Introduction: "Words are easy" -- Prelude: The Edloe sixty-six -- 1850-1860 -- The fugitive economy -- Underground commons -- The world of the streets -- Boston in the shadow of slavery -- Women in service -- Making a living in unsettled times -- 1861-1865 -- The politics of wartime work and charitable assistance -- Boston diaspora I -- "A higher standard of courage" -- Hardship on the homefront -- "False and exaggerated ideas of freedom" -- 1865-1875 -- Their suffering housekeepers -- Boston diaspora II -- White men demanding their own rights, but refusing to concede to others theirs -- Persistent industry -- "Safely doing injustice" to black Bostonians

"Before, during, and after the US Civil War, Boston's Black workers were barred from the skilled trades, factory work, and public-works projects. In Boston, as in cities across the North, white abolitionists focused virtually all their energies on the plight of enslaved Black Southerners, while refusing to address the challenges faced by their Black neighbors. The author presents inspiring and heart-wrenching stories of people-from day laborers and domestics to physicians and lawyers-who ingeniously forged careers in the face of monumental obstacles"--