Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism (2006)

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. Organized around four themes, Revisions, Origins, Revolutions, and Representations, the book incorporates new thinking on such topics as the role of early black newspapers, anti-slavery 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.

Foreword by Michael Fellman
Afterword by Martin Duberman

An original and thoughtful work on a subject of signal importance--Ira Berlin

Over the past generation, historians have shown that women and nonwhites fundamentally contributed to American antislavery agitation.... Nevertheless, there has not yet been a new synthetic treatment of abolitionism that absorbed this new work. The field has not yet been reconceived in terms of the social history of what we now realize to have been a multiracial and broad grass-roots movement with a long chronology. This important collection of essays admirably fills the gap
--American Historical Review

Historians have developed a new narrative for radical abolitionism over the past two decades and it is thoroughly explored in this book.... The contributors include both young and established historians at the cutting edge of the scholarship [who] chronicle the most innovative shifts in abolitionist studies over the past 17 years, specifically, the emphasis on the centrality of black protest to American abolitionism, and a fresh understanding of the violent abolitionism embodied by John Brown.... Prophets of Protest is an impressive volume that should become required reading for graduate students of abolitionism and for scholars who wish to stay on top of the literature--H-Net

This rich collection [presents] new scholarship and new social contexts which contribute to our evolving view of the United States’ political, social and cultural history.... Although directed most specifically to historians, students of cultural studies, women’s studies or political science will find this detailed and thorough collection well worth their time, as will anyone interested in the literature of protest and social critique. The triumph of Prophets of Protest is best summarized by Martin Duberman in the Afterword: “The great achievement of this volume is that we are finally able to hear many more of the voices, and to appreciate far more profoundly the significance of their contributions to the ongoing struggle for a decent society”--Cercles

Examining everyone from Midwesterners to women to free blacks, these essays tell the lesser-known stories of the abolitionists of various periods and places who created "one of the most diverse social movements in American history".... A worthy read for anyone interested in an insightful re-examination of the battle for abolition--Publishers Weekly

This collection of essays by historians explores how scholarship on abolitionism has expanded beyond portraits of influential white males to blacks and women, beyond the historically assigned beginnings with William Lloyd Garrison in 1831 back to the American Revolution, and beyond U.S. soil to Britain.... Though written by leading historians, the collection is highly accessible to general readers and offers a fresh perspective on the most powerful social movement of the nineteenth century--Booklist