Archives + Special Collections

A documentary on Public Television (PBS) called The African Americans: Many Rivers To Cross offers an excellent overview of slavery in the United States from its early beginnings in the 1500s to its final end in 1865.  This view aligns closely with the history recorded in the Black Abolitionist Archive’s editorials and speeches.  Slavery wasn’t anything new when this country was first established.  What WAS new, however, was the notion of “who” slaves were and how this tied in with...

Communication holds together the people within a defined social structure.  Slavery as a social institution in the early years of this country, kept people isolated.  The practice of using human beings as chattel was brought to the Americas as a matter of course in the early years of its colonizing.  At that time, no one seemed to pay much attention to the idea that there was something very wrong with this practice.  Soon, however, communication in the form of abolitionist...

“Old Winter has Come Again, Alack” One of the best topics for conversation when nothing else is on the table for discussion is the weather.  Weather discussion offers you an endless supply of metaphor, an easy connection between strangers (who doesn’t enjoy talking about the weather?), and a huge area for opinion of one sort or another. It also offers a great way to ease into heavier subjects, such as poverty and the misery of the poor. During the 1800s,...

The Black Abolitionist archive features a portrait of Anthony Burns on the Digital Archives page. While not an abolitionist himself, Burns’ experience played a prominent role in the direction of abolition during the turbulent years of the mid-1800s. His experience, occurring soon after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, offered a turning point for public sentiment regarding the plight of the slave. Wikipedia tells us that Anthony Burns was born into slavery in Virginia on May 31, 1834 (slavery was...

The University of Detroit Mercy has a large collection of documents in the Black Abolitionist Archive that can be searched on the library web page. You can find the text of over a thousand speeches and editorials from the 1820′s to the Civil War on the site, some of which you can also listen to on an audio file. It is not possible to list everything in the collection, so periodically there is a request to find something in the...