jan 1, 1775 - Revolutionary Era

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Late 1700s: The rhetoric surrounding citizenship and independence during the Revolutionary Era reveals the anxiety over the linkage between dependence and slavery. As independence is what separates American colonists from their slaves, it becomes the basis of American citizenship, and subsequently becomes conflated white masculinity, in opposition to women’s weakness. Free Blacks who fought in the war contributed to the notion of equal citizenship, but most states still limited Black rights.

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