Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African-American Protest Literature, 1790-1860

Front Cover
Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, Phillip Lapsansky
Routledge, 2013 M11 26 - 336 pages
Between the Revolution and the Civil War, African-American writing became a prominent feature of both black protest culture and American public life. Although denied a political voice in national affairs, black authors produced a wide range of literature to project their views into the public sphere. Autobiographies and personal narratives told of slavery's horrors, newspapers railed against racism in its various forms, and poetry, novellas, reprinted sermons and speeches told tales of racial uplift and redemption. The editors examine the important and previously overlooked pamphleteering tradition and offer new insights into how and why the printed word became so important to black activists during this critical period. An introduction by the editors situates the pamphlets in their various social, economic and political contexts. This is the first book to capture the depth of black print culture before the Civil War by examining perhaps its most important form, the pamphlet.

From inside the book

Contents

ABSALOM JONES AND RICHARD ALLEN
32
A Charge 1797
45
JAMES FORTEN
66
PRINCE SAUNDERS
80
WILLIAM HAMILTON
110
Productions 1835
123
DAVID RUGGLES
144
Proceedings of the National Convention
166
JOHN W LEWIS
190
FREDERICK DOUGLASS ET AL
214
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN
240
MARY STILL
254
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
282
T MORRIS CHESTER
304
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2013)

Richard Newman is Assistant Professor of History at the Rochester Institute of Technology; Patrick Rael is Assistant Professor of History at Bowdoin College; and Phillip Lapsansky is an archivist at the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Bibliographic information