1800: Abolitionism - the Fight for Human Rights
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 and fought for their human rights.
What’s important to know?
Abolitionism: Abolitionism started the day Africans landed on the Virginia coast. The movement gained influence and followers throughout the seventeenth century, but remained a Black-led fight for human rights and dignity in the United States.
Black Abolitionists: Many abolitionist stories told today highlight the work of White abolitionists or one or two Black anti-slavery advocates. There were many Black people involved in the effort and we list the names of twelve.
1: Abolitionism
Abolitionist, Frederick Douglass in 1879
Douglass 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). Abolitionism challenged the legitimacy of a race-based 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.
Black and White abolitionists cried foul to these arguments, noting the deeply hypocritical stance adopted by leaders of a nation that claimed to defend freedom while keeping a significant portion of their citizens enslaved.
Definitions
It is important to clarify the difference between human rights and civil rights. Many people are more familiar with the twentieth century civil rights movement and so can easily forget that the first fight for Black people in North America, was the fight for human rights.
What are human rights? The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner defines human rights as:
“Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human beings - they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. They range from the most fundamental - the right to life - to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.”
Visit their website to read more about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights first adopted by the United Nations in 1948.
2: Black Abolitionists
Formal Portrait of Harriet Tubman after the Civil War
Image Source: Wikipedia
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 everyday acts of resistance enslaved people engaged in to assert their power and defy the dehumanization of enslavement.
Video from Learning for Justice.
Community Members
Rev. Moses Dickson, abolitionists and organizer of the Knights of Liberty, which intended to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States.
Image Source: Wikipedia
Did you know?
In 1846, Moses Dickson organized a meeting in St. Louis to create “a secret society called the Knights of Liberty, whose goal was to enlist and arm southern slaves for an insurrection to end slavery” (Wright, 2002, p. 14-15). Dickson vowed to “organize the slaves throughout the south, drill them, and in ten years from that time strike for freedom" (Denver Post, 1901).
Frederick Douglass 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 Douglass Papers).
William Wells Brown, another abolitionist, 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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General Resources:
Read about the important role that German immigrants played in abolition in St. Louis.
Read about Moses Dickson and the orders he established to support Black Americans.
Books & Articles:
Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Oxford University Press, 1999
Wright, J. A. (2002). Discovering African American St. Louis. Missouri Historical Society Press.
Archives:
The State Historical Society of Missouri: Archival materials related to Moses Dickson.
Museums & Parks:
Read about an exhibit hosted at Saint Louis University about German abolitionists.
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Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Oxford University Press, 1999
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.
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Adeleke, T. (1998). Afro-Americans and moral suasion: The debate in the 1830’s. The Journal of Negro History, 83(2), 127-142. doi:10.2307/2668536
"An Underground Railway Story", Denver Post, reprinted Minneapolis Journal, July 4, 1901
Douglass, F. (1846) Frederick Douglass Papers: Speech, Article, and Book File.
Frankin, J. H. and Schweninger, Loren. (2000). Runaway slaves: Rebels on the plantation. Oxford University Press.
Jeffrey, J. (2008). Abolitionists remember: Antislavery autobiographies and the unfinished work of emancipation. The University of North Carolina Press.
Kendi, I. X. (2017). A history of race and racism in America: in 24 chapters. New York Times Book Review. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/books/review/a-history-of-race-and-racism-in-america-in-24-chapters.html
Sinha, Manisha. (2017) The slave’s cause: A history of abolition. Yale University Press.
Wright, J. A. (2002). Discovering African American St. Louis. Missouri Historical Society Press.