American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism

How a group of Black liberal thinkers challenged the race-based feudalism that reigned in the early American republic

Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Old World. What they saw was a racially stratified country that reflected not the ideals of a modern republic but rather the remnants of feudalism. American Dark Age reveals how defenders of racial hierarchy embraced America’s res...