Alexander Crummell (1819-98) Born in New York City, USA, Crummell was an educator, scholar, minister, missionary, and anti-slavery activist. He traveled to England in the 1840s to raise money for the abolitionist cause, moved to Liberia in the 1850s to educate and and spread Christianity among native Africans, and returned to the U.S. in the 1870s to establish the first independent Black Episcopal congregation in Washington, D.C. While teaching at Howard University, he founded the first major intellectual society for African Americans, the American Negro Academy (ANA), in 1897. Image from Alexander Crummell, The Greatness of Christ: And Other Sermons. Thomas Whittaker, 1882. Suggested Readings: Crummell, Alexander. Africa and America: Addresses and Discourses. Willey & Co., 1891. —. The Future of Africa: Being Addresses, Sermons, Etc., Etc., Delivered in the Republic of Liberia. Charles Scribner, 1862. Thompson, Stephen. “Alexander Crummell.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/alexander-crummell/. Amanda Berry Smith (1837-1915) Born enslaved in Long Green, Maryland, USA, Smith resettled in Pennsylvania, received an informal education through Sunday school, and became involved in the Methodist church after her father purchased his family’s freedom. In 1899, she opened The Amanda Smith Orphanage and Industrial Home for Abandoned and Destitute Colored Children in Chicago. Her autobiography, published in 1893, recounts her evangelical and missionary work in her travels across America, England, Ireland, Scotland, India, and Africa. Image from Henry F. Kletzing and William Henry Crogman, Progress of a Race, Or The Remarkable Advancement of the American Negro. J. L. Nichols, 1898. Suggested Readings: Pope-Levison, Priscilla. “Amanda Berry Smith.” In Turn the Pulpit Loose: Two Centuries of American Women Evangelists, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 85-96. Smith, Amanda. An Autobiography, The Story of the Lord’s Dealing with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist Containing an Account of her Life Work of Faith, and Her Travels in America, England, Ireland, Scotland, India, and Africa, as An Independent Missionary. Meyer & Brother Publishers, 1893. Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) Born enslaved in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, Cooper became a well-known scholar, educator, speaker, and voice for Black feminist thought. She was a devout member of the Black women’s club movement that arose in the 1890s, and she dedicated her life to advocating for the uplift and education of Black women. Her most famous text, A Voice from the South, was published in 1892. In 1924, Cooper received her PhD in history from the Sorbonne in Paris, France. Image from Library of Congress, C.M. Bell, photographer, ca. 1901. Suggested Readings: Cooper, Anna Julia. “Colored Women as Wage Earners.” Southern Workman, vol. 28 (August 1899), pp. 295–98. —. A Voice from the South. The Aldine Printing House, 1892. Gines, Kathryn T. “Anna Julia Cooper.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2015, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anna-julia-cooper/. Moody-Turner, Shirley. “Prospects for the Study of Anna Julia Cooper.” Resources for American Literary Study, Vol. 40 (2018), pp. 1-29. Bishop Walter Hawkins (ca. 1809-94) Hawkins was born enslaved in Georgetown, Maryland, USA. After fleeing slavery and settling in Canada West, he was ordained as a minister and became pastor of the British Methodist Episcopal Church in Ontario. His biography was written by British Black journalist, S. J. Celestine Edwards, in 1891. That same year, Hawkins traveled to England on a speaking tour to raise funds to build churches for Black parishioners back in Canada. When he died in 1894, he was the presiding Bishop of the British Methodist Episcopal Church. Image from S. J. Celestine Edwards, From Slavery to a Bishopric, or, The Life of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church Canada. London: Kensit, 1891. Suggested Readings: “Bishop Walter Hawkins.” The Railway Signal; Or, Lights Along the Line: A Journal of Evangelistic and Temperance Work on All Railways, vol. 4, 1891, pp. 173-74. Edwards, S. J. Celestine. From Slavery to a Bishopric, or, The Life of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church Canada. London: Kensit, 1891. Hamilton, James Cleland. “John Brown in Canada.” The Canadian, vol. 4, 1895, pp. 119-40. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Born enslaved in Hale’s Ford, Virginia, USA, Washington became an educator, orator, and author. He championed racial uplift by means of industrial education, business, and institution building. In 1881, he founded the historically Black college, Tuskegee Institute, in Alabama, and he was one of the founding members of the National Negro Business League, organized in 1900. Washington’s speech, known as the “Atlanta Compromise,” was delivered at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition and garnered him national attention, attracting both commendation and criticism. Image from Library of Congress, C. E Cheyne, photographer, 1903. Suggested Readings: Moore, Jacqueline M. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift. SR Books, 2003. Norrell, Robert J. Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. Belknap Press/Harvard UP, 2009. Smock, Raymond. Booker T. Washington: Black Leadership in the Age of Jim Crow. Ivan R. Dee, 2009. Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Exposition Address.” Delivered at The Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, Sept. 18, 1895. —. Up from Slavery. Doubleday & Co, Inc., 1901. Carrie Steele Logan (1829-1900) Born enslaved in Georgia, USA, Logan became an educator and philanthropist. While working at the Atlanta Terminal Railroad Station as a maid, she used an abandoned box car to house orphans who were left the depot. In 1888, she chartered her own orphanage in Atlanta. The Black orphanage cared for parentless children, including children who were of victims of the Georgia convict lease system, children born in convict camps, and juveniles accused of petty crimes. The Carrie Steele-Pitts Home is still running successfully in Atlanta. Image from Henry F. Kletzing and William Henry Crogman, Progress of a Race, Or The Remarkable Advancement of the American Negro From the Bondage of Slavery, Ignorance and Poverty to the Freedom of Citizenship, Intelligence, Affluence, Honor and Trust. J. L. Nichols, 1897. Suggested Readings: “Carrie Steele Logan.” Georgia Women of Achievement, 2016, https://www.georgiawomen.org/carrie-steele-logan. Dorsey, Allison. To Build Our Lives Together: Community Formation in Black Atlanta, 1875-1906. University of Georgia Press, 2004. Henson, Tevi T. “Carrie Steele Logan (1829-1900).” New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2019, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/carrie-steele-logan-1829-1900. S. J. Celestine Edwards (ca. 1858-94) Born on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean, Edwards moved to the United Kingdom in the 1870s, where he settled first in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then in London, England. He is known as the U.K.’s first editor of African descent. He edited the British newspapers, Lux (1892) and Fraternity (1893), the official organ of the Society for the Recognition of the Brotherhood of Man (SRBM). Alongside Ida B. Wells, Edwards lectured in British cities against racial violence and lynching in the United States. Image from the National Archives, William Harry Horlington, photographer, 1894. Suggested Readings: Bressey, Caroline. Empire, Race and the Politics of Anti-Caste. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013. Edwards, S. J. Celestine. From Slavery to a Bishopric, or, The Life of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church Canada. London: Kensit, 1891. —. Political Atheism: A Lecture. London: Kensit, 1889. Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark (1823-92) Born free in Concord, Massachusetts, USA, Clark became an antislavery activist, civil rights advocate, and educator. After moving to Boston in the 1840s, she joined the Joy Street African Baptist Church, also known as the African Meeting House, the birthplace of the New England Anti-Slavery Society and a central meeting site for abolitionists. Supported by the American Missionary Association (AMA) as well as the Friends’ Freedmen’s Association (FFA), Clark spent years educating newly freed people in the South. Representational image created by the Robbins House Suggested Readings: Davis, Christina Lenore. The Collective Identities of Women Teachers in Black Schools in the Post-Bellum South. PhD dissertation, University of Georgia, 2016. “Ellen Garrison.” The Robbins House: Concord’s African American History Website, 2020, https://robbinshouse.org/story/ellen-garrison-jackson/. Frances Ellen Watkins (F. E. W.) Harper (1825-1911) Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, Harper was a writer, poet, teacher, abolitionist, and suffragist. Harper was the first known African American woman to publish a short story. Her literary achievements include a recently recovered volume of poetry, Forest Leaves (ca. 1846); a poetry volume, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) a serialized novel, Minnie’s Sacrifice (1869); and a separately published novel, Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892), among others. In 1894, she helped found the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Image from frontispiece of Harper’s Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted. Boston: James H. Earle, 1892. Suggested Readings: Foster, Frances Smith. A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader. The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1990. Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins. “Two Offers.” The Anglo-African Magazine, June-July 1859. Ortner, Johanna. “Lost No More: Recovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Forest Leaves.” Common-place, vol. 15, no. 4, 2015, http://commonplace.online/article/lost-no-more-recovering-frances-ellen-watkins-harpers-forest-leaves/. Frederick Douglass (1818-95) Born enslaved in Talbot County, Maryland, USA, Douglass escaped slavery and became a renowned abolitionist, orator, reformer, writer, and editor. The first of his three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, was published in 1845. In 1847, he launched his anti-slavery newspapers, The North Star (1847-51), which was then merged with another paper to form Frederick Douglass’ Paper (1851-58). Before and after the Civil War, Douglass lectured across the United Kingdom against slavery and racial violence. Image from Library of Congress, ca. 1877. Suggested Readings: Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster, 2020. Douglass, Frederick. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” In The Portable Frederick Douglass, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and John Stauffer, Penguin, 2016, pp. 195-222. Murray, Hannah-Rose. “Douglass in Britain and Ireland.” Frederick Douglass in Britain, 2020, http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/. Stauffer, John, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier. Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American. Liveright, 2015. Henry “Box” Brown (c. 1815-1897) Born enslaved in Louisa County, Virginia, USA, Brown famously escaped slavery on March 23, 1849 by shipping himself to a free state in a box through the Adams Express Company, a private mail service. The box was 3 feet long by 2 feet 8 inches deep by 2 feet wide and was marked as “dry goods.” He published two editions of his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself. The first was printed in 1849 in Boston; the second in Manchester, England in 1851. He lectured throughout the United States and England, where he later moved, performing with his anti-slavery panorama called “Mirror of Slavery.” A major part of his panorama performances included the original box in which he escaped slavery. Image from frontispiece, Narrative of Henry Box Brown. Boston: Brown and Stearns, 1849. Suggested Readings: Brown, Henry “Box.” Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery, Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide. Written from a Statement of Facts Made by Himself. With Remarks Upon the Remedy for Slavery. By Charles Stearns. Boston: Brown and Stearns, 1849. —. Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery, Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide. Written from a Statement of Facts Made by Himself. With Remarks Upon the Remedy for Slavery. By Charles Stearns. Second edition. Manchester: Lee & Glynn, 1851. Cutter, Martha J. “Will the Real Henry ‘Box’ Brown Please Stand Up?” Common-place, vol. 16., no. 1, 2015, http://commonplace.online/article/will-the-real-henry-box-brown-please-stand-up/. Henry Highland Garnet (1815-82) Born enslaved in Chesterville (then New Market), Maryland, USA, Garnet became an abolitionist, minister, educator, and orator. His famous speech, “An Address to the Slaves of the United States,” called on enslaved peoples to rebel and resist the system of slavery. The speech was delivered at the National Negro Convention of 1843 held in Buffalo, New York. In the 1840s, Garnet travelled to England and Scotland to give antislavery speeches, and in 1852 he left England for Jamaica to work as a missionary. Image from National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, James U. Stead, photographer, ca. 1881. Suggested Readings: Duane, Anna Mae. Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation. NYU Press, 2020. Garnet, Henry Highland. The Past and the Present Condition, and the Destiny, of the Colored Race: A Discourse Delivered at the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Female Benevolent Society of Troy, N.Y., Feb. 14, 1848. J. C. Kneeland, 1848. Schor, Joel. Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice of Black Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century. Greenwood Press, 1977. Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) Born into slavery in Mississippi, USA, during the Civil War, Wells became an investigative journalist, educator, civil rights advocate, and women’s suffrage leader. From 1893-94, she traveled throughout England to campaign against lynchings back home in the US. She published two pamphlets documenting horrific and widespread incidents of racial violence, including Southern Horrors (1892) and The Red Record (1895). She was an active member among African American women’s clubs as well as suffrage clubs for Black women in Chicago. Image from Library of Congress, ca. 1895. Suggested Readings: Davidson, James West. ‘They Say’: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race. Oxford UP, 2007. Giddings, Paula J. Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. HarperCollins, 2008. Hayden, Joe. “‘A Hearing in the Press’: Ida B. Wells’ Lecture Tour of 1893-1894.” Political Pioneer of the Press: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Transnational Crusade for Social Justice. Edited by Lori Amber Roessner and Jodi L. Rightler-McDaniels, Lexington Books, 2018, pp. 17-35. Well, Ida B. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, second edition. Edited by Alfreda M. Duster, University of Chicago Press, 2020. J. A. Arneaux (1855-unknown) Born in Savannah, Georgia, USA, J. A. Arneaux was a Shakespearean actor, the manager and founder of an all-Black theatrical troupe, a social reformer, and an editor. His newspaper, the New York Enterprise (c. 1884-86), of which no known extant copies have been found. To push back against the reductive stage figure of the minstrel, Arneaux self-published an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Richard III in 1886. A member of a pioneer theater group named the Louisiana Coloured Troupe, Arneaux went on to found the Astor Place Tragedy Company in New York City. His company provided a preeminent stage for Black performances of Shakespeare’s works. Image from William J. Simmons, Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. Geo. M. Rewell & Co., 1887. Suggested Readings: Arneaux, J. A. Shakespeare’s historical tragedy of Richard III. Adapted for amateurs and the drawing room. Self-published by Arneaux, 1886. Errol, Hill. Shakespeare in Sable: A History of Black Shakespearean Actors, University of Massachusetts Press, 1984. Simmons, William J. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. Geo. M. Rewell & Co., 1887. Reverend Joseph Jackson Fuller (1825-1908) Born enslaved in Spanish Town, St. Catherine, Jamaica, Fuller was emancipated in 1833 when the country abolished slavery. At 18 years old, he left Jamaica for West Africa as a Baptist missionary. Fuller later settled in England, where he traveled around the country delivering sermons at Baptist churches and settled in Hackney. His autobiography, which was never published, is included in the Baptist Mission Archives at the Regent’s Park Baptist College in Oxford. Image from presentation of Annette Robinson. Suggested Readings: Donington, Katie. “Local Roots/Global Routes: Slavery, Memory, and Identity in Hackney.” In Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery: Local Nuances of a ‘National Sin,’ edited by Donington, Ryan Hanley, and Jessica Moody, Liverpool UP, 2016, pp. 172-94. Glennie, Robert. Joseph Jackson Fuller: An African Christian Missionary. Carey Press, 1930. Newman, Las. “A West Indian Contribution to Christian Mission in Africa: The career of Joseph Jackson Fuller (1845-1888).” Transformation, vol. 18, no. 4, 2001, pp. 220-31. Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-93) Born free in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, Cary was a teacher, abolitionist, journalist, and newspaper editor and publisher. When she launched her antislavery newspaper, The Provincial Freeman (1853-57), she became the first female African American newspaper editor in North America. Cary also became the second African American woman in the United States to earn a law degree. Her 1852 pamphlet, a pamphlet entitled A Plea for Emigration, encouraged people of African descent living in the US to emigrate to Canada. Image from Courtesy of National Archives of Canada, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons Suggested Readings: Cary, Mary Ann Shadd. A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West, in Its Moral, Social and Political Aspect: with Suggestions respecting Mexico, West Indies and Vancouver’s Island for the Information of Colored Emigrants. Detroit: G. W. Pattison, 1852. Rhodes, Jane. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. Indiana UP, 1999. Streitmatter, Rodger. Raising Her Voice: African-American Women Journalists Who Changed History. University Press of Kentucky, 2014. Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) Born free in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, Terrell was a member of the women’s club movement and a social and racial justice advocate. She became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). To bring about legislation for women’s suffrage, she picketed the White House with the interracial, transnational coalition of female activists, the National Woman’s Party. In 1898, she delivered her well-known address, “The Progress of Colored Women,” at the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Washington, D.C. The closing words, “Lifting as we climb,” became the slogan of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. Image from the Library of Congress, ca. 1880-1900 Suggested Readings: Parker, Alison M. Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell. University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Quigley, Joan. Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital. Oxford UP, 2016. Terrell, Mary Church. “Club Work of Colored Women.” Southern Workman, August 1901, 435-38. —. A Colored Woman in a White World. Ransdell, Inc., 1940. Moses Roper (ca. 1815-91) Born enslaved in Caswell County, North Carolina, USA, Roper became an abolitionist, author, and orator. After escaping slavery, he relocated to London, England and published his slave narrative, Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery (1838). Roper toured England and Ireland to speak out against the slave system. He lectured in nearly 1,000 locations, and his autobiography was published in ten editions between 1847 and 1856. Image from Roper’s autobiography. Suggested Readings: Andrew, Mark. “Roper, Moses.” In African American Lives, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford UP, 2004, pp. 727-29. Cutter, Martha J. “Revising Torture: Moses Roper and the Visual Rhetoric of the Slave’s Body in the Transatlantic Abolition Movement”. ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, vol. 60, no. 3, 2014, pp. 371-411. Murray, Hannah-Rose. African American Abolitionist Website: Moses Roper’s mapped speaking locations, www.frederickdouglassinbritain.com. Roper, Moses. Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery. With an Appendix, Containing a List of Places Visited by the Author in Great Britain and Ireland and the British Isles; and Other Matter. Berwick-upon-Tweed: Published for the author and printed at the Warder Office, 1848. Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930) Born free in Portland, Maine, USA, Hopkins became a prolific writer. She wrote short stories, novels, newspaper articles, pamphlets, and plays. She also served as the women’s and literary editor of the Colored American Magazine (1900-09) from 1900 to 1904. Three of her novels were serialized in the magazine, including Hagar’s Daughter (1901-02), Winona (1902-03), and Of One Blood (1903). Of One Blood is considered the first mystery novel and the first early science fiction novel to be written by a Black American. In addition to fiction, Hopkins also wrote a series of collective biographical sketches highlighting the accomplishments of Black men and women in the United States. Image from public domain. Suggested Readings: “About Hopkins.” The Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society Website, http://www.paulinehopkinssociety.org/biography/. Brown, Lois. Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution. University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Hopkins, Pauline Elizabeth. Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South. The Colored Co-Operative Publishing Co., 1900. Wallinger, Hanna. Pauline E. Hopkins: A Literary Biography. University of Georgia Press, 2005. Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford (ca. 1858-1909) Born enslaved near Hampton, Virginia, USA, orphaned soon thereafter from his parents, and raised for almost two years among Native Americans, Stanford became a pastor, writer, philanthropist, and anti-lynching activist. He published two autobiographies, The Plea of the Ex-Slaves Now in Canada (1885) and From Bondage to Liberty (1889), three editions of a textbook called The Tragedy of the Negro in America (1897, 1898, 1903), and countless newspapers articles. After receiving an education at Suffield Institute in Connecticut and becoming ordained as a pastor with the help of Henry Highland Garnet, Stanford relocated to Canada West to pastor to struggling Black churches. From there he moved to England, where he became known as “Birmingham’s First Black Minister.” In 1895, he returned to the United States to investigate the lynchings of Black Americans. Image from the first edition of Stanford’s Tragedy of the Negro, 1897. Suggested Readings: The Magnificent Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Transatlantic Reformer and Race Man. Edited by Barbara McCaskill and Sidonia Serafini, with Paul Walker. University of Georgia Press, 2020. McCaskill, Barbara, and Sidonia Serafini. “Literacy and Education in the Transatlantic Texts of Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Birmingham’s First Black Minister,” The Iron Room, Archives and Collections, The Library of Birmingham, July 2, 2020. —. “Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford Pushes Back: The Politics of Antislavery in the Early Twentieth-Century Press,” Readex Blog, vol. 15, no. 1, Apr. 2020. Stanford, Peter Thomas. The Tragedy of the Negro in America: a Condensed History of the Enslavement, Sufferings, Emancipation, Present Condition and Progress of the Negro Race in the United States of America. Boston: Charles W. Wasto, 1897. Rose Grenfell (1855-?) Video presentations below courtesy of Annette Robinson and the Kingsway Project. Image from Annette Robinson presentation. Sarah Parker Remond (1826-94) Born free in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, Remond became an abolitionist, lecturer, human and women’s rights activist, and physician. As an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, she lectured throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland in the late 1850s and early 1860s to garner support for the abolition of slavery in the United States. She also worked with the American Equal Rights Association in order to secure suffrage for women and African Americans. Remond studied to become a nurse in London before moving to Italy, where she studied as a medical student and became a doctor. Image ca. 1865. Public domain. Suggested Readings: Porter, Dorothy Burnett. The Remonds of Salem Massachusetts: A Nineteenth Century Family Revisited. American Antiquarian Society, 1985. Salenius, Sirpa. An Abolitionist Abroad: Sarah Parker Remond in Cosmopolitan Europe. University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. Timothy Thomas Fortune (1856-1928) Born enslaved in Marianna, Jackson County, Florida, USA, Thomas became a civil rights activist and one of the most influential editors and publishers of Black newspapers in the United States. His New York City-based newspaper, the New York Age (1887-1960), was published weekly and employed luminaries in the Black community, including Gertrude Bustill Mossell and W. E. B. Du Bois. Fortune founded the civil rights group, the National Afro-American League, in 1887. Image from Daniel Wallace Culp, Twentieth Century Negro Literature, J.L. Nichols & Company, 1902. Suggested Readings: Calloway-Thomas, Carolyn, and Thurmon Garner. “Timothy Thomas Fortune.” In Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance: A-J, edited by Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelmanpp, Routledge, 2004, pp. 405-06. Fortune, Timothy Thomas. Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South. Fords, Howard, and Hulbert, 1884. Thornbrough, Emma Lou. T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist. University of Chicago Press, 1972. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA, Du Bois was sociologist, civil rights activist, educator, historian, author, and editor. Du Bois was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He established and edited the newspapers, the Moon Illustrated Weekly (1906) and the Horizon (1907-1910), which were precursors to the NACCP’s official organ, the Crisis (1910-present). His seminal collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), he described his concept of double consciousness” and proclaimed that “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.” Image from the Library of Congress, photographer Cornelius Marion Battey, 1918. Suggested Readings: Ashton, Susanna. “Du Bois’s Horizon: Documenting Movements of the Color Line.” MELUS, vol. 26, no. 4, 2001, pp. 3-23. Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1935. —. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903. Gaines, Kevin K. Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century. University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Moore, Jacqueline M. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift. SR Books, 2003. William and Ellen Craft (1824-1900; 1826-91) Born enslaved in Macon, Georgia, USA, the Crafts escaped slavery together in 1848. Ellen crossed-dressed as a man and passed as a white planter, and William posed as her servant. The married couple emigrated to England, where they spoke about their escape and lectured against slavery. Their joint autobiography, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, was published in 1860. Images from William Still, The Underground Railroad, 1872. Suggested Readings: Craft, William and Ellen. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, with an introduction by Barbara McCaskill, University of Georgia Press, 2011. McCaskill, Barbara. Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory. University of Georgia Press, 2015. —. “William and Ellen Craft (1824-1900; 1826-1891).” New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2020, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/william-and-ellen-craft-1824-1900-1826-1891. William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934) Based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Trotter was a prominent civil rights activist, newspaper editor, and businessman. In 1901 he founded the Boston Guardian (1901-ca. 1950s). With W. E. B. Du Bois, he helped to found the Niagara Movement as well as contributed to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Alongside Rev. Peter Thomas Stanford, he served on the committee of the New England Suffrage League. Image from Trotter Multicultural Center. Public domain, undated. Suggested Readings: Fox, Stephen R. The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter. Atheneum, 1970. Greenidge, Kerri K. Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter. Liveright, 2019. “Timeline of William Monroe Trotter’s Life.” The William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center, University of Michigan, 2020, https://trotter.umich.edu/article/timeline-william-monroe-trotters-life. William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926) Born enslaved in Macon, Georgia, USA, Scarborough became a scholar, teacher, and educational administrator and advocate. Considered the first Black American classical scholar, he published the popular Greek textbook, First Lessons in Greek (1881). Scarborough also served as president of the historically Black college Wilberforce University in Ohio from 1908 to 1920. Image from William A. Joiner, Half Century of Freedom of the Negro in Ohio. Press of Smith Adv. Co., 1915. Suggested Readings: Scarborough, William Sanders. The Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough: An American Journey from Slavery to Scholarship, edited by Michele Valerie Ronnick, Wayne State UP, 2005. —. First Lessons in Greek. A.S. Barnes & Co, 1881. —. Questions on Latin Grammar, with Appendix. University Publication Company of New York, 1887. The Works of William Sanders Scarborough: Black Classicist and Race Leader. Edited by Michele Valerie Ronnick, Oxford UP, 2006. William Wells Brown (ca. 1814-84) Born enslaved near Montgomery County, Kentucky, USA, Brown became an abolitionist, lecturer, historian, playwright, and novelist. His writings were prolific and spanned the literary genres of travel writing, drama, and fiction. His novel, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter (1853), is considered the first novel published by a Black American. He also published several memoirs, the first of which was his slave narrative, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (1847). His subsequent memoirs documented his travels throughout the United Kingdom lecturing against slavery. Image from Brown, Three Years in Europe: Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1852. Suggested Readings: Brown, William Wells. The American Fugitive in Europe. Sketches of Places and People Abroad. Boston: John P. Jewett, 1855. Ernest, John. “The Negro in the American Rebellion: William Wells Brown and the Design of African American History.” In Literary Cultures of the Civil War, edited by Timothy Sweet, University of Georgia Press, 2016, pp. 56-76. From Fugitive Slave to Free Man: The Autobiographies of William Wells Brown. Edited by William L. Andrews, University of Missouri Press, 2003. Greenspan, Ezra. William Wells Brown: An African American Life. W. W. Norton, 2014.
