Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North by Crystal Lynn Webster (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North by Crystal Lynn Webster Jeanne Klein Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North. By Crystal Lynn Webster. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. xv + 186 pp. Hardcover 95. 00, paperback 24. 95, e-book 19. 99. While much is known about the horrific effects of human bondage in the South before the Civil War, how did gradual emancipation in the North affect the lives of African American children residing in large urban cities? As explained in her intriguing introduction, Crystal Lynn Webster approaches this question by moving beyond the boundaries of constructed childhoods and conceptualizing the "metaphysical dilemmas" of Northern Black childhood (5–6). This broadly defined theoretical framework allows her to explore how enslaved and free Black children and mothers performed as significant yet underappreciated historical actors on the political stages of freedom-making during Northern abolitionist and reform movements. By plumbing an extensive array of archival records primarily in Philadelphia but also in New York and Boston, she introduces a new cast of named and unnamed Black children who challenged white-dominated constructions of childhood. For instance, a remarkable End Page 309 sketched drawing that graces the book's cover illustrates Rachel, a brown-faced girl playing blindman's bluff with two white children outdoors. Webster organizes five thematic chapters based on her archival process; they situate Black children's experiences at play, in institutional buildings, at work as indentured servants, and in schools, as well as Black mothers' activism across three major cities. This organizational structure separates macro and micro contexts within respective cities and sometimes obfuscates new archival evidence from institutional records that reappear across chapters. Even so, each chapter makes for compelling reading as Webster integrates published child narratives, discourses in Black newspapers and periodicals, and others' historiographies that supplement her readings. The first chapter, entitled "Fugitive Play, " contrasts African-descended and white middle-class notions of children's play, thereby establishing emerging constructions marked by racialized differences that marginalized Black children. Even as the majority of Black children reportedly lived and worked with both parents through age fourteen, some so-called "orphans" lived in segregated orphanages temporarily (19). Here, Webster points out that free African Americans donated money toward creating Philadelphia's first Shelter for Coloured Orphans and an unnamed Black woman served as its first matron. Yet confined spaces exacerbated diseases and early deaths that white doctors attributed to "heredity" (49). As for segregated reformatories, white authorities disproportionately criminalized impoverished Black children as "inmates" (56), even though white juvenile gangs committed twice as many offenses. Racialized differences also arose in the common practice of indenturing children from age eight through their twenties. The exploitation of Black indentured labor at institutions not only prolonged enslavement but also led some children to run away back to their family homes. While Black schools offered a primary means of racial uplift, Webster emphasizes cases of children's racial subjugation and discriminatory mistreatment. For instance, she surmises that an unnamed girl at Boston's Abiel Smith School may have suffered physical and/or sexual abuse by its white headmaster. While Black parents were often denigrated, they relied on charitable institutions to protect their children temporarily, forcing mothers to regain legal custody of their children. Accounts of the Ricks family that open most chapters particularize and encapsulate the book's themes. After her emancipation in 1827, Lucinda Ricks, presumably a destitute widow, entered Philadelphia's Shelter for Colored Orphans as a boarder with her three young sons and yielded her guardianship. Having lived alone for one year nearby, Mrs. Ricks returned to the orphanage and regained custody of eight-year-old Henry to prevent his indenture. End Page 310 Stephen, a pious boy who preferred learning with pen and book over recess, astonished Quaker reformers for his remarkable talents at such a young age. In 1831, when Simon died at age seven, Stephen mourned for his brother by writing a poem to another orphan, Mary Walton, in which he praised her for teaching him not to fear death. After Stephen's own untimely death around age nine in. . .