This chapter addresses examples of African American autobiography published before the Civil War that both called for and complicated the concept of a Black community, narratives not about the journey from slavery to freedom but about the story of a tenuous freedom and an uncertain community, a collective story under development and in need of a proper telling. Many of these autobiographies speak of platforms built, of relations established, of communities forged; others speak of the need for such platforms, the absence of immediate relations, the longing for community. What they all share, however, is the commitment to telling a different story about Black life and ambition than the one that was all but required of African Americans at the time, the story of suffering under slavery.

This chapter explores the effect of emancipation in Jamaica in particular on the work of Nancy Prince. Connecting Prince’s commentary on Jamaica to her struggles with white-led abolitionist organizations, this chapter looks closely at how Black freedom abroad could be used to critique the policies of US-based abolitionists.