Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America

By exploring the role of Oberlin--the college and the community--in fighting against slavery and for social equality, J. Brent Morris establishes this "hotbed of abolitionism" as the core of the antislavery movement in the West and as one of the most influential reform groups in antebellum America. As the first college to admit men and women of all races, and with a faculty and community comprised of outspoken abolitionists, Oberlin supported a cadre of activist missionaries devoted to emancipation, even if that was through unconventional methods or via an abandonment of strict ideological consistency. Their philosophy was a color-blind composite of various schools of antislavery thought aimed at supporting the best hope of success. Though historians have embraced Oberlin as a potent symbol of egalitarianism, radicalism, and religious zeal, Morris is the first to portray the complete history behind this iconic antislavery symbol. In this book, Morris shifts the focus of generations of antislavery scholarship from the East and demonstrates that the West's influence was largely responsible for a continuous infusion of radicalism that helped the movement stay true to its most progressive principles.

This dissertation examines the role of Oberlin (the northern Ohio town and its organically connected college of the same name) in the antislavery struggle. It traces the antislavery origins and development of this Western "hot-bed of abolitionism," and establishes Oberlin-the community, faculty, students, and alumni-as comprising the core of the antislavery movement in the West and one of the most influential and successful groups of abolitionists in antebellum America. Within two years of its founding, Oberlin's founders had created a teachers' college and adopted nearly the entire student body of Lane Seminary, who had been dismissed for their advocacy of immediate abolition. Oberlin became the first institute of higher learning to admit men and women of all races. America's most famous revivalist (Charles Grandison Finney) was among its new faculty as were a host of outspoken proponents of immediate emancipation and social reform. From its beginning, Oberlin Institute and the community supported a cadre of activist missionaries who helped spur the abolitionist movement to its greatest period of growth and assisted in the breaking down of racial barriers in an exceedingly intolerant region. The college and town comprised one of the most ideologically influential and tactically successful groups of abolitionists within the antislavery movement. With Oberlin in the vanguard, the West becomes the movement's nerve center by the late 1840s. Oberlin representatives were at the cutting edge of political antislavery organization embodied in the Liberty, Free Soil, and Republican Parties, the African American convention movement, and constant facilitators in one of the nation's busiest Underground Railroad "depots." Oberlin was instrumental in developing diversity in antislavery thought, an aspect of the movement that most historians have not explored. Rather than falling into the distinct categories which many scholars place abolitionists (political, radical pacifist, radical militant, clerical, etc.), Oberlin abolitionists took the field as men and women devoted to ending slavery by any means necessary, even if that meant not adhering to ideological consistency or working through unconventional methods. Their philosophy was a composite of various schools of anti-slavery thought aimed at supporting the best hope of success.

A richly illustrated volume presenting a comprehensive history of the education of African American students at Oberlin College.

A groundbreaking collective biography narrating the history of emancipation through the life stories of women of African descent in the Americas.

A new interpretation of the Underground Railroad that places violence at the center of the story.

Reparation and Reconciliation is the first book to reveal the nineteenth-century struggle for racial integration on U.S. college campuses. As the Civil War ended, the need to heal the scars of slavery, expand the middle class, and reunite the nation engendered a dramatic interest in higher education by policy makers, voluntary associations, and African Americans more broadly. Formed in 1846 by Protestant abolitionists, the American Missionary Association united a network of colleges open to all, designed especially to educate African American and white students together, both male and female. The AMA and its affiliates envisioned integrated campuses as a training ground to produce a new leadership class for a racially integrated democracy. Case studies at three colleges--Berea College, Oberlin College, and Howard University--reveal the strategies administrators used and the challenges they faced as higher education quickly developed as a competitive social field. Through a detailed analysis of archival and press data, Christi M. Smith demonstrates that pressures between organizations--including charities and foundations--and the emergent field of competitive higher education led to the differentiation and exclusion of African Americans, Appalachian whites, and white women from coeducational higher education and illuminates the actors and the strategies that led to the persistent salience of race over other social boundaries.

"From Boston's strident Liberator to Frederick Douglass's North Star, more than forty newspapers were founded in the United States in the decades before the Civil War with the specific aim of promoting emancipation. In Abolition and the Press, Ford Risley discusses how these fiery publications played a vital role in keeping the issue of slavery in the public eye. Reaching an audience that only grew when the papers became objects of controversy and targets of violence in both the South and the North, the abolitionist press continued to provide a needed platform for discourse even after some mainstream publications took up the call for emancipation. Its legacy endured as contemporary reform writers and editors continue to champion the press as a tool in the fight for equality and civil rights."--BOOK JACKET.