Those of you who have visited the Black Abolitionist Archive have likely noticed the photograph of a young man named Anthony Burns in the upper left-hand corner of the main page. There’s an interesting history to this young man’s experience that helped to bring to light the depth of the outrage of slavery, and to change the hearts and minds of the citizens of Boston. Through his own words we learn of his plight....
This month we celebrate Black History. As part of that celebration, our DVD of the week (titled “Underground Railroad: the William Still Story”) highlights a book by William Still. As it happens, William Still is one of my favorite Black Abolitionists. He is called an “unsung hero” and that he was. I’d wager that not too many people have heard of him. Yet his speeches, delivered during the late 1850s and early 1860s, are some of the most eloquent I’ve read....
It could very well be that one of the “worst laws in the history of this country” is not what some might imagine. Take the Fugitive Slave Laws, for example. Slavery was bad enough, our entire economy was based on enslaved human labor. During this time, while some in government worked for a reasoned and compassionate solution to an obvious moral crisis, there were plenty of people in government who could not see any other way to realize economic prosperity for the country. Ending slavery meant, to them, the complete disruption of a booming economy, a growing national wealth, and a steady increase in power over England. If we took away the foundation of this economy, what in the world would save us from… disaster!?...
“Resolved, That the practice of non-resistance to physical aggression, is not only consistent with reason, but the surest method of obtaining a speedy triumph of the principles of universal
peace.” — William Whipper, 1837
Among the many speeches and editorials contained in the Black Abolitionist archive are three lengthy speeches delivered between 1833 and 1837 by William Whipper, black businessman and abolitionist. His were among the first speeches entered into the archive and the ones that had the most profound effect on me. Reading these speeches encouraged the excited feeling of discovery that would stay with me through the entire archiving project. Surely, I felt, I had discovered something that few others had seen. Surely, I thought, here is evidence of the seeds of change that altered the course of this country’s history in the years leading up to Emancipation....
Agitation is an interesting word and one used often in the Black Abolitionist speeches and editorials. One definition offered by dictionary.com is: “persistent urging of a political or social cause or theory before the public.” This defining seems to fit, yet it also offers the idea that this type of action is at once determined and steady without being violent and aggressive. “Agitation” says “we’re not going away” as it demands change. While protest marches and rioting can spark immediate attention and forceful response in kind, agitation works slowly to alter the direction of a nation over time....
The story of Henry Bibb is fairly typical of a lot of Black Abolitionists. He was born into slavery in the early 1800′s at the peak of American slave holding, and he died before Emancipation. (His mother was a slave and his father was purported to be a wealthy plantation owner.) He sought out education illegally, witnessed his siblings sold to other plantations, and married young. He escaped slavery more than once, and established Canada’s first black newspaper The Voice of the Fugitive. He became an outspoken activist for abolition, fighting for freedom along side Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown, and became one of the best known Black Abolitionists of his day....
Included in the festivities for the celebration of Emancipation Day each year, were speeches delivered by prominent abolitionists. One champion of the cause of abolition to speak in 1861 was William Howard Day, whose speeches and editorials can be found in the Black Abolitionist Archive among our digital collections. Day, formally educated (rare for a man of color during this time), spoke eloquently and passionately for the cause of freedom, for a reasoned approach to ending slavery. ...
The July 4 holiday celebrates our national freedom and commemorates the hard won independence from England that Americans value. Yet for 300 years there were people living in this country without inclusion, without citizenship, without a national identity, and without freedom. Each year on the fourth of July, they watched the celebrations, the fireworks, and the merrymaking without feeling a connection to place or national pride. For so long, this celebration of freedom only served to remind a portion of...
History was made 100 years ago in the cause of human freedom. On the first of January 1863, Abraham Lincoln (16th president of the United States) signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring the end of slavery in the Confederate states. Part of this document states: “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof...
On June 7, 1849, an amazing tale of one man’s courageous flight from slavery was published in the Emancipator, one of many black abolitionist newspapers in circulation at the time. The editorial is titled, “Thrilling Narrative,” and in it the author tells the story of Henry Brown who escaped slavery by having himself shipped to freedom in a sealed crate. His ordeal almost cost him his life, but earned him his freedom, the admiration of all who heard his story, and the nickname Henry “Box” Brown....
