Halfway to Freedom

“In Maurice Jackson, ‘Chocolate City’ has found its preeminent historian. And that’s an understatement, for Halfway to Freedom offers a window on to the full history of our settler, slaveholding, and segregated Republic, and a spotlight on the brilliant, creative, and courageous Washingtonians who showed the nation and the world how to be free. A truly magnificent achievement.” - Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

“Halfway to Freedom is an invaluable addition to the small hill of literature illustrating the essential role Black people played in making and nurturing DC. There are forgotten corners, alleys and streets, and lost buildings where people lived the best lives they could and Jackson has found those places and those people. This book is many things. An engagingly well written, and breathtaking history, to be sure, of some two and a half centuries of a people in an important town on a big map—but it is also an edifying rebuke to carpetbaggers; it is lasting evidence of years-long work of a man who has come to love and cherish his adopted city.” - Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

“In this magisterial, impeccably researched, and highly readable history of Black Washington D.C., Professor Maurice Jackson has deepened our understanding of the Nation’s Capitol and, consequently, of the nation. From its origins, the United States has at once depended upon and denied Black people, who nevertheless continually pressed onward toward freedom. Nowhere is this more apparent in all of its complexity than Washington D.C. This book is indispensable, essential, and timely.” - Imani Perry, Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University