A Gradual Emancipation (1783 – 1827)

The American Revolution birthed a paradox. As patriots championed their own freedom from the British they continued to enslave people of African descent. Brooklyn was the slaveholding capital of New York State. But anti-slavery sentiment grew in the early republic. Many enslaved people of African descent and white Quakers used the rhetoric of the Revolutionary War to demand civil rights and broaden the ideology of freedom. As a result, manumissi…

Timeline

…ite. In 1789, at the age of sixteen, he was manumitted. It is difficult to say exactly why Jea was freed, but occasionally Christian slaveholders faced the moral dilemma of enslaving their fellow Christians. With a new physical and spiritual freedom, Jea traveled as a preacher across the United States, West Indies, and Europe and shared the Gospel and his life story with audiences. He detailed his experiences in the Life, History, and Unparallele…

Crisis Decade (1850 – 1860)

…Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. Henry Bibb, originally a fugitive from Kentucky enjoyed a long successful career as a public speaker and prominent abolitionist. He published the Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave (1849) designed to tell his own story and provide a source of income as a free man. But former fugitives such as Bibb were often contracted…