Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, during which he gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to enslavers' arguments that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved people around the world.
The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America until 1837, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the migration of freeborn blacks and emancipated slaves to the continent of Africa. It was modeled on an earlier British colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor".
Henry Highland Garnet was an American abolitionist, minister, educator and orator. Having escaped as a child from slavery in Maryland with his family, he grew up in New York City. He was educated at the African Free School and other institutions, and became an advocate of militant abolitionism. He became a minister and based his drive for abolitionism in religion.
James William Charles Pennington was an American historian, abolitionist, orator, minister, writer, and social organizer active globally. Pennington is the first known Black student to attend Yale University. He was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church, later also serving in Presbyterian churches for congregations in Hartford, Connecticut; and New York. After the Civil War, he served congregations in Natchez, Mississippi; Portland, Maine; and Jacksonville, Florida.
Anthony Benezet was a French-born American abolitionist and teacher who was active in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A prominent member of the abolitionist movement in North America, Benezet founded one of the world's first anti-slavery societies, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. He also founded the first public school for girls in North America and the Negro School at Philadelphia, which operated into the nineteenth century. Benezet was a vegetarian and advocated for the kind treatment of animals, integrating these views into his teachings.
The Barbados Slave Code of 1661, officially titled as An Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes, was a law passed by the Parliament of Barbados to provide a legal basis for slavery in the English colony of Barbados. It is the first comprehensive Slave Act, and the code's preamble, which stated that the law's purpose was to "protect them [slaves] as we do men's other goods and Chattels", established that black slaves would be treated as chattel property in the island's court.
Black History Month is an annual observance originating in the United States, where it is also known as African-American History Month. It has received official recognition from governments in the United States and Canada, and more recently has been observed in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It began as a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. It is celebrated in February in the United States and Canada, while in Ireland and the United Kingdom it is observed in October.
Alexander Crummell was an American minister and academic. Ordained as an Episcopal priest in the United States, Crummell went to England in the late 1840s to raise money for his church by lecturing about American slavery. Abolitionists supported his three years of study at Cambridge University, where Crummell developed concepts of pan-Africanism and was the school's first recorded Black student and graduate.
David Ruggles was an African-American abolitionist in New York who resisted slavery by his participation in a Committee of Vigilance and the Underground Railroad to help fugitive slaves reach free states. He was a printer in New York City during the 1830s, who also wrote numerous articles, and "was the prototype for black activist journalists of his time." He claimed to have led more than 600 fugitive slaves to freedom in the North, including Frederick Douglass, who became a friend and fellow activist. Ruggles opened the first African-American bookstore in 1834.
Frederick Douglass and the White Negro is a documentary telling the story of ex-slave, abolitionist, writer and politician Frederick Douglass and his escape to Ireland from America in the 1840s.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the late colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery for non-criminals through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.
This article documents the history of African-Americans or Black Philadelphians in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Wilson Armistead was a Quaker, businessman, abolitionist and writer from Leeds. He led the Leeds Anti-Slavery Association and wrote and edited anti-slavery texts. His best known work, A Tribute for the Negro, was published in 1848 in which he describes slavery as "the most extensive and extraordinary system of crime the world ever witnessed". In 1851 he hosted Ellen and William Craft, including them on the census return as 'fugitive slaves' in an act that has been described as "guerrilla inscription".
George "Sam" Albert Shepperson was a British historian and Africanist, noted particularly for his work on Malawian and African-American history. He was William Robertson Professor of Commonwealth and American History at the University of Edinburgh from 1963 until 1986. He was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989.
Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism is a 1961 book by Ronald Robinson and John Andrew Gallagher, with contributions from Robinson's wife, Alice Denny. The book argues that British involvement in the Scramble for Africa occurred largely to secure its empire, specifically routes to India and was a strategic decision. It was well received upon publication and is considered an influential work.
Leeds Anti-Slavery Association was an abolitionist society established in Leeds in 1853 and founded by Wilson Armistead. It was the first such organisation to allow women to be members and to take committee roles. The association was active in Leeds, Yorkshire and North America, supplying abolitionist pamphlets to people on the east coast.
"The Constitution of the United States: is it pro-slavery or anti-slavery?" is a speech that Frederick Douglass gave on March 26, 1860, in Glasgow, in which he rejected arguments made by slaveholders as well as by fellow abolitionists as to the nature and meaning of the United States Constitution. The popularity of the speech led to its being published as a pamphlet.
The Fifth of July is a historic celebration of an Emancipation Day in New York, marking the culmination of the state's 1827 abolition of slavery after a gradual legislative process. State law passed under Governor Daniel D. Tompkins a decade earlier had designated Independence Day, the Fourth of July, as when abolition would take effect, but the danger of racist violence led African Americans to celebrate on the following day instead.
