Education:A Newspaper in time - an Abolitionist Account

Grade/Subject

9-11th grade

Time Required for Completed Lesson

Three block periods

Resources

Background Information

Free Northern blacks and their enslaved Southern brethren participated in personal as well as organized acts of resistance against slavery. In the North, African Americans faced huge odds and the systematic violation of their civil liberties. Consequently, many fervently supported the abolitionist cause with both open and surreptitious acts of rebellion. Northern blacks began forming groups to support the cause for freedom. As early as 1817, black Philadelphians formally protested African colonization, and by the late 1820s, black participation in anti-slavery societies had proliferated throughout the northeastern United States.

Abolitionists newspapers, such as William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator, funded abolitionist activities, thanks to the consistent and generous financial support of black activists, who made up the majority of the paper’s subscribers in its early, critical years. Former slaves and descendants of slaves also published their own newspapers to deliver powerful testimonies against slavery, at the risk of being enslaved themselves.

Fierce words and vivid images were among the tools that radical “immediatist” abolitionists used to further their cause. Instead of gently pleading their case, they employed sensational language to shock people into action against slavery. On posters for abolitionist rallies and meetings, the fervor of the language is matched only by its physical, typographical boldness and size. This poster's appeal to the “Citizens of Boston” and “Sons of Otis, and Hancock” to “see that Massachusetts Laws are not outraged with your consent,” conjures up the signers and the principles of the Declaration of Independence to stir the reader to act in favor of the cause. http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/abolitionism/spread_word.htm