Prophets Of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism

Description

This is the first collection of original essays on American abolitionism to appear in a generation. It offers: a major re-assessment of American History; widespread reviews anticipated in both national press and academia; and mail out planned with other African American History books by New Press to specialist courses. 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 and received wisdom 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 gathering of writings on abolitionism in more than a generation, draws on an immense new body of research in 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.

Timothy Patrick McCarthy teaches history and literature at Harvard University. He is the editor, with John C. McMillan, of The Radical Reader. 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.

"So often maligned or misunderstood by historians, the abolitionists have only in the last generation or so begun to receive a fair hearing among scholars... theirs is the typical fate of American radicals People with the courage to fight the abuses of power and the privilege around them are rarely celebrated in their own time. - FROM PROPHETS OF PROTEST"