Prophets of Protest

Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism

Edited by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer

Foreword by Michael Fellman
Afterword by Martin Duberman

paperback

$22.95 / £12.99

The campaign to abolish slavery in the United States was the most powerful and effective social movement of the nineteenth century and has served as a recurring source of inspiration for every subsequent struggle against injustice. But the abolitionist story has traditionally focused on the evangelical impulses of white, male, middle-class reformers, obscuring the contributions of many African Americans, women, and others.

Prophets of Protest, the first collection of writings on abolitionism in more than a generation, draws on an immense new body of research in African American studies, literature, art history, film, law, women’s studies, and other disciplines. The book incorporates new thinking on such topics as the role of early black newspapers, antislavery poetry, and abolitionists in film and provides new perspectives on familiar figures such as Sojourner Truth, Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown.

With contributions from the leading scholars in the field, Prophets of Protest is a long overdue update of one of the central reform movements in America’s history.

Timothy Patrick McCarthy is Lecturer on History and Literature and on Public Policy at Harvard University, where he directs the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. An award-winning scholar, teacher, and activist, he is editor of The Indispensable Zinn and co-editor of The Radical Reader and Protest Nation, all published by The New Press. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. John Stauffer teaches English and American civilization, also at Harvard. His first book, The Black Hearts of Men, won the 2002 Frederick Douglass Prize for the Best Book on Slavery. They both live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Michael Fellman is Professor of Liberal Studies at Simon Fraser University and author of the forthcoming book Twisting the Cross. Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at CUNY and the author of some twenty books, including Paul Robeson (The New Press).