Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence

From its origins in the 1750s, the white-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance. 

But a century later, any rights black Americans held as enslaved or free people had been voided. As conditions deteriorated for African Americans, black abolitionist leaders embraced violence as the only means of shocking Northerners out of their apathy and instigating an antislavery war. 

In her forthcoming book, Wellesley College historian Kellie Carter Jackson provides the first historical analysis exclusively focused on the tactical use of violence among antebellum black activists.

Force and Freedom takes readers beyond the honorable politics of moral suasion and the romanticism of the Underground Railroad and into an exploration of the agonizing decisions, strategies, and actions of the black abolitionists who, though lacking an official political voice, were nevertheless responsible for instigating monumental social and political change.

Kellie Carter Jackson is a historian and an Assistant Professor at Wellesley College in the Department of Africana Studies. She earned her B.A. from Howard University and her PhD from Columbia University. 

Copies of Force and Freedom will be available for purchase and signing at the event.