The History of Black Abolition

The History of Black Abolition

Millions of 19th century African American radical reformers campaigned for the end of slavery in the USA by every means necessary. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813-1897) were among thousands of revolutionary self-liberated freedom-fighters and social justice campaigners who sought to awaken the US nation and the world to slavery’s atrocities by engaging in acts of authorship and political activism.

The autobiographies, speeches, narratives, and histories not only of Douglass and Jacobs but of leading antislavery campaigners, Nathaniel Turner (1800-1831), Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879), David Walker (1796-1830), Harriet Tubman (1820-1913), and Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), went through numerous editions and were widely read across the world.

‘There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death… no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted.’
Harriet Tubman