Search

The article provides a historical account of the abolitionist white supremacy work of Henry N. Frisbie and his defrauding of Black and white proponents of abolition in the name of profit, power and capitalism in the Civil War era. Information is provided on the role of elite capture in the persistence of racial capitalism and egalitarian movements, as well as Frisbie's systems of deception of enslaved Black working class using a fraudulent land company to steal their crops and wages.

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles within the issue on topics including worker agency and resistance of the Black refugee community in postwar Virginia, threat to the freedom of freedpeople due to competing interest of planters, Northern reformers and federal agencies, and application of the concept of elite capture to Chicago Republican, abolitionist and Union soldier Henry Frisbie and his expression of antilabor politics.

The article examines the stance of antislavery citizens of Cleveland, Ohio on the trial of fugitive enslaved woman Lucy Bagby and her reenslavement during the secession crisis. Topics discussed include the news coverage of Bagby's trial, a personal background of Bagby, the capture of Bagby and the actions made by a group of Black abolitionists to save Bagby from the Fugitive Slave Act.

In the late nineteenth century, abolitionists felt entitled to use all possible means to save the African victims of the slave trade. As European imperialism rose, abolitionism legitimized interventionism. This article explores how a major humanitarian movement could sanction colonial occupation and the violence that accompanied it. It also examines the position of African slaveholders who resisted the entrenchment of European rule and defended an order in which slavery was common. It focuses on two main actors: French Captain Leopold Joubert, Catholic royalist and former pontifical Zouave who supported Cardinal Lavigerie's Missionaries of Africa and Belgian King Leopold II's allegedly abolitionist endeavours; and Tippu Tip, a trader and slaver who, like Joubert, worked for self-styled abolitionists such as Leopold II and the Sultan of Zanzibar. The connected microhistories of these men show how the international problematization of African slavery fuelled both European imperialism and anti-colonial resistance, while also creating circumstances in which enslaved persons emancipated themselves. The article investigates the moral perceptions of individuals whose sense of self was predicated upon values embodied by Europe's monarchies, the papacy of Rome, and the sultanate of Zanzibar. Faced with what they perceived as existential threats to these institutions, they responded with rising radicalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Letters of Richard Cobden Online" is a website that offers a comprehensive database of Cobden's letters, providing a valuable resource for historians and researchers. The site features a searchable database of 5609 transcripts of Cobden's letters, along with teaching resources and explanatory essays. Cobden's letters offer insights into his personal life, political views, and relationships, showcasing his vibrant prose and clear expression. The website serves as both a historical archive and a pedagogic tool, highlighting Cobden's commitment to democracy, free trade, and international cooperation. [Extracted from the article]

For more than two decades after Gregg v. Georgia (1976), use of the death penalty greatly expanded across the United States. Since 2000, however, it has declined significantly. Perhaps the most notable explanation for this decline is the contemporary focus on wrongful convictions. In this paper, we aim to contextualize the modern death penalty decline, and its connection with innocence, through the theoretical lens of social movements and collective action. We argue that dual opportunities reshaped the modern anti‐death penalty movement. First, the McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) ruling affirmed the federal courts' resistance to abolition and inspired activists to begin shifting toward state‐level political abolitionism. Activists then took advantage of the developing interest in wrongful convictions. Specifically, innocence‐related abolitionist activities in Illinois reinvigorated the anti‐death penalty movement, expanded the advocacy network, and fundamentally reframed the debate around capital punishment in the United States. We suggest that, collectively, these dual opportunities reshaped the anti‐death penalty movement into one that emphasized strategies reaching beyond constitutionality and propelled the movement into the twenty‐first century with a foundation for successful political abolitionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first study of the full range of documentary evidence concerning the unintended arrival of the Enterprise in Bermuda in 1835, the earliest incident of an American slave ship entering a British colonial port after the Emancipation Act. The choice for freedom made by 72 enslaved people touched off a tense discussion in Bermuda about the legal status of its human cargo. This challenged the capacity of elite white Bermudians to reconcile their reluctance to accept them into Bermuda with the imagined benevolence they had conjured during Bermuda's own recent emancipation. Bermuda's officials negotiated the degree to which calculated inaction would balance imperial abolitionism with local racial anxieties and American entanglements. Scholars have noted the incident mainly for its geopolitical significance in the post-emancipation Atlantic, but Bermudian and Colonial Office sources emphasize the role of local Black Bermudian communication networks and their knowledge of the law. The archive also reveals that the Enterprise incident encompassed some of the most prominent slave traders and abolitionist families in the United States. Rather than an aberration, in characteristics such as the striking young age of its human cargo, the Enterprise was typical of this phase of the American internal slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors draw upon their lived experiences as Black women in the academy to conceptualize a framework for Black women's peer mentorship, or 'sister scholarship,' within academia. Through auto-ethnographic 'sister talks,' the sister scholar relationship is conceptualized as a sanctum from gendered and racialized trauma, an impetus for the co-generation of knowledge, an approbation of intersectionality, and a gathering of the whole self. This work is grounded in Black feminist understandings of resiliency, resistance, and grace within academia. In discussion, the authors call for the abolition of oppressive policies and systems that aim to marginalize and disenfranchise Black women and other Women of Color in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction draws out and amplifies the major themes engaged in this special issue of "Abolitionist Rhetorics." Insurgent abolition, we contend, far from marking yet another "turn" in disciplinary history, compels the field to reckon with its conditions of possibility and, in that encounter, with its abolition. It does so inasmuch as it proffers an immanent limit to the rhetorical field's intellectual imagination; in its invention of a planetary vocabulary and praxes of relationality and scale that cuts against rhetoric's imperial commonplaces; and by confronting rhetoricians with their disavowed desires for radical realization. In the upshot, the larger stakes of abolitionist rhetorics go beyond epistemic and disciplinary refurbishment. Instead, we argue that abolition—as seen in the rebellions, insurgencies, and resistances that have marked the twenty-first century—are unfoldments of radical survivance and living in the late racial capitalocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on penal minimalism as a conceptual and normative alternative to the dominant criminal justice discourses in the U.S. It presents penal minimalism as a balanced approach between tough-on-crime policies, abolitionism, and civil libertarianism. It emphasizes that penal minimalism advocates for a fair and humane criminal legal system that is used only as a last resort in addressing social harms.

The article discusses the history of slavery and antislavery sentiments in the Hispanic world, particularly in Mexico and Texas, from 1789 to 1827. It highlights the efforts of various individuals and groups to abolish slavery, showing a shift towards antislavery sentiments among Mexican political elites. The text explores the complexities of the institution of slavery, the regulations surrounding it, and the eventual abolition of slavery in Mexico and Texas. The article emphasizes the ideological support for abolition and the impact of these measures on the relationship between Texas and the rest of Mexico. [Extracted from the article]

Throughout feminist histories, both the wife and prostitute have been evoked as symbols of women's shared experiences under patriarchy or of a common female condition. Yet even as various feminist currents have put pressure on marriage and prostitution alike as pillars of male domination, these are decisively held to be not quite the same: the feminist movement today has produced a global campaign toward the immediate abolition of prostitution, but not of marriage. This means that the contemporary feminist pursuit of the abolition of prostitution is perfectly compatible with hegemonic ways of seeing "female" bodies in at least one important way: prostitutes are criminalized, or penalized in other direct or indirect ways by criminal justice structures, in the name of the abolition of their sexual labor; wives are not. Given this intersection between certain currents of contemporary feminism and the state, this article will ask how we might account for the fact that there has been no large-scale feminist movement toward the abolition of marriage or the family, as there exists now for the abolition of prostitution. Is it possible to theorize the abolition of prostitution—as well as marriage—within a feminist framework that does not seek to do so via increasing state control of laboring bodies? In exploring these questions, I argue that to misunderstand sexual labor and the people who do sexual labor—both in and out of the home—will, until corrected, ultimately defeat the crucial feminist project of reclaiming our bodies and abolishing the exploitation of our work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces and explains the key concerns that have informed and inspired this Special Issue of the Community Development Journal. It sees punishment and prisons as troubling issues for community development despite the comparative lack of attention they have received in the journal to date. The article acknowledges that the specific forms that punishment, incarceration and their alternatives take have profound implications for the lives people live in communities; but that those forms of punishment, as well as resistances to them, are also shaped by collective activism and actors operating from , on , through or on behalf of communities, both real and imagined. We reflect on changing conceptions of the carceral state, positing that 'carceral community development' is playing an increasingly prominent role in the extension, outsourcing and normalization of punishment internationally. Against such tendencies, we consider the potential for abolitionist theory and practice to contribute to a critically self-reflexive community development that is committed to anti-carceral or de-carceral futures, and to the building of concrete forms of community in the here and now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines nineteenth century American abolitionist writings on India. My sources include abolitionist newspapers, primarily focusing on William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper the Liberator, but also incorporating other abolitionist newspapers. These include the Friend of Man and publications of individual abolitionists like Lydia Maria Child’s The History of the Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations. By looking at their writings on Christian missionary activities in India, Indian women, and British rule in India, this article argues that although many abolitionists Orientalized India, they at the same time found many parallels between Indian society and the US. Although they did not develop a full criticism towards colonialism in the antebellum period, their criticism towards Empire matured by the early twentieth century. My scholarly intervention centres on acknowledging the hitherto unknown role of abolitionist writings on India in the intellectual history of American abolitionism and US-India transnational history. By not fully engaging with India, the scholarship on US-India relations and abolitionism misses a critical dimension of the abolitionist movement’s intimate relationship with related causes of feminism, anti-clericalism, and anti-imperialism. Most importantly, this article demonstrates that abolitionist writings on India far exceeded Orientalism as the only frame of understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Journal of Global Slavery has announced the winner of the Paul E. Lovejoy Prize, named after esteemed scholar Paul E. Lovejoy, for excellence in works related to global slavery. The winning book, "Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves," by Gunja SenGupta and Awam Amkpa, connects Atlantic and Indian Ocean slavery histories, exploring global discourses on freedom and bondage. The book is praised for its meticulous research, engaging narrative, and contribution to understanding interconnected systems of slavery and colonialism. Submissions for next year's Lovejoy Prize are open until February 14, 2025, and should highlight significant contributions to the field of global slavery studies. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Constellations: The Lives, Stories, and Networks of Yale's Early Black Students" explores the lives of early Black students at Yale University. It highlights the efforts of researchers like Marion Phillips and scholars like Curtis L. Patton and Ronald Mickens to uncover the stories of these trailblazing individuals. The Constellations Project aims to identify and uplift the stories of over two hundred Black students who attended Yale before 1940, shedding light on their varied experiences and contributions to the university and beyond. Through ongoing research and the creation of a website, the project seeks to engage descendants, community historians, and researchers in exploring the rich history of these early Black students at Yale. [Extracted from the article]

"Reconstruction Revisionism Revisited" by Manisha Sinha in Reviews in American History delves into the complexities of defining and understanding the Reconstruction era in American history. Sinha challenges traditional narratives and offers a new perspective on Reconstruction, emphasizing the agency of Black people, the struggle for interracial democracy, and the interconnected reconstructions of democracy, capitalism, women's rights, and the West. The text highlights the ongoing scholarly debate surrounding Reconstruction, its impact on American society, and its relevance to contemporary challenges to democracy and racial equality. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses four books that focus on the history of fugitives from slavery and their impact on American history. The books cover various aspects of the Underground Railroad, abolitionist movements, and the experiences of escaped slaves in urban settings. Each book offers a unique perspective on the role of fugitives in shaping American history, challenging traditional narratives and highlighting the complexity of their contributions. The authors explore themes of resistance, activism, and the interconnectedness of different strands of the abolitionist movement, providing a nuanced understanding of the historical significance of fugitives from slavery. [Extracted from the article]

Drawing on experiential, literary and historical narratives, this article connects the long history shaping the school-to-prison-pipeline to the contemporary experiences of Black youth in today's educational system. It maps abolitionism from its origins as a movement to end slavery through the ongoing Black freedom struggles that have challenged state and vigilante violence throughout the eras of Jim Crow and Civil Rights to today's efforts to dismantle the prison state. By situating the criminalization of African American education from our nation's founding until the present with particular focus on the post Brown years, the article stresses how policies that funded policing over education persisted through liberal and conservative administrations. This longer and broader historical approach to school discipline should help teachers, school administrators and policy makers devise anti-racist teaching practices that can resist the seemingly unyielding and ever adaptable strictures of white supremacy, most recently evidenced in the attacks on "Critical Race Theory," "Diversity Equity and Inclusion" initiatives and so-called "wokism." By listening to how those who have been enslaved and incarcerated regarded education, I join a chorus of voices suggesting how we might structure our pedagogical choices as a fugitive practice that looks for solutions outside the institution and imagines as yet unthought of alternatives to the ways punishment is incorporated into today's public education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the life and representation of Joachim Nettelbeck, a Prussian sailor and slave trader, who was celebrated as a national hero in Germany for his defense of Kolberg against Napoleon in 1807. However, his involvement in the slave trade was largely ignored or downplayed in public representations of him. In recent years, there have been efforts to challenge Nettelbeck's commemorative presence and confront Germany's colonial past. The article analyzes the different narratives surrounding Nettelbeck and the strategies used to shield him from criticism. It also calls for further research on German involvement in the slave trade and its connections to nationalism and colonialism. [Extracted from the article]

Abolition is a verb, referencing how people build safe conditions while dismantling (and developing solutions beyond) harmful institutions, including within education. Considering disability justice movement work in our roles as teacher educators, we explored how we might contend with the harmful purposes and functions of educational structures as we prepare future teachers to adopt abolitionist stances in their pedagogies. We begin with the premise that the current educational system, rooted in ableism, is fundamentally designed to rank, categorize and hypervalue/devalue children based on ability. Ableism intersects with multiple oppressions, fueling the inequitable distribution of resources in special/gifted education; and racist educational outcomes. To divest from ableism — decoupling learning from punishment in practice — we share three pedagogical examples from our own teaching, discussing how we support future teachers to imagine and enact teaching practices beyond providing services or accommodations, so that multiply-marginalized children and educators can be recognized as whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1834, hundreds of thousands of enslaved people in the British empire became free laborers under the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act. In Britain that same year, the Poor Law Amendment Act created the first free market in labor for some of the United Kingdom's poorest workers, agricultural laborers on British and Irish farms. Although political economists in Britain posited that slavery was estranged from the free market, "free labor"—at least for farmworkers—came to Britain and its empire at roughly the same time. For some activists in the British antislavery movement, wage labor appeared to have a civilizing power, and it seemed that enslaved people would need to be taught how to behave in a free labor market so that its "natural" laws would impel them to steady wage work after emancipation. In 1815, the end of the Napoleonic wars brought a prolonged period of economic "distress" in Britain and Ireland. In this era, antislavery thinkers began to reflect on the ways that wages, properly calibrated, could civilize free as well as enslaved workers. This article traces overlapping ideas about the free market in both antislavery and laissez-faire economic thought. It shows how antislavery thinkers struggled with the tension between their faith in a free labor market and their concerns about setting a "civilizing" rate of wages. Finally, it sketches the history of the Quaker abolitionist William Allen's attempt to build a colony in England that would educate free workers in wage labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the years prior to legal emancipation, British officials enacted a series of laws intended to ameliorate the condition of those held in slavery in their colonies. This article investigates the impact of amelioration on the islands of the Seychelles immediately prior to emancipation. While the legal changes, including the dispatch of a Protector of Slaves to the Seychelles, were limited in terms of effectiveness, their implementation offered people new avenues to protest mistreatment and engage directly with the language of abolition. Reports filed by the protector highlight people's uncertainty and isolation during the years leading up to emancipation. While there is evidence of resistance through uprisings, desertions, and the filing of formal complaints, people in the Seychelles faced significant challenges as owners used the islands' distance from colonial oversight to maintain control through violence and patriarchal structures of domination. As remote 'island laboratories', however, the islands offer unique insights into the ways in which people managed to leverage British abolitionism to their advantage even on such isolated islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jacob D. Green's speaking career in England (1863-66) is an exploration of how an independent, self-financed Black speaker became a networked abolitionist building on the achievements of other expatriate African American activists like Moses Roper and James Watkins. Born enslaved in Maryland, Green made serial escapes from enslavement in Kentucky and elsewhere in the United States, sojourning in Toronto before arriving in Lancashire at about age forty-eight with evidently few funds. Green appealed to cotton and woollen mill town residents to oppose enslavement and the Confederate States of America from where most of North-West England's cotton originated. He initially lectured under the sponsorship of nonconformist ministers in Yorkshire and built a network that included ministers in the United Methodist Free Church, Congregational Union, capitalists, and tradespeople. Nonconformist sponsorship led to an 1864 move to Heckmondwike in the centre of his lecture circuit. He connected with those who sponsored other Black abolitionists, burgeoning his network by speaking in West Yorkshire towns and cities that had hosted African American orators before. As a networked abolitionist, he earned income from speaking and publishing an autobiography and may have died in England in 1866. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a systematic and localized analysis of how female anti-slavery activity in the North-East of England influenced and impacted the transatlantic campaign to abolish slavery in the West Indies and then the United States. Female anti-slavery societies in Newcastle and Darlington organized local meetings with prominent African American anti-slavery campaigners, leading regional and national conversations about abolition and wider discussions about race and slavery. This article argues that regional conceptions of race and identity were shaped by local religious dissenting cultures and the unique professional relationships formed between African American abolitionists and North-East women's societies. This study is nonetheless critical of the way white female anti-slavery activism often envisioned emancipation as a fulfilment of maternal and imperialistic duties, arguing that the notion of a 'transatlantic sisterhood' espoused by British and American female abolitionists only served to further subjugate those who had previously been enslaved, delaying any unified political response from women on both sides of the Atlantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist" by Marcus Rediker is a biography that explores the life of Benjamin Lay, an often overlooked Quaker abolitionist. Rediker's engaging writing style makes the book accessible to a wide range of readers, even those with limited knowledge of eighteenth-century history. Lay's unconventional methods of protest against slavery, such as his symbolic use of a sword and pokeberry juice, are highlighted, despite his disownment by Quaker meetings. The biography also delves into Lay's experiences as a mariner and his physical condition, which shaped his empathy for the suffering of enslaved individuals and animals. The text acknowledges Lay's nonviolence and direct action for emancipation, but does not provide a historical context for his nonviolence. Additionally, the book explores Lay's radicalism and his associations with less reputable figures, as well as how he was able to exert influence despite facing opposition. The text concludes by discussing a graphic novel adaptation of Lay's story, which aims to introduce his story to new audiences. [Extracted from the article]

The rise of abolitionist verse in the late 1780s coincided with the end of the period of dominance of the heroic couplet, which had by then been the preeminent literary form for the best part of 150 years. Taking as a case study William Cowper's The Task of 1785—the poem of Cowper's that gained him the attention of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787—this essay considers some of the reasons why heroic couplets came to be treated with suspicion by politicized poets at the end of the eighteenth century, and thinks through some of the affordances of blank verse, in particular, that marked it out as attractive to abolitionists like Cowper. Blank verse, I argue, served to fold the distance between "here" and "there" (between, for instance, a Britain free of enslavement and the centrality of enslavement in its colonies); it produced disordered images that undermined the ordering logic of colonialism; and it reflected the fundamental difference Cowper came to discern between social connections and what he came to call "incorporation"—the unnatural grouping together of men under the banners of commercial entities and enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces 17th-century American Quaker abolitionist John Woolman and explores his socio-spiritual journey that led across U.S. colonies, as well as his embodiment of affirmative mysticism in British America. Topics discussed include the sickness of Woolman that resulted in visions of God for the Religious Society of Friends, his mission to preach love and freedom, and his opposition to human bondage and the slave trade.

This article explores the life and ideas of André-Daniel Laffon de Ladébat, an eighteenth-century abolitionist deputy from Bordeaux, France. Laffon de Ladébat's treatise, "Discours sur la nécessité et les moyens de détruire l'esclavage dans les colonies," argued for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. Despite the strong pro-slavery sentiment in Bordeaux, the region consistently elected abolitionist deputies to represent them in Paris. The article suggests that the influence of the abolitionist movement may have been perceived as weak, and the eventual abolition of slavery in France was largely influenced by the revolt of African slaves in Saint-Domingue. The study highlights the importance of considering lesser-known abolitionists and the political and economic contexts of the time. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the American expatriate community in Florence, Italy, between 1840 and 1865. Florence, with its history of liberalism, attracted reformers from all over the Atlantic world, including many Americans and Britons committed to antislavery. During the two decades before the Civil War, Florence attracted American and British cultural elites who valued its history, culture, cosmopolitanism, and suitability for untrammeled discussion and debate about a variety of liberal causes, including antislavery. For American reformers and intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, and Sarah Parker Redmond, the city represented both a physical location and an imagined community dedicated to antislavery and liberal reform. American abolitionists' interaction in Florence with English abolitionists such as Robert and Elizabeth Browning and Fanny Trollope suggests that the city looms larger in the geography of nineteenth-century abolitionism than previously appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after Toussaint Louverture died in 1803, a literary tradition emerged in British abolitionist texts which portrayed the character of Toussaint in heroic terms. This article takes five texts written between 1803–1863 to demonstrate how Toussaint was constructed as an antislavery hero and what the motivations were behind this construction. The hero can be understood as a lens through which Toussaint’s character, and the character of the whole Haitian Revolution, was flattened. The hero was a frame that made him knowable and understandable to European audiences, but that also erased both the mass of enslaved people that formed the grassroots of the revolution in Haiti, as well as the many aspects of Toussaint himself that were not deemed to fit the hero narrative. This literary tradition arose because the mainstream of the nineteenth-century British antislavery movement opposed and feared rebellions led by enslaved people, believing on racist grounds that they were violent, uncontrolled, and anarchic, and at odds with the new liberal vision of empire that most British abolitionists wanted to create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how American abolitionists reacted to the Haitian Revolution between the start of the Revolution in 1791 till the passage of Congressional legislation banning trade with Haiti in 1806. Abolitionists' reactions to the Revolution illustrate some of the unifying and dividing ideas deeply imbedded within the abolition movement. The Haitian Revolution did not create the divisions between abolitionists, but rather brought to the forefront divides that had already existed from the formation of the movement. Importantly, this article illustrates how dichotomic framings of American abolitionism as either radical or conservative are insufficient to explain the diversity of thought within the movement, as reflected in abolitionists' reactions to Haiti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article first introduces and reviews Nancy Fraser's latest book Cannibal Capitalism. Next, it discusses the book's its programme for critical theory in the framework of Fraser's previous scholarship. It focuses on two ingredients of 'Fraserian' critical theory: the role of difference in social justice-driven research and the separation of ontological and normative parts of such research. It then applies these specifically to feminist radical theories and explains why current, ostensibly non-economic, care-, solidarity- and abolitionist resistance programmes cannot underwrite sufficiently radical political programmes for social change. While these programmes' alternative ontologies are resourceful for informing and fomenting resistance, their potential to radically change social structures hinges upon their ability to relate their programme to other socially dominated and economically oppressed groups on the Left. Because capitalism codes both social domination and economic oppression, radical programmes would integrate their ostensibly non-economic ontological resources with a critique of capitalism to illuminate the common struggles of socially dominated and economically oppressed. 'System crises critique' articulated by Fraser in Cannibal Capitalism is an example of one such 'radical' programme, which mobilises the working class as well as other marginalised groups, which are simultaneously economically oppressed and socially dominated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses William Still's role as an abolitionist and civil rights leader in Philadelphia from 1853 to 1861, assisting nearly 1,000 freedom seekers in their escape from enslavement. Still's data collection methods provided scholars with a dataset on Underground Railroad activities, shedding light on individual stories of enslaved individuals seeking freedom. The dataset offers opportunities for scholars to explore trends in freedom seekers' experiences and transportation methods, contributing to a deeper understanding of the Underground Railroad's use during the 1850s. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the Sino-Portuguese efforts against the slave trade in China from 1557 to 1639, highlighting the complexities and challenges faced in enforcing anti-slavery measures. Despite shared intentions to suppress the trade, divergent strategies and the pursuit of trade profits by local Chinese officials, merchants, and the business community in Macao hindered effective enforcement. By leveraging Chinese, Portuguese sources, including official memorials, Jesuit manuscripts, and royal decrees, the article offers new insights into the geopolitical and economic contexts shaping the slave trade. It underscores the need to understand the varied strategies and considerations employed by different entities in addressing slavery, contributing to a more nuanced narrative of global history and early globalization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical Black women teachers actively participated in the fight to abolish slavery while simultaneously, struggling for educational equity. This paper departs to address what inspired them to engage in these radical actions during the era of enslavement and its immediate afterlives. Drawing on close analysis of archival documents, this paper reclaims the radical faith of historical Black women teachers that allowed them to move from intimate, inward yearnings of freedom to outward expressions of sociopolitical action. What is revealed is an intersectional, transcendent, lived womanist theo-ethic of abolition that responded to their existential and material realities, and informed their notions of education, freedom, gender equality and justice, constituting a very particular form of resistance. I suggest that in order to enact radical transformation within the field of education, and beyond, contemporary teachers must first interrogate the interior and embody an abolitionist ethic. Gratefully, historical Black women teachers have provided a prophetic witness on how to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the limitations of criminal legal responses to gender-based violence in Australia, specifically sexual assault law reforms and the criminalisation of coercive control. We demonstrate that carceral horizons deployed to address gender-based violence cause further harm to survivors and overshadow diverse perceptions and practices of justice. We suggest that such an approach is inappropriate and dangerous in the Australian context, given the historical and enduring harms of colonisation and the extent to which the actors within and the structure of the criminal legal system perpetrate violence towards Indigenous survivors of gender-based violence. Drawing on insights from research on survivors' justice needs, survivors' experiences in the criminal legal system, and abolitionist, transformative, and Indigenous scholarship, we discuss the potential for alternative ways of conceptualising justice responses in the Australian context that move beyond and avoid further perpetuating the harms arising from criminal legal responses to gender-based violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Restorative Justice. Healing, Transformation, Justice, and Social Peace" by Otmar Hagemann deals with the topic of conflict mediation in criminal cases. The author has been researching and teaching various sociological, criminological, and victimological issues for over three decades. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the subject and includes theoretical derivations as well as application areas of restorative justice. It also addresses questions of victimization, abuse of power, empathy, female criminality, and discrimination in the criminal justice system. The third part of the book is dedicated to conferencing procedures in practice. The text describes various contributions and arguments on the topic of restorative justice. Practical application examples and dialogue procedures are outlined. The focus is on the application of restorative justice in the criminal justice system, both before and after a conviction. Various programs and pilot projects are presented that demonstrate the success of the measures. Additionally, the idea of "restorative prisons" is discussed, and the perspective of abolitionism is taken. Overall, the text is aimed at people who are interested in a world of diversity, humanity, justice, and social peace. [Extracted from the article]

The maker movement propagated throughout educational spaces alongside promises that technological and design literacies could be harnessed to shape equitable social futures. However, researchers have highlighted the ways makerspaces can reinforce hierarchies of race, gender, and class. This paper builds on research that seeks to support girls' making through broader sociopolitical and ethical commitments. We consider what an everyday pedagogy of feminist abolition looked like in a makerspace, with a focus on how educators responded to emergent social needs within and across gender lines. Our data sources (extensive field notes, audio–video recordings, photographs, and student interviews) are drawn from Hubspace, a 6‐week summer program serving Black, Latine/x, and South Asian middle school youth and grounded in expansive forms of storytelling, coding, engineering, music, writing, and art. In closely analyzing routine forms of educator reflection alongside the design decisions, pedagogical moves and forms of student sense‐making they supported, we found that student and educator sociopolitical learning emerged together to build what became possible in the culture of the space over time. Across three cases, we show how such pedagogies offered lived models and creative languages for practicing restorative and just social relationships. Each of the cases tell the story of different moments when gender became important to the ways participants were working to recognize and desettle received terms of thought and generate alternate forms of thinking, living, and relating, or the making of new stories and worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text discusses the resilience of Christianity in today's society, highlighting its presence in various countries around the world. It acknowledges both the positive contributions of Christianity, such as promoting equality and democracy, as well as the negative aspects associated with it, such as slavery and a dismissive attitude towards women. The text emphasizes the complex relationship between church and state, noting that Christianity has had a significant impact on social life but was not intended for direct political engagement. The Special Issue book explores the history of church-state relations and their relevance to contemporary society, covering topics such as religious freedom, peace efforts, and the potential of religion to shape public affairs in the future. [Extracted from the article]

This essay surveys Henry David Thoreau's extensive commentary on slavery and freedom in the 1840s and 50s, tracking the ways he toggles between the literal (i.e., the institutions of racial chattel and capital's value-form resisted by civil disobedience and reconfigured by civil war) and the figurative (i.e., the existential and spiritual slavery evaded by the individual and collective attainment of 'real values'), and how his natural philosophy at once illuminates and obscures the true stakes of his abolitionism and that of his fellow Transcendentalists. It notes that there is much to be said for and much yet to be done on the burgeoning intersectional critique of Transcendentalism, one that highlights both its strengths and limitations—or, at times, its outright problems—regarding race, nation, class, gender, sexuality et al. So too for the literature celebrating Thoreau 'as much for his politics as his aesthetics,' avowing how his 'reform writings and lectures alone have earned him the reputation of being a social activist who didn't rest on high-minded principles.' The focus here is adjacent and complementary: to consider the prospects of a Black Transcendentalism that is coeval with and prior to Thoreau's articulation of the principles of 'Elevation' and 'Emancipation.' Beyond that, it speculates about something like the blackness of Thoreau's own evolving relation to the political-intellectual movement of Transcendentalism itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benjamin Rush's 1773 antislavery pamphlets are often cited as quintessential examples of "environmentalist" understandings of human difference because Rush proclaimed in them that all people were the same outside of accidents of local climate and custom, seemingly rejecting the notion of innate racial differences. However, closely examining the use of climate's relationship to health in Rush's tracts reveals that he mixed environmentalism with more essentialist ideas of race that supposed fixed differences between people of European and African descent. Rush expressed essentialist ideas about differing rates of reproduction and the ability to survive hot climates without theorizing about their cause, and he leveraged these ideas to blame enslavers for the mortality of enslaved people and for the failure to create a self-sustaining enslaved population. Crucially, Rush's statements implying fixed racial differences would be regularly repeated by later abolitionists, making antislavery speeches and publications a conduit for reinforcing and spreading racial comparisons. Rush's pamphlets illustrate that abolitionist writers, not just proslavery ones, contributed to the emergence of medical and scientific racism and indicates that the incompleteness of emancipation had its roots in the language of the freedom struggle itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward Long (1734–1813), wrote the History of Jamaica (1774), in part, with the hope that his words would reshape the colony's frontier by drawing yeoman farmers from Britain to the island's unsettled interior. Long's vision was to remake the unimproved frontier into something approximating rural England, which would serve the planter class by reducing island food prices; denuding forested safe havens for runaways and rebels; and refashioning the colony into something that could better withstand nascent British antislavery critique. Long's rhetorical strategy obscured the harsh realities of Jamaica's slave economy while it pointed potential migrants away from commercial slave ownership. This article highlights how the planter-author juxtaposed his picturesque descriptions of the island with quantitative tables that were intended to attract migrants of a certain caste. It was Long's hope that these settlers would be liminally and forever fixed between the enslaved population and the ruling planter class. Long's plans for the creation of British settlements excited neither the ruling class nor potential migrants and therefore failed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Creation of a Crusader: Senator Thomas Morris and the Birth of the Antislavery Movement" by David C. Crago explores the evolution of Senator Thomas Morris from a Jacksonian senator with little interest in slavery to an influential abolitionist and constitutional theorist. Through detailed research, Crago highlights Morris's pivotal role in developing the concept of an antislavery Constitution and opposing the elite slave power that threatened the republic. The book delves into Morris's transformation within the context of Jacksonian-era politics, shedding light on how his views on slavery evolved over time and influenced antebellum third-party antislavery politics. [Extracted from the article]

Sarah J. Adams's book "Repertoires of Slavery: Dutch Theater Between Abolitionism and Colonial Subjection, 1770–1810" examines Dutch anti-slavery plays from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, revealing that while they criticized Dutch involvement in slavery, they did not challenge white hegemony. Adams argues that these plays upheld white superiority as the status quo, deploying racism as a buffer between abolition and equality. The book analyzes how these plays perpetuated racial stereotypes and white self-representation, shedding light on the historical production of racism and its impact on present-day racial dynamics. [Extracted from the article]