William Lloyd Garrison

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Teaching Outside the Textbook: From ‘The Abolitionists’ to a Two-Term Black President

February 3, 2013

This week PBS’s The American Experience concluded “The Abolitionists,” a searing three-part documentary on a fiercely committed band of white and African American freedom fighters. It took a fresh look at the anti-slavery movement, its most dramatic moments, its key figures and its amazing impact considering it was a movement which was run by hated […]

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The Women who Gave us Christmas

December 22, 2010

Before Christmas emerged as a commercial success it led a checkered social life. In the 13 colonies it was known not as a Silent Night, Holy Night but as a heavy drinking, brawling festival, a raucous blend of July 4th and New Years Eve. But as the struggle over slavery in the United States heated […]

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Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson

January 21, 2001

Author: Professor Paul Finkelman Publisher: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2001 In the 1830s William Lloyd Garrison, a fiery anti-slavery polemicist, infuriated citizens of Boston by publicly threatening to burn a copy of the US Constitution which he excoriated as a “covenant with death” and “an agreement with Hell.” People were shocked and even among his band […]

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