Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North by Crystal Lynn Webster

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North by Crystal Lynn Webster Vanessa M. Holden (bio) Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North. By Crystal Lynn Webster. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. 208. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $24.95.) Lucinda Ricks, a newly freed single mother, moved with her three children into the Shelter for Coloured Orphans in the City of Brotherly Love in 1827. Stephen, Simon, and Henry Ricks would initially live with their mother as boarders in the shelter, but, because of her precarious financial future, Lucinda surrendered her sons to the shelter and moved out into the city. The family’s story, including that of Simon and Stephen’s deaths while in the care of shelter workers, haunts Crystal Lynn Webster’s book, Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood. In it the Ricks navigate the changing landscape of Black freedom in a city noted in its time as a hub of free Black life. Webster tells their story and the stories of other free Black parents and children to demonstrate the important role that Black children and the contested meanings of their childhood played in shaping free Black life. Webster’s work offers a significant contribution to African American history. Few books have investigated the lives of free and enslaved antebellum Black children. Broadening our understanding of emancipation and free Black life, Webster argues that free Black children and command of their labor were central concerns of activist movements in the antebellum North. But beyond how adults contested the boundaries of Black childhood, Webster demonstrates how Black children acted politically and advocated for themselves. The book begins with an exploration of how white reformers and ante-bellum popular culture racialized childhood as a white and middle-class prerogative. Webster then demonstrates that while play was an essential hallmark of white childhood, Black children at play transgressed society’s expectations. While Black children were institutionalized at benevolent homes and orphanages, reformers instilled the middle-class values of industry and labor. These values were classed, raced, and imposed on the poor and racially marginalized. Benevolent homes, asylums, orphanages, almshouses, and reformatories run by white reformers and activists were sites of abuse, neglect, and suffering for many free children of color. Webster presents the bleak reality of children growing sick and dying. She also reads the building plans and [End Page 554] layouts of these institutions to demonstrate how literal structures reflected authorities’ ideas about the differences between white and Black children. Unlike their approach to white children, authorities also sent Black children to institutions intended for adults, rendering these youths vulnerable to even more abuse. Reformers and officials racialized and criminalized African American children and childhood, denying Black children the innocence and play afforded to white children. The line between placement in a benevolent home and incarceration in developing antebellum prisons was thin, and reformers often pushed Black children across it. For Black children, danger came from within and without institutions. Webster notes how whites targeted institutions for Black children with extralegal violence and destruction. Beyond brick-and-mortar institutions, Webster investigates a significant legal institution: indenture. With roots in systems of apprenticeship, the legal system of indenture bound an apprentice to a master for a set term of service. Ministers of the poor throughout antebellum America bound children, white and Black, to property-owning white adults who were obligated to provide their new wards with basic shelter, clothing, and food. In return, children were expected to work for their masters. As Webster points out, institutions often had stipulations that their charges would be placed through indenture with white adults. Officials also indentured Black children deemed destitute. Once their children were relinquished to or taken to an institution, Black parents faced considerable obstacles to retrieving them. Through this legal system of unfree labor, whites continued to control free Black children and profit from their exploitation. The system did not die when northern states began the process of emancipation, and it did not die in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment. Webster’s work presents important consideration of the value of Black children’s labor and the...