"Platform for Change" is a comparative study of the evolution of the free African American community in three citiesNew York, Philadelphia, and Bostonfrom 1776 to 1865. It articulates the beginnings of community consciousness among northern free African Americans and examines their lives in the period from the Revolutionary to the Civil War. The author challenges existing scholarship about nineteenth-century blacks, which assesses their activity as just another exercise in powerlessness. Reed's work demonstrates that these people discovered and organized their power, and utilized it to...