1800: Abolitionism
Big Idea
Rebellions against White plantation owners, fleeing enslavement, and forming political and religious movements were some of the many ways Black men and women confronted and resisted the dehumanizing institution of slavery.
Abolitionism
Abolitionist, Frederick Douglas in 1879
Douglas became one of the most well known Abolitionist leaders in the United States.
Image Source: Wikipedia
Abolitionism — the organized fight to end slavery — was not something done to the enslaved Africans and African Americans. From the beginning of their enslavement, they resisted and organized and fought against the dehumanizing institution in big and small ways.
Historian Manisha Sinha (2017) wrote, “The connection between slave resistance and abolition in the United States was proximate and continuous. Prominent slave revolts marked the turn toward immediate abolition. Fugitive slaves united all factions of the movement and led abolitionists to justify revolutionary resistance to slavery” (p. 2).
Free Black people, fugitive enslaved persons, and Black church members increasingly mobilized white and Black groups to criticize slavery and actively resist it.
Abolition challenged the white-benefitting status quo. It challenged the economic model upon which the South derived its wealth and stability. It threatened the supremacy of White legal, cultural, and political power across the country (Jeffrey, 2008, p. 1). In many ways, abolitionism challenged the very notion of a racial hierarchy in the United States.
Historian Tunde Adeleke (1998) noted,
Pro-slavery advocates and racial conservatives justified discriminatory politics on alleged deficiencies inherent in the character and conditions of blacks. Blacks, according to popular reasoning, were disadvantaged and degraded in consequence of behavioral and situational imperfections—that they were lazy, ignorant, backward and morally decadent… [R]acial conservatives described these traits as inherent, perhaps even divinely conditioned, and, therefore, permanent. (p. 128)
South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun, promoting this view of the inherent inferiority of Blacks, argued that slavery was a “positive good” (Kendi, 2017) – benefitting the country and the Blacks themselves.
White abolitionists tapped into a long history of subtle and overt resistance by African Americans. While denigrated, abused, and enslaved, Black men, women, and children found ways to celebrate their culture, stay connected to their families and friends, and whenever possible, defy their White owners and seek their freedom (Franklin and Schweninger, 2000, p. 18-19; Kendi, 2017).
Black Abolitionists
Many narratives highlight the work of White abolitionists. The list below is not comprehensive but is meant to highlight the Black abolitionists who worked so hard to fight against the horrors of enslavement in the United States.
Students
Want to learn more? Listen to Professor Tera Hunter describe the everday acts of resistance enslaved people engaged in to assert their power and defy the inhumanization of enslavement.
Video from Learning for Justice.
Community Members
Did you know?
Frederick Douglas delivered one of his most important addresses while in Saint Louis at Turner’s Hall on February 7, 1867. “According to the Daily Missouri Democrat, the audience’s frequent applause and cheering proved that the speaker had met ‘the highest expectations of his numerous warm friends in St. Louis’.” (The Frederick Douglas Papers).
William Wells Brown spent most of his childhood enslaved and working in St. Louis.
Your Turn
What does it mean to resist dehumanization? How was it done in the past? How is it still being done in the present?
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Black Abolitionist Archive housed at the University of Detroit Mercy
24 Black Abolitionists, Zinn Education Project
Black Writers of the 1800s
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Listen to a teacher discuss how to teach about abolitionism and the resistance of enslaved persons.
Teaching Hard History Text-Dependent Questions for Key Concept 5 to accompany the Tera Hunter video.
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Read about the important role that German immigrants played in abolition in St. Louis.
Read about an exhibit hosted at Saint Louis University about German abolitionists.
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Blackett, R. (2013). Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery. University of North Carolina Press.
Blackett, R. ed. (1999) Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery. Louisiana State University Press.
Jackson, K. C. (2019). Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Quarles, B.A. (1969). Black Abolitionists. Oxford University Press.