Massachusetts - State & Local History, American Revolution - Politics & Government, Slavery & Abolitionism - African American History, Northeast & Mid-Atlantic State & Local Government

Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform

Name: Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform
Author: Bruce Laurie
ISBN: 9780521605175

by Bruce Laurie

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

Why was antebellum Massachusetts one of the few Northern states in which African American males enjoyed the right to vote? Why did it pass personal liberty laws that helped protect fugitive slaves from federal authorities in the two decades preceding the Civil War? Why did the Bay State at this time integrate its public facilities and public schools? Beyond Garrison finds answers to these important questions in unfamiliar and surprising places. Its protagonists are not the leading lights of American abolitionism grouped around William Lloyd Garrison but are the less well-known men and women in country towns and villages, encouraged by African American activists throughout the state. Bruce Laurie's fresh approach trains the spotlight on the politics of such antislavery advocates. Laurie demonstrates their penchant for third-party politics, with a view toward explaining the relationship between social movements based on race, class, and nationality, on the one hand, and political insurgency, on the other.

Synopsis

Why Massachusetts has gained a reputation for racial intolerance despite formerly beneficient behavior towards African-Americans.

About the Author, Bruce Laurie

Bruce Laurie was born in Linden, NJ, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in
1971. He did post-doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, and has held teaching positions at Mount Holyoke College and the University of Warwick. Professor Laurie has been honored with fellowships from the Carnegie Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Antiquarian Society. He has travelled to Western Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. A member of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Asociation, his articles and reviews have appeared in numerous collections of essays, as well as Labor History, Journal of Social History, and Journal of American History. He is a member of the editorial committee of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, and is the co-editor of Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker (Greenwood Press, 1979). He is also the author of Working People of Philadelphia, 1800-1850 (Temple University Press, 1980), and Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (Hill & Wang, 1989).