Waite details the history of the community of Oberlin, Ohio, which demonstrated a commitment to the education of blacks during the antebellum period that was rare at the time. By the end of Reconstruction, however, black students at Oberlin were becoming segregated, and events at the college influenced the rest of the community, with neighborhoods, houses of worship, and social interaction becoming segregated. Waite suggests that Oberlin's history mirrors the story of race in America. The decision to admit black students to Oberlin College, and offer them the same curriculum as their white classmates, challenged the notion of black intellectual inferiority that prevailed during the antebellum period. Following the model of the college, the public schools of Oberlin were integrated in direct opposition to state laws that forbade the education of black children with public funds. However, after Reconstruction (1877), the nation tried to negotiate the future of a newly freed and barely educated people. In Oberlin, this change was evidenced by the gradual segregation of black students at the college. In the community, newly segregated neighborhoods, houses of worship and social interaction took hold in the former interracial utopia. The country looked to Oberlin as a model for integrated education at the end of the 19th century only to find that it, too, had succumbed to segregation. This study examines why, and focuses on the intersection of three national issues: the growth of the black church, increased racism and discrimination, and the transformation of higher education.

The Black pioneers who established the Queens Bush settlement where present-day Waterloo and Wellington counties meet are the focus of this extensively researched book.

Perhaps no other crusade in the history of the U.S. provoked so much passion and fury as the struggle over slavery. Many of the problems that were a part of that great debate are still with us. Louis Filler has brought together much information both known and new on those who organized to defeat slavery. He has also re-examined the anti-slavery movement's ideals, heroes, and martyrs with historical perspective and precision. Contrary to popular belief, the anti-slavery movement was far from united. It included abolitionists as well as a variety of reformers whose activities place them among the anti-slavery forces. These included men as different in background and temperament as William Lloyd Garrison and John Quincy Adams. Portraits of the many protagonists, their hardships, and their quarrels with Southerners and Northerners alike, bring to life this exciting and tumultuous period. Filler also examines the many related reform movements that characterized the period: feminism, spiritualism, utopian societies, and educational reform. The volume traces the relationship of the antislavery movement to abolition and probes their connection with the several reforms that dominated the period. He brilliantly recaptures a sense of the contemporary consequences of the reformers efforts. This is an absorbing and important survey of the problems--political, social, and economic--that made this period so crucial in the history of the U.S.

This volume of eight essays examines the role that religious traditions, practices and beliefs played in women's involvement in the British and American campaigns to abolish slavery during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It focuses on women who belonged to the Puritan and dissenting traditions.

A vividly told tale of a forgotten American hero—an impassioned newsman who fought for the right to speak out against slavery. The history of the fight for free press has never been more vital in our own time, when journalists are targeted as “enemies of the people.” In this bnrilliant and rigorously researched history, award-winning journalist and author Ken Ellingwood animates the life and times of abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy. First to Fall illuminates this flawed yet heroic figure who made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for free press rights in a time when the First Amendment offered little protection for those who dared to critique America’s “peculiar institution.” Culminating in Lovejoy’s dramatic clashes with the pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois—who were torching printing press after printing press—First to Fall will bring Lovejoy, his supporters and his enemies to life during the raucous 1830s at the edge of slave country. It was a bloody period of innovation, conflict, violent politics, and painful soul-searching over pivotal issues of morality and justice. In the tradition of books like The Arc of Justice, First to Fall elevates a compelling, socially urgent narrative that has never received the attention it deserves. The book will aim to do no less than rescue Lovejoy from the footnotes of history and restore him as a martyr whose death was not only a catalyst for widespread abolitionist action, but also inaugurated the movement toward the free press protections we cherish so dearly today.

Engaging critically with the political and aesthetic agenda behind the project of recovery, this collection of specially commissioned essays offers revisionary readings of both established canonical Victorian women poets and re-discovered writers.