Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565849922 ISBN 13: 9781565849921

Publisher: New Press, 2006

Synopsis

The first collection of original contributions on American abolitionism to appear in a generation.

The campaign to abolish slavery in the United States was the most powerful and effective social movement of the nineteenth century and has served as a recurring source of inspiration for every subsequent struggle against injustice. But the abolitionist story has traditionally focused on the evangelical impulses of white, male, middle-class reformers, obscuring the contributions of many African Americans, women, and others.

Prophets of Protest, the first collection of writings on abolitionism in more than a generation, draws on an immense new body of research in African American studies, literature, art history, film, law, women's studies, and other disciplines. The book incorporates new thinking on such topics as the role of early black newspapers, anti-slavery poetry, and abolitionists in film and provides new perspectives on familiar figures such as Sojourner Truth, Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown.

With contributions from the leading scholars in the field, Prophets of Protest is a long overdue update of one of the central reform movements in America's history.

About this title

About the Author:

Timothy Patrick McCarthy is Lecturer on History and Literature and on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. He is co-editor, with John McMillian, of The Radical Reader (The New Press). John Stauffer teaches English and American civilization, also at Harvard. His first book, The Black Hearts of Men, won the 2002 Frederick Douglass Prize for the Best Book on Slavery. They both live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Michael Fellman is Professor of Liberal Studies at Simon Fraser University and author of Twisting the Cross. Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at CUNY and the author of some twenty books, including Paul Robeson (The New Press).

From Publishers Weekly:

This collection of historical essays takes another look into what editors McCarthy and Stauffer—who both teach at Harvard—call the "maligned" and "misunderstood" role of abolitionists. The book argues that abolitionism was far from a movement dictated by elite, white men in Boston. Examining everyone from Midwesterners to women to free blacks, the authors of these essays tell the lesser-known stories of the abolitionists of various periods and places who created "one of the most diverse social movements in American history." One essay discusses a first generation of black abolitionists that later inspired Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, including businessman James Forten, who opposed resettling free blacks in Liberia. On radical John Brown, Karl Gridley argues that Brown's violent movement in Kansas was a genuinely moral struggle, not a cynical land grab, as some past historians have written; Hannah Geffert writes that Brown, contrary to many histories, did work with blacks, because he didn't believe the universal idea that blacks were as "submissive as Uncle Tom." This is a dense book written by scholars, but it's a worthy read for anyone interested in an insightful re-examination of the battle for abolition. (May)
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About this edition

• Publisher: New Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1565849922
• ISBN 13: 9781565849921
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: McCarthy Timothy Patrick, Stauffer John