Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice

Editorial Board:

Rosanne Adderley (Tulane University)
Yacine Daddi Addoun (York University)
Emmanuel Akyeampong (Harvard University)
Lee Arnold (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)
Kevin Bales (Free the Slaves)
Joyce Broussard (California State University, Northridge)
Thomas Buchanan (University of Adelaide)
Jacqueline Burnside (Berea College)
Alex Byrd (Rice University)
Rina Cáceres (University of Costa Rica)
Mariza de Carvalho Soares (Univ. Federal Fluminense)
José Curto (York University)
Patience Essah (Auburn University)
Sylvia Frey (Tulane University)
Alan Gallay (Ohio State University)
Guy Grannum (The National Archives)
Ariela Gross (University of Southern California)
Rick Halpern (University of Toronto)
Leslie Harris (Emory University)
Joseph Inikori (University of Rochester)
David Konig (Washington University in St. Louis)
Paul Lovejoy (York University)
Mary Ann Mahony (Central Connecticut State University)
Susan O’Donovan (Harvard University)
Olatunji Ojo (Brock University)
Naana Opoku-Agyemang (Cape Coast University, Ghana)
Dr Helen Paul (University of Southampton)
Yolanda Pierce (Princeton Theological Seminary)
Bryan Prince (Buxton National Historic Site)
David Richardson (University of Hull)
Richard Sears (Berea College)
Verene Shepherd (University of the West Indies)
Marika Sherwood (University of London)
Brenda Square (Amistad Research Center)

Source Libraries:

This project involves source material from some 30 libraries and archives across the Atlantic World including:

• Anti-Slavery International
• Berea College
• the British Library
• Buxton National Historic Site, Ontario
• Duke University
• Free the Slaves
• Georgia State Archives
• Historical Society of Pennsylvania
• Institute of Commonwealth Studies
• Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa
• Louisiana State University
• Mariners Museum, Virginia
• Merseyside Maritime Museum
• North Carolina State Archives
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL
• The National Archives, Kew
• University of New Orleans
• Wilberforce House, Hull

It also features links to many other crucial sources for the study of slavery and abolition in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and North, South and Central America.

Nature of the Material:

This project provides access to many thousands of original manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, maps and images. Most are reproduced as high quality greyscale images, but there are also a significant number of colour images. All printed items are full text searchable and manuscripts have document level indexing. All documents have distinct URLs and can be embedded in course notes and reading lists or downloaded as PDFs.

Scope of the Collection:

For the latest additions to the Slavery Portal, please see:

Slavery Portal Update Newsletter - Spring 2010  

This extraordinary resource on trans-Atlantic slavery and abolition brings together original manuscript and rare printed material from dozens of libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. It includes significant coverage of Slavery Today, US court records from the local, regional and State Supreme Court level, documents on the Islamic slave trade, as well as sources on urban slavery, interracial education, the Day Law in Kentucky, desegregation and social justice. Published in several phases between 2007 and 2009, this collection will prove invaluable for postgraduate and scholarly research and will also provide a user-friendly classroom tool for undergraduates.

Documents are presented alongside contextual essays contributed by leading academics in the field; each essay will have hypertext links to the primary sources it discusses. The project will encompass all the major themes, including:

1) Slavery in the Early Americas
2) African Coast
3) Middle Passage
4) Slavery and Agriculture
5) Urban and Domestic Slavery
6) Slave Testimony
7) Spiritualism and Religion in slave communities
8) Resistance and Revolts
9) Underground Railroad
10) The Abolition movement
11) Legislation: Enactment and Enforcement
12) Freedmen and Free Black Settlements
13) Education
14) Slavery and the Islamic World
15) Varieties of Slave Experience
16) Slavery Today, Legacy of Slavery
17) The Evolution of Slavery

The following gives an idea of the variety of material covered:

• the African Coast – there are records of the African Company, details of coastal forts, records of transactions and spectacular maps of the African Coast from The National Archives, Kew, as well as first hand descriptions of the operation of the slave trade on the west coast of Africa in papers held at the Bank of England Archives and the Merseyside Maritime Museum. We also provide original manuscript accounts by Samuel Crowther and James Africanus Horton of their experiences of slavery. Professor Naana Opoku-Agyemang, who has carried out ground-breaking research on the oral histories of African villages, is contributing an essay on ‘Songs that recall the Trans-Atlantic Slave Experience’.

• the Middle Passage – sources from the British Library, the Mariners Museum and Wilberforce House describe the Middle Passage from a human, economic and medical perspective.

• Slavery and Agriculture – there are substantial groups of papers describing plantation life (and other forms of agricultural slavery) including the hitherto unpublished Castle Wemyss papers (Jamaican plantation estate papers) from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, records of plantations in Georgia and South Carolina from the Historical Society of Philadelphia, letters and journals of Caribbean plantation overseers from Merseyside Maritime Museum and Wilberforce House, and the Uncle Sam Plantation Papers from Louisiana State University.

• the Abolition movement – we offer extensive coverage of the Slavery, Abolitionist and African-American pamphlets collections at Duke University (carefully screened to avoid duplication with other widely available sources) – these materials bring the debates over slavery to life and expose economic, religious and racist arguments for and against the trade. We also offer records of Benezet, Clarkson, Parker, Sharp and Wilberforce describing their experiences in the crusade for abolition and there are ships’ logs and journals from the National Archives which describe naval actions against privateers and slavers.

• Education - Berea College is distinctive amongst institutions of higher learning in the United States. Founded in 1855 as the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, Berea's commitment to interracial education was overturned in 1904 by the Kentucky Legislature's passage of the Day Law, which prohibited education of black and white students together. When the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Day Law, Berea set aside funds to assist in the establishment of Lincoln Institute, a school located near Louisville, for black students. When the Day Law was amended in 1950 to allow integration above the high school level, Berea was the first college in Kentucky to reopen its doors to black students. We feature a wealth of important manuscript and printed records on these events digitized from the College Archives. An essay by Dr Jacqueline Burnside looks at all aspects of the Day Law and Berea’s heritage with links to key documents. Professor Richard Sears writes on Berea and the American Missionary Association.

• Highlights from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, include manuscript material on Brazil, Grenada and Puerto Rico as well as items from the Phelps-Stokes Fund Records and the Kurt Fisher Papers, an important collection on Haiti. We have items on Harriet Tubman and excellent visual material from the Photographs and Prints Division covering topics such as African culture, black minstrels, education (for instance, the New York African Free School), exodusters, slave auctions, the East African trade, the Caribbean and urban New York.

• Pamphlet literature from Duke University (over 1,800 pamphlets) and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (over 1,000 items), recently catalogued thanks to major grant funding from the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom – screened carefully against other resources. These provide strong material on legislation and politics, the abolition debate, plantation life, resistance and revolts, the Underground Railroad, freedmen and Free Black Settlements. Many pamphlets are well illustrated with engravings and line drawings. Various items examine conditions in different states in the American South, in the Caribbean and in South America. How might the master slave relationship and the treatment of slaves be different under the English, French, Dutch, Spanish or Portuguese?

• Resistance and Revolts – evidence relating to Jamaica, Haiti, Demerera, Essequibo, Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad, Brazil, South Carolina and Virginia.

• the Underground Railroad – both the Rankin/Parker papers from Duke University and material from the Buxton National Historic Site offer evidence concerning the functioning of the vast network of people who helped fugitive slaves. Bryan Prince’s essay covers free slave settlements in Canada and the help given to fugitive slaves. Materials from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, including papers of the Vigilance Committee organized by the Philadelphia abolitionists and documents relating to the activities of William Still, who kept records of his interviews with the individuals he managed to help, demonstrate the importance of Pennsylvania in the escape network.

• Slavery Today – Slavery did not end in 1807 (when the British Parliament voted to abolish the trade in slaves and the US House and Senate approved an Act to ‘Prohibit the Importation of Slaves into any Port or Place Within the Jurisdiction of the United States’), 1838 (when slavery was outlawed in the British Empire) or 1865 (when the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States declared that 'neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction’) – recent publications and UN submissions of Anti-Slavery International show that it continues today and affects millions of people.

• Ending Slavery - “Provocative, shocking, saddening, angering and inspiring”, the recently published book by Dr Kevin Bales, has received much critical acclaim following up on his book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy – now a regular feature on many course reading lists. To build on this, Kevin has provided a contextual essay on ‘Slavery Today and the Legacies of Slavery’. Documents from Free the Slaves, the US sister organisation of Anti-Slavery International, are featured along with a substantial range of ASI material.

• Slavery and the Islamic World – documents and essays looking at the trans-Sahara slave trade, the role of important trading centres in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and the Eastern Trade across the Indian Ocean.

• a significant series of US State Supreme Court records (Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri and North Carolina) focusing on slave cases or those involving some aspect of slavery, local and regional court records, with supporting essays on these documents by Professor Susan O’Donovan, Dr Thomas Buchanan and Dr Joyce Broussard (including links to the Natchez Court Records site). What types of cases were settled at County level? Why did some cases need to go up to the Supreme Court? How did the cases and their outcomes vary over the period of the records and in different States?

• additional material on Haiti, Brazil and Angola with contextual essays by José Curto and Mary Ann Mahoney.

• Urban Slavery in New York and Philadelphia, including a contextual essay on Slavery in New York by Professor Leslie Harris.

• Slavery in the early Americas, the evolution of slavery and the many varieties and complexities of slave experience, from work in dangerous conditions in gold or lead mines, to a role as guides, timber gang leaders or overseers in positions of responsibility, to trusted servants like head cooks or favoured slaves allowed by their masters to carry guns, the use of slaves in military expeditions, their role in Africa as porters, canoeists and essential cogs in the transport system, or the harsh experiences of forced construction work under Islamic masters or the varied treatment of different plantation owners. Documentary evidence is used to investigate a wide variety of different slave occupations. We also explore the use of indigenous and bonded labour, the trafficking of people and other types of forced labour, from the 1490s through to the problems of the modern world and the continued existence of Slavery beyond 2007.
  

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