Feb 20, 2023
Cliff and Isaac join Jesse Olsavsky, author of The Most Absolute
Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of
Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835–1861, for a discussion on his
book on the early abolitionist movement. They discuss the textbook
history of abolition, and how this masks the role of runaways and
other radicals substituting them for a white middle-class
leadership, what Vigilance Committees were and how they acted, the
exchange of ideas between different social groups in the
abolitionist movement, the role runaway interviews had on the
movement and its parallels today. They also talk about the Fugitive
Slave Act and its effect on the Committees, the international
dimension of abolitionism, the abolitionist view of the U.S.
republic and the links between abolitionism and other
movements.
Prof. Olsavsky recommended these texts as good primary sources on
revolutionary abolitionism.
Thomas Smallwood (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/smallwood/smallwood.html)
Harriet Jacobs (https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html)
Phillip Foner's edited collection of speeches by Frederick Douglass
(https://archive.org/details/DouglassSelectionsWritings)
Frances Ellen Walker's poems (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/frances-ellen-watkins-harper)
Martin Delany's novel Blake (https://archive.org/details/blakeorhutsofame00dela)
Harriet Beecher Stowe's second novel Dred (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55012)