African American Abolitionists

1. African American Abolitionists

2. Mary Ann Shadd Cary was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1823 where her parents were abolitionists and their home was a station on the Underground Railroad. They moved to Pennsylvania so that their children could attend school because the education of black children was illegal in Delaware. Cary studied at a Quaker school and became an educator, teaching for 12 years. After the passage of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which was a threat to the safety of all African Americans, the Shadd’s moved to Canada. Cary wrote and published a pamphlet encouraging other blacks to settle in Canada and founded Canada's first anti-slavery newspaper, the Provincial Freeman. She supported John Brown's raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry and helped Osborne P. Anderson publish his firsthand account of the raid. She returned to the U.S. where she became active in the women's suffrage movement and she studied law at Howard Univ. After initially being denied access to the bar, she received her law degree in 1883

3. Henry Highland Garnet was born in captivity in Maryland in 1815. When he was nine, his family secured their freedom via the Underground Railroad. Garnet entered the African Free School in NYC in 1826. In 1834, Garnet and some of his classmates formed their own club, the Garrison Literary and Benevolent Association. Because the society was named after a controversial abolitionist, the public school where the group wanted to meet insisted that the group first change their name. To do otherwise would be to risk mob violence. The club decided to keep their name and instead change their venue. The first meeting of the group garnered over 150 African Americans under 20.Garnet is perhaps most famous for his radical speech of 1843, "An Address to the Slaves of the USA." In this speech, Garnet speaks directly to those enslaved, urging them to rebel against their masters. . . Because of Garnet's outspoken views and national reputation, he was a prime target during the 1863 New York City draft riots. Rioters mobbed the street where Garnet lived and called for him by name. Fortunately several neighbors helped to conceal Garnet and his family. Garnet was also involved in the fight to desegregate streetcars.

4. Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1873) joined the abolitionist movement while in his early twenties, working as an agent for Garrison’s Liberator in 1832 and later as a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. These experiences helped earn him a nomination as the only African American delegate to the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. During this conference and his subsequent United Kingdom lecture circuit, he developed a reputation as an eloquent orator, additionally demonstrating his commitment to women’s rights by protesting the conventions rejection of female delegates. Upon his return to the United States, Remond labored not only to end slavery, but to improve the lives of free-blacks in the north, lobbying the Massachusetts House of Representatives to end segregation on trains.

5. Perhaps one of the most famous abolitionists and Underground Railroad operators, Harriet Tubman, was born into slavery in the early 1820s in Dorchester County, Maryland. In 1849 Tubman fled Maryland for the north. She would return south on countless trips to bring people to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Less known is her role during the Civil War when she led the Union army in the Raid at Combahee Ferry that freed more than 700 people from slavery. This was the only Civil War military operation led by a woman and it was extremely successful. Later in her life she also became active in the Women's Suffrage movement.

6. Leonard Grimes (1815-1873), born in Virginia, was an abolitionist and pastor who played an active role on the Underground Railroad. After witnessing the horrors of slavery as a young man, Grimes determined to devote his life to helping people escape. He got a job as a hackman (horses and carriages for hire) to provide cover for his work on the Underground Railroad. In 1839 he was arrested in Washington, D.C. (yes, our nation's capitol) for transporting a family to freedom and sent to Virginia, where he was sentenced to two years of hard labor in the Richmond penitentiary. After his release, he and his family moved to Boston, where he became the first pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church, known as The Fugitives Church. There he continued his abolitionist work and open defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He was credited with helping hundreds of freedom seekers make their way to Canada.

7. Lewis Hayden was born in bondage in 1811 in Lexington, Kentucky. His first wife and son were sold by U.S. Senator Henry Clay into the deep south and Hayden never saw them again. He married Harriet Bell in 1840. The couple escaped on the Underground Railroad in 1844, fleeing to Canada before they made their way to Boston. (The two abolitionists who assisted Hayden's escape were arrested and jailed.) In Massachusetts, Hayden and his family ran a clothing store where they held abolitionist meetings and provided refuge for people escaping from slavery. The Hayden's stored kegs of gunpowder in their home in the case that slave catchers would ever attempt to capture the people they sheltered--they'd have rather blown up the house than surrender the persons they were protecting. During the Civil War Hayden helped recruit black soldiers and later served a term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He worked for a monument to honor Crispus Attucks and supported women's suffrage. He passed away in 1889.

8. Frederick Douglass was a very influential African American leader of the nineteenth century. He used his exceptional skills as an orator, writer, journalist, and politician to fight for the abolition of slavery and for an end to racial discrimination. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) is a classic account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery for slave and slaveholder alike. He was born on a plantation in Maryland. His mother was a black slave, and his father most likely her white owner. Douglass was separated from his mother at an early age, and at age 7 he was sent to Baltimore to work for a family. He later regarded this change from the plantation to the city as a great stroke of fortune because in Baltimore he was able to begin educating himself. His master's wife taught him the alphabet, and Douglass taught himself how to read and write. Even when he was very young, his limited reading convinced him of the evils of slavery and the need to seek his freedom. He eventually escaped slavery to become a leader of the abolitionist movement.

9. Abolitionist and educator Charlotte FortenGrimké was the granddaughter of Philadelphia abolitionist James Forten. She was active in the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society. After the start of the Civil War, Forten taught a community of African Americans living on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina who had been liberated in 1862. She wrote about the experience in her article "Life on the Sea Islands," published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1864. 

10. Robert Morris (June 8, 1823 – Dec. 12, 1882) was one of the first African American lawyers in the U.S. He was one of the abolitionists who helped Shadrach Minkins escape from the courthouse on Feb. 15, 1851 where he had been brought under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Morris was tried and acquitted for his role in the Minkins escape. Morris was also one of the attorneys for Benjamin Roberts who filed the first school integration suit on Feb. 15, 1848 (Roberts v. Boston) after Roberts' daughter Sarah was barred from a white school in Boston, MA. 

11. Solomon Northup was born free in upstate New York in 1808. The story of his enslavement was told in his book 12 Years a Slave and has been made into films by Gordon Parks (1984) and Steve McQueen (2013). His book and the movie tell the story of Northup’s enslavement for twelve years on plantations in Louisiana before he was able to regain his freedom. Missing from the film was his abolitionist activity after his emancipation. Northup wrote his book to expose the brutal conditions of enslavement and he spoke across the U.S. His campaign for reparations, supported by Frederick Douglass and Free Soil Party U.S. Congressman Gerrit Smith, was a precursor to the national reparations campaign for all African Americans. 

12. 11. Abolitionist Paul Jennings(1799 – 1874) was held in bondage by President James Madison during and after his White House years. After securing his freedom in 1845, Jennings published the first White House memoir. His book, "A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison," is described as "a singular document in the history of slavery and the early American republic."  Jennings also played a lead role in planning the Pearl incident "the largest slave escape attempt in U.S. history.

13. 11. Sojourner Truth was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. Sojourner Truth was named Isabella Baumfree when she was born. She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843. Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention inAkron, Ohio. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves.