Overview

This two-volume scholarly anthology publishes nineteen narratives and eighty speeches written by African American authors in Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century in a contemporary edition for the first time.This two-volume set reproduces nineteen narratives and eighty speeches by world famous and under-researched African American freedom fighters, liberators and human rights campaigners living and working in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England in the nineteenth century. Both books include in-depth introductory essays, author biographies, scholarly annotations and detailed biographies. All the narratives and speeches included in these books constitute radical declarations of Black artistic and political independence. Each author bears witness to their determination to resist white racist attempts to script, edit and censor Black acts and arts of imaginative literary production. Across both books, all of the authors and orators testify to their lifelong 'fight for freedom' across their radical and revolutionary works. Throughout their lives, they warred against the 'sufferings and horrors' of enslavement as a centuries-old 'cursed institution.' 'Words are weapons' in their fight for Black liberation. Across their life's works, they all protested against the rise of the 'spirit of slavery' in white supremacist and white racist U.S. and British transatlantic societies.

Full Product Details

9781399530941

Table of Contents

Reviews

Nineteenth-Century African American Narratives in Britain and Ireland presents a remarkable collection of narratives penned by self-liberated American individuals in the UK. These nineteenth narratives enrich our collective knowledge, empathy, and appreciation for the resilience of those who endured enslavement. This important collection resonates with profound historical significance. Professors Bernier and Murray provide the speeches of both men and women who traveled the UK, lecturing on the ills of slavery. Nineteenth-Century African American Speeches in Britain and Ireland exposes us to self-liberated American individuals who lectured the anti-slavery case in the UK. A book we did not know we needed --Bill E. Lawson, University of Memphis

Author Information

Celeste-Marie Bernier is Professor of United States and Atlantic Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is the author/ editor/ curator of over 85 books, exhibitions, essays, and digital educational resources including the forthcoming Douglass Family Lives: Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass Family Biography and Collected Works eight book series. Hannah-Rose Murray is a Teaching Fellow in US History at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Her first book, Advocates of Freedom: African American Transatlantic Abolitionism in the British Isles, was published in 2020. Her accompanying website (www.frederickdouglassinbritain.com) maps thousands of Black activist speaking locations in Britain and Ireland and is the basis for her community and heritage work.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available