Abolitionism: Did you mean...?

Olaudah Equiano (l. c. 1745-1797, also known as Gustavus Vassa) was an African of the Igbo village of Essaka, of the Kingdom of Benin (modern Nigeria), who was enslaved around the age of ten, bought his...

John Wesley Cromwell (l. 1846-1927) was an African American civil rights activist, educator, historian, journalist, and lawyer who wrote extensively on slave revolts, especially Nat Turner's...

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (16-18 October 1859) was carefully planned and, at first, perfectly executed – until he made the mistake of letting the physician John Starry go...

Enslaved Blacks in the United States, seeking freedom, often fled to Canada, especially after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 compelled citizens in free states to...

When Sojourner Truth (circa 1797-1883) escaped from slavery, she later said, "I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right" (Delbanco, 142...

Although Phillis Wheatley's poetry found an audience upon publication, it was not well received by everyone and some, notably Thomas Jefferson (l. 1743-1826), dismissed her work entirely as "mimicry"...

David Walker (l. c. 1796-1830) was an African American abolitionist writer best known for his 1829 work An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (also known The Appeal or Walker's Appeal...

In 1848, Ellen and William Craft escaped from slavery in Georgia by Ellen posing as a Southern gentleman and William as 'his' slave (since women were not allowed to travel alone...

Ellen and William Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860) tells the story of the couple's escape from slavery, with Ellen disguised as a young, White gentleman of means and William...

Fear of Insurrection comes from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs (l. c. 1813-1897) describing the reaction of the White community of Edenton, North Carolina, to...