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Fighting Alone? Debating the Freedom Struggle in America with Dr. Richard Bell

Fighting Alone? Debating the Freedom Struggle in America with Dr. Richard Bell


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Nikole Hannah-Jones contends in the New York Times’ 1619 Project that there was no significant bi-racial antislavery campaign in this country in the critical period between the Constitution and the Age of Jackson. White people, she said, sat on their hands. They did nothing of substance. “For the most part,” she wrote, “Black Americans fought back alone.” 

This conversation seeks to unpack this stout and sobering claim—the claim that African Americans had no meaningful white allies in antislavery before 1840. It explores what the freedom fight looked like from the perspective of the people caught in the vortex of human bondage; what it looked like from the perspective of their vocal-free Black allies living on free soil in the North; and what it looked like from the perspective of the embattled minority of white people who did finally start to organize into a nationwide antislavery campaign by the 1830s. 

Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship and the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar Award. Professor Bell is author of the new book "Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home," which was shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize.

This conversation is suitable for all ages.

90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.

Customer Reviews

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V
V. (San Diego, US)
Intensely interesting

Dr. Bell examines the claim by the 1619 Project that enslaved people pretty much had to fight enslavement on their own. With his usual meticulous attention to historical detail, Dr. Bell provided evidence that led to.... well, I can't tell you because then you wouldn't take the seminar! It's worth taking though.

Customer Reviews

Based on 1 review
100%
(1)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
V
V. (San Diego, US)
Intensely interesting

Dr. Bell examines the claim by the 1619 Project that enslaved people pretty much had to fight enslavement on their own. With his usual meticulous attention to historical detail, Dr. Bell provided evidence that led to.... well, I can't tell you because then you wouldn't take the seminar! It's worth taking though.