The Precious Birthright: Black Leaders and the Fight to Vote in Antebellum Rhode Island
CJ Martin
University of Massachusetts Press
In 1842, Black Rhode Islanders secured a stunning victory, a success rarely seen in antebellum America: they won the right to vote. Amid heightened public discourse around shifting ideas of race, citizenship, and political rights, they methodically deconstructed the arguments against their enfranchisement, exposing the arbitrariness of the color line in delineating citizenship rights and choosing the perfect moments in which to act forcefully.
By investigating their tactics, Martin deepens the story of how race played a crucial role in American citizenship, and by focusing on Black leadership, he relates this history through the people who lived it—who thought, debated, petitioned, and enacted their own liberation.