Citizens for Protection

Philadelphia contained the early republic’s largest population of free people of color, described as “the elite of our people” by other African Americans. Led by the wealthy sailmaker James Forten and Bishop Richard Allen, founder of the AME Church, they practiced “shadow politics,” building their own institutions separate from white society, protected by powerful whites in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Despite their legal right to vote, however, they also accepted their de facto exclusion from party and electoral politics. This politics of deference in return for protection left black Philadelphians defenceless against white violence and disfranchisement in the 1830s, after which they retreated into a closed world of ritual and small-scale factional disputes.