what it means to be "free"

There is a short block near my Alabama neighborhood called the "back way to Holt." It is mostly working class and populated by African American, white and Latino residents. This area’s racial make-up is easy to see during warmer months because the children are sometimes outside playing together. This street paints a story that permits many questions. How early in American history do we see certain bodies coming together residentially or otherwise? How and where does that change? In her study of New York City from the colonial period through 1863, Leslie Harris tells us that though African Americans were made legally free in 1827, New Yorkers increasingly had different ideas about what it meant to be free (we get a sense of this, entertainingly though imperfectly, in Martin Scorsese’s 2002 “Gangs of New York,” which focuses on the Irish working man’s perspective). In 1853, as Harris writes, some African Americans in this city did not want to work in service and domestic professions. They joined forces with white waiters and demanded higher wages. This coalition reflected a class-based interest that was reflected in their after work activities in New York’s Five Points area. However, race-based interests during the Civil War led to changes in some attitudes. Ethnicity and national identity figured into such a shift.  Ultimately, Harris takes the issues of slavery and freedom, which we typically think of as southern issues, and complicates New York’s “vision of community,” which she sees not as a fixed entity, but as one filled with great struggle. As an aside, New York is a port city, a topic addressed earlier on this blog. How does that geographical dynamic complicate the issue at hand?