Created Equal: The Abolitionists

The PBS film The Abolitionists brings to life the struggles of the men and women who led the battle to end slavery. Using this film to ground our discussion, we will explore the lives of the individuals who participated in the antislavery movement:  newspaper editor William Lloyd Garrison; former slave, author, and activist Frederick Douglass; Angelina Grimké, daughter of a rich South Carolina slaveholder; Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin; and John Brown, ultimately executed for his armed seizure of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Clips from the film will be shown at the event, and the entire three-part film  can be viewed in its entirety at: createdequal.neh.gov.

Our facilitator, Joanne Pope Melish, is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and a visiting scholar in American Studies at Brown University. She is the author of Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860.