New Year’s Day is traditionally a time when people make resolutions, sleep late after partying, and watch college bowl games and parades (when it does not fall on a Sunday). Historic events that fell on this day are often overlooked, and in the case historic events involving black Americans, they would would probably gain more attention if they had taken place during that short month we now dedicate to black history.
This day marks the first publication of The Liberator:
On January 1, 1831 the first issue of The Liberator appeared with the motto: “Our country is the world—our countrymen are mankind.”
William Lloyd Garrison was a journalistic crusader who advocated the immediate emancipation of all slaves and gained a national reputation for being one of the most radical of American abolitionists. The Liberator denounced the Compromise of 1850, condemned the Kansas-Nebraska Act, damned the Dred Scott decision and hailed John Brown’s raid as “God’s method of dealing retribution upon the head of the tyrant.”
The slaveholders in the South demanded the end of the incendiary paper and the state of Georgia offered a $5,000 reward for Garrison’s capture. The Liberator was a mighty force from the beginning and became the most influential newspaper in the antebellum antislavery crusade.
“I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as un-compromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; – but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.” —William Lloyd Garrison, in the first issue of The Liberator
The Liberator
The Liberator (1831–1865) was an abolitionist newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp in 1831. Garrison co-published weekly issues of The Liberator from Boston continuously for 35 years, from January 1, 1831, to the final issue of December 29, 1865. Although its circulation was only about 3,000, and three-quarters of subscribers were African Americans in 1834, the newspaper earned nationwide notoriety for its uncompromising advocacy of "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves" in the United States.
Thanks to The Liberator Scanning Project, every issue of The Liberator is available online in .pdf format.
William Lloyd Garrison was born in 1805 and died in 1879.
The son of a merchant sailing master, William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1805 […] When he was 25, Garrison joined the Abolition movement. He became associated with the American Colonization Society, an organization that believed free blacks should emigrate to a territory on the west coast of Africa. At first glance the society seemed to promote the freedom and happiness of blacks. There certainly were members who encouraged the manumission (granting of freedom) to slaves. However, it turned out that the number of members advocating manumission constituted a minority. Most members had no wish to free slaves; their goal was only to reduce the numbers of free blacks in the country and thus help preserve the institution of slavery. By 1830 Garrison had rejected the programs of the American Colonization Society. By this time he had worked as co-editor of an antislavery paper started by Benjamin Lundy in Maryland, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. And on January 1, 1831, he published the first issue of his own anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator.
In speaking engagements and through the Liberator and other publications, Garrison advocated the immediate emancipation of all slaves. This was an unpopular view during the 1830s, even with northerners who were against slavery. What would become of all the freed slaves? Certainly they could not assimilate into American society, they thought. Garrison believed that they could assimilate. He believed that, in time, all blacks would be equal in every way to the country's white citizens. They, too, were Americans and entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Though circulation of the Liberator was relatively limited -- there were less than 400 subscriptions during the paper's second year -- Garrison soon gained a reputation for being the most radical of abolitionists. Still, his approach to emancipation stressed nonviolence and passive resistance, and he did attract a following. In 1832 he helped organize the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and, the following year, the American Anti-Slavery Society. These were the first organizations dedicated to promoting immediate emancipation.
Garrison was unyielding and steadfast in his beliefs. He believed that the the Anti-Slavery Society should not align itself with any political party. He believed that women should be allowed to participate in the Anti-Slavery Society. He believed that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document. Many within the Society differed with these positions, however, and in 1840 there was a major rift in the Society which resulted in the founding of two additional organizations: the Liberty Party, a political organization, and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which did not admit women. Later, in 1851, the once devoted and admiring Frederick Douglass stated his belief that the Constitution could be used as a weapon against slavery. Garrison, feeling betrayed, attacked Douglass through his paper. Douglass responded, and the attacks intensified. Garrison and Douglass would never reconcile their differences. Although Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was a government decree, Garrison supported it wholeheartedly. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, Garrison published his last issue of the Liberator. After thirty five years and 1,820 issues, Garrison did not fail to publish a single issue.
Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University, was asked which obstacles were faced by the abolitionist movement:
One might say that the greatest obstacle facing the Abolitionist Movement as it develops in the 1830's was not so much the heated hostility of the white South -- everybody would understand that the white South would be bitterly opposed to a movement demanding the abolition of slavery -- but the indifference, you might say, in the North. There was a conspiracy of silence about the issue of slavery. Both major political parties, Whigs and Democrats, basically agreed to keep this out of politics. You just were not allowed to raise this question in a public forum. And when abolitionists did begin to talk about slavery publicly, in the North, mobs would break up their meetings; their printing presses were destroyed. Elijah Lovejoy, an editor in Illinois, was murdered by a mob, trying to defend his printing press. Why was this? I think it's because so many northerners were deeply implicated in the institution of slavery itself -- the trade of cotton, the financing of cotton. Then there were racist fears that the abolition of slavery would unleash a flood of black migrants into the North, competing for jobs and things like this. And there were those who felt, "Well, if we raise the slavery question, it's going to destroy the American Union." For those and other reasons, as I say, there was this conspiracy of silence. And the first thing abolitionists had to do was just put the issue on the table, in a way that it couldn't be ignored. Or as Wendell Phillips, the great abolitionist orator, said: We must divide public opinion. Our enemy is not the slaveowner only. It's also the person of good will who simply doesn't want to talk about slavery and wants to keep it off the national agenda. I think the greatest achievement of the Abolitionist Movement in its first decade was to make slavery a public issue, to destroy the conspiracy of silence on slavery.
Reading about those people who didn’t want to talk about slavery then reminds me all too well of those who don’t want to talk about its inheritance—namely, racism and white supremacy—today.
On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a presidential proclamation and executive order which we now refer to as the Emancipation Proclamation.
I don’t know about you, but I clearly remember being taught in grade school that this proclamation was when “Lincoln freed the slaves,” and he was given the title of “The Great Emancipator.” Today, many of us know that this is far from the truth. But students are still taught this and other fallacies like “Columbus discovered America.”
Thomas Nast’s graphic art print titled “Emancipation Proclamation” has been studied by art history scholars.
Thomas Nast's celebration of the emancipation of Southern slaves with the end of the Civil War. Nast envisions a somewhat optimistic picture of the future of free blacks in the United States. The central scene shows the interior of a freedman's home with the family gathered around a "Union" wood stove. The father bounces his small child on his knee while his wife and others look on. On the wall near the mantel hang a picture of Abraham Lincoln and a banjo. Below this scene is an oval portrait of Lincoln and above it, Thomas Crawford's statue of "Freedom." On either side of the central picture are scenes contrasting black life in the South under the Confederacy (left) with visions of the freedman's life after the war (right). At top left fugitive slaves are hunted down in a coastal swamp. Below, a black man is sold, apart from his wife and children, on a public auction block. At bottom a black woman is flogged and a male slave branded. Above, two hags, one holding the three-headed hellhound Cerberus, preside over these scenes, and flee from the gleaming apparition of Freedom. In contrast, on the right, a woman with an olive branch and scales of justice stands triumphant. Here, a freedman's cottage can be seen in a peaceful landscape. Below, a black mother sends her children off to "Public School." At bottom a free Negro receives his pay from a cashier. Two smaller scenes flank Lincoln's portrait. In one a mounted overseer flogs a black field slave (left); in the other a foreman politely greets Negro cotton-field workers.
For a less idealized portrait of the proclamation, I send my students to the Zinn Education Project and have them read the chapter entitled “Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom”—and this piece from 2012 by Bill Bigelow:
Here’s a history quiz to use with people you run into today: Ask them who ended slavery. I taught high school U.S. history for almost 30 years, and as we began our study, students knew the obvious answer: Abraham Lincoln. But by the time our study ended, several weeks later, their “Who ended slavery?” essays were more diverse, more complex—and more accurate. In coming months and years, teachers’ jobs will be made harder by Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, in which Daniel Day-Lewis gives a brilliant performance as, well, Lincoln-the-abolitionist. The only problem is that Lincoln was not an abolitionist.
Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner chose to concentrate on the final months of Lincoln’s life, when, as the film shows in compelling fashion, the president went all-out to pass the 13th Amendment, forever ending U.S. slavery. Missing from this portrait is the early Lincoln—the Lincoln that did everything possible to preserve slavery.
Bigelow addresses the “Great Emancipator” moniker:
Lincoln may be remembered today as “the Great Emancipator,” but Lincoln was no abolitionist. His aim throughout his presidency was to keep the Union together, a task fraught with contradictions, as large swaths of the country embraced both the Union and slavery—for example, Missouri, Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. As Lincoln himself said famously in August 1862, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”
Lincoln’s stance on slavery as the war progressed was based on military rather than moral considerations. And that’s the necessary context for students to approach the Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect 150 years ago, on January 1, 1863. Interestingly, despite the fact that the proclamation is mentioned in virtually every textbook, it is never printed in its entirety. Perhaps that’s because despite its lofty-sounding title, this is no stirring document of liberty and equality; in fact, it does not even criticize slavery. “Emancipation” is presented purely as a measure of military necessity. Lincoln offered freedom to enslaved people in those areas only “in rebellion against the United States.” It reads like a document written by a lawyer—one who happened to be a Commander in Chief—not an abolitionist. It even goes county by county listing areas where slavery would remain in force, “precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.” According to Eric Foner, the proclamation left more than 20 percent of enslaved people still in slavery—800,000 out of 3.9 million.
Far more interesting (and accurate) than the faux humanitarian portraits of Lincoln are studies of the abolitionists who spearheaded the movement. I prefer using the PBS series by that name: The Abolitionists.
Abolitionist allies Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Angelina Grimké turned a despised fringe movement against chattel slavery into a force that literally changed the nation.
The entire series can be viewed on YouTube.
Taking a step further into unpacking history, it’s important to understand that slavery didn’t end after the Civil War.
The PBS film Slavery by Another Name delved further.
Directed by Sam Pollard, produced by Catherine Allan and Douglas Blackmon, written by Sheila Curran Bernard, the tpt National Productions project is based on the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name challenges one of our country’s most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The documentary recounts how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, keeping hundreds of thousands of African Americans in bondage, trapping them in a brutal system that would persist until the onset of World War II.
Based on Blackmon’s research, Slavery by Another Name spans eight decades, from 1865 to 1945, revealing the interlocking forces in both the South and the North that enabled this “neoslavery” to begin and persist. Using archival photographs and dramatic re-enactments filmed on location in Alabama and Georgia, it tells the forgotten stories of both victims and perpetrators of neoslavery and includes interviews with their descendants living today
Though more and more books and films are beginning to correct the skimpy (and often incorrect) knowledge of the black history of this nation, there is still much to be done. Too few teachers (and students) avail themselves of scholarly publications like The Journal of African American History.
The Journal of African American History (JAAH), formerly The Journal of Negro History, was founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in January 1916. Since that time the JAAH has become the leading scholarly publication on African American life and history. Now in its second century, the JAAH publishes original scholarly articles on all aspects of the African American experience. Most recently, JAAH special issues and symposia have focused on Women and Slavery in the Atlantic World, The Legacy of Malcolm X, and African Americans and Movements for Reparations, Past, Present, and Future.
Jan. 1 is also the birthday of JAAH.
I have written about Dr. Woodson in the past and his importance—not only the founder of Negro History Week, but as a scholar and historian.
In his seminal work The Mis-education of the Negro, Woodson said:
In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.
Racism is not good for the majority—or for those of us who fall into a category dubbed “minority.” Neither is ignorance. And we have yet to eradicate the ignorance surrounding black history.
My 2017 New Year’s resolution is to spend more time reading through the JAAH archives and other sources of black history, and sharing the information I find with a wider audience.
If we don’t know where we’ve been, we don’t know where we stand today—and where we are headed in the future.
At a time when a newly-elected person who is to become some folk’s president has vowed to undo our hard-won civil rights victories, all of us—no matter our color—need to be better armed with the lessons history can teach us. As Howard Zinn has often said, “History is a weapon.”
Let us arm ourselves and fight on.