TITLE: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism
SPEAKER: Maurice Jackson
EVENT DATE: 02/26/2009
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 60 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Anthony Benezet is recognized as the founder of the antislavery movement in America in the mid-1700s. Benezet believed the British ban on slavery should have been extended to the colonies, and worked to convince his Quaker brethren that slave-owning was not consistent with Christian doctrine.
Benezet and his fight against slavery was the topic of a lecture by Maurice Jackson, an assistant professor in the history department at Georgetown University. Jackson discussed his recently published book "Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism."
Benezet transformed Quaker anti-slavery sentiment into a broad-based transatlantic movement. According to Jackson, Benezet translated ideas from diverse sources -- Enlightenment philosophy, African travel narratives, Quakerism, practical life and the Bible -- into concrete action. He founded the African Free School in Philadelphia, where future abolitionist leaders Absalom Jones and James Forten studied.
Speaker Biography: Maurice Jackson, a former Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, teaches Atlantic and African-American history at Georgetown. He currently is at work on a social, political and cultural history of African Americans in Washington D.C. (1790 to the present). He is co-editor, with Jackie Bacon, of "African-Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents," to be published in 2010. Jackson will be inducted into the Washington, D.C., Hall of Fame in April for his years of service to the people in the nation???s capital.
