The Ohio constitutional convention in 1802 established Ohio's status as a free state, marking the Ohio River as the border between slavery and freedom. However, slaveholder influence continued to permeate the region as questions over fugitive slaves, Black migration, and the rights of free African Americans created a hostile political climate for African Americans. Despite anti-Black legislation and the fragility of freedom along Ohio's southern border, African Americans continued moving into Southeast Ohio, forming small communities across the rural landscape. As they formed communities, they built institutions and began to challenge the limitations posed by the white supremacist society in which they lived. I argue that Southeast Ohio's self-sufficient Black communities were the core of activism surrounding Black freedom and citizenship rights. They constructed their American citizenship to encompass the rights to mobility, education, and self-determination. African Americans within the rural landscape turned to self-determination through separatist agrarian communities, Black institutions, and regional political alliances to pursue racial uplift and to press for their right to citizenship. Using newspapers, government documents, court documents, I examine the strategies employed by Black activists, as well as the attitudes held by white Southeast Ohioans. This thesis challenges Black histories of Ohio to elaborate on the role of interstate politics and the local political landscape in Black activists' fight for freedom and citizenship in a rural Midwestern community. / Master of Arts / When Ohio became a state in 1803, the state constitution prohibited slavery. However, the introduction of new laws limited the rights of African Americans in response to Black migration from neighboring Virginia. Black Ohioans in Southeast Ohio faced both the discrimination of local and state laws and the danger of slave catchers from across the Ohio River. This thesis investigates the strategies employed by African Americans in their fight for freedom and citizenship rights, including the rights to free movement, voting, and education. African Americans communities organized and petitioned against unjust laws and to form institutions to provide for their needs when the law failed to do so. I argue that self-sufficient Black communities formed by free African Americans were the foundation to the fight for citizenship in Southeast Ohio. In asserting their right to citizenship, African Americans drastically changed ideas about freedom and citizenship in the region.