Winch has written the first full-length biography of James Forten, a hero of African American history and one of the most remarkable men in 19th-century America.

Born into a free black family in 1766, Forten served in the Revolutionary War as a teenager. By 1810 he had earned the distinction of being the leading sailmaker in Philadelphia. Soon after Forten emerged as a leader in Philadelphia's black community and was active in a wide range of reform activities. Especially prominent in national and international antislavery movements, he served as vice-president of the American...

In Between Slavery and Freedom, Julie Winch explores the complex world of those people of African birth or descent who occupied the "borderlands" between slavery and freedom in the 350 years from the founding of the first European colonies in what is today the United States to the start of the Civil War. However they had navigated their way out of bondage - through flight, through military service, through self-purchase, through the working of the law in different times and in different places, or because they were the offspring of parents who were themselves free - they were determined to...