Courage and Conscience

"Courage and Conscience" documents the biracial cooperation that helped shape the enlightened racial situation of nineteenth-century Boston. Until recently little was known of the contributions and participation of African Americans in the antebellum abolition movement. In the past, Blacks were portrayed as pawns manipulated by great social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison. Recent research, however, has revealed an impressive level of African American participation in cities of the North, particularly in Boston, one of the centers of antislavery agitation. Very early in the history of the United States, Massachusetts had granted full voting rights to African American males, who in other states were subject to various property qualifications. This situation, combined with the reformist zeal of many Bostonians, led to the evolution of a militant abolitionist community. In this atmosphere, Black activist David Walker could galvanize his community and cause white reformers such as Garrison to realize that Black activism was critical to the success of the abolitionist cause. Walker, Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Maria W.
Stewart, and others negotiated racial and cultural differences to form a coalition that would eventually influence national policy and sway public sentiment. The contents include: "David Walker and William Lloyd Garrison: Racial Cooperation and the Shaping of Boston Abolition" by Donald M. Jacobs; "Abolitionism and the Nature of Antebellum Reform" by William E. Gienapp; "The Art of the Antislavery Movement," by Bernard F. Reilly, Jr.; "Massachusetts Abolitionists Document the Slave Experience" by Robert L. Hall; "Boston, Abolition, and the Atlantic World, 1820-1861" by James Brewer Stewart; "The Affirmation of Manhood: Black Garrisonians in Antebellum Boston" by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton; "The Black Presence in the West End of Boston, 1800ETH1864: A Demographic Map" by Adelaide M. Cromwell; "Boston's Black Churches: Institutional Centers of the Antislavery Movement" by Roy E. Finkenbine; "What If I Am a Woman?" Maria W. Stewart's Defense of Black Women's Political Activism" by Marilyn Richardson; and, "Integration versus Separatism: William Cooper Nell's Role in the Struggle for Equality" by Dorothy Porter Wesley.