Books by Shane White

Shane White creatively uses a remarkable array of primary sources - census data, tax lists, city directories, diaries, newspapers and magazines, and courtroom testimony - to reconstruct the content and context of the slave's world in New York and its environs during the revolutionary and early republic periods.

This book re-creates the experience of black New Yorkers as they moved from slavery to freedom. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, New York City's black community strove to realize what freedom meant, to find a new sense of itself, and, in the process, created a vibrant urban culture.

The phrase 'Harlem in the 1920s' evokes images of the Harlem Renaissance, or of Marcus Garvey and soapbox orators haranguing crowds about politics and race. This title reveals a different dimension of African American culture that made not only Harlem but New York City itself the vibrant and energizing metropolis it was.