1857

Chief Justice Taney's Dred Scott ruling, that Black people 'had no rights which the white man was bound to respect', was met with organized Black defiance. Black conventions in Philadelphia, New York, and Ohio convened within weeks to assert citizenship. Frederick Douglass declared: 'My hopes were never brighter than now.' The ruling accelerated Black emigrationist sentiment led by Martin Delany and intensified Underground Railroad activity.

Philadelphia-born Frank J. Webb published 'The Garies and Their Friends' in London with a preface by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the second novel by a Black American and the first to depict middle-class free Black urban life in the North. Set in Philadelphia, it addressed racial violence, mixed-race families, and property rights. The 1838 Philadelphia race riots were a central event in the novel, making it early Black historical fiction.