ABSTRACT
Official and unofficial discrimination against free African Americans increased in the early 19th century. At the same time that white men experienced a significant expansion of their rights, especially in terms of voting, free blacks saw their rights eroding in both the North and the South. Many of these erosions were for rights guaranteed in the US constitution: by 1835, the right of free assembly had been revoked for nearly all of the South's free blacks. Several states followed Pennsylvania's lead in requiring free blacks to work and mandating that their means of support be visible. At the same time, African Americans were almost completely eliminated from the better-paying skilled trades as well as work on the docks, in warehouses. Now here was discrimination more pronounced in the early republic than in matters of suffrage. In a bill signed by Thomas Jefferson in 1802, they were excluded from the polls in the newly designated capital of Washington.
