Publisher's Synopsis
Hinsonville: A Community at the Crossroads, tells the story of a tiny rural community of free black property owners who lived in southeastern Pennsylvania during antebellum times. Just six miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line, this community illustrates in microcosm the nature of the dilemma that defines the black experience in America. Torn by tensions that troubled African Americans everywhere, the dozen or so families of Hinsonville grappled with many of the important issues of the day: white vs. black; slavery vs. freedom; colonization vs. abolition; agrarianism vs. industrialism; and rootedness vs. restlessness. Even Lincoln University - the oldest black college in America - which grew up in Hinsonville's midst - ironically contributed to the village's fate by devouring the very farms whose owners had initially provided a safe haven for the institution. The story opens a window to a rarely written about world - that of rural black America in the nineteenth century. Marianne H. Russo taught English at Lincoln University. The late Paul A. Russo was Associate Professor of History at Lincoln University.
