries that forward into the 1990s and early 2000s in the last chapter by taking a fascinating look at Afrocentric schools that came to embody many of the principles echoed earlier. In all of these ways, the book makes a substantial contribution to existing knowledge because of its unique framing—a dual study of integration and separation—which gives it the ability to portray these longstanding debates in new ways as a dilemma for African Americans to resolve. Burkholder’s work is a welcome addition to the scholarship on this area. Because there has never been anything quite like it before, it does not replace existing scholarship per se. Instead, it has instigated an entirely new line of inquiry. Although the book is written largely for a scholarly reading audience, it will be studied by scholars and lay people alike—perhaps offering a model for school districts in the North—still sorely in need of paradigms for successful examples of school integration. Burkholder offers these examples—in Montclair, New Jersey and Hartford, Connecticut—places that struck an essential balance between integration, the traditions of Black communities and the desires of the white community, blazing a path right through the dichotomy that is the “African American dilemma.”