That We May Exert Our Influence More Powerfully: Race, Politics and Identity in Ohio's Southeast Borderland, 1802-1865

The Ohio constitutional convention in 1802 established Ohio's status as a free state, marking the Ohio River as the border between slavery and freedom. However, slaveholder influence continued to permeate the region as questions over fugitive slaves, Black migration, and the rights of free African Americans created a hostile political climate for African Americans. Despite anti-Black legislation and the fragility of freedom along Ohio's southern border, African Americans continued moving into Southeast Ohio, forming small communities across the rural landscape. As they formed communities, they built institutions and began to challenge the limitations posed by the white supremacist society in which they lived. I argue that Southeast Ohio's self-sufficient Black communities were the core of activism surrounding Black freedom and citizenship rights. They constructed their American citizenship to encompass the rights to mobility, education, and self-determination. African Americans within the rural landscape turned to self-determination through separatist agrarian communities, Black institutions, and regional political alliances to pursue racial uplift and to press for their right to citizenship.

Using newspapers, government documents, court documents, I examine the strategies employed by Black activists, as well as the attitudes held by white Southeast Ohioans. This thesis challenges Black histories of Ohio to elaborate on the role of interstate politics and the local political landscape in Black activists' fight for freedom and citizenship in a rural Midwestern community.