Black Agency in the Long Nineteenth-Century Atlantic

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, the transition from enslavement to freedom in the black Atlantic involved many accounts of self-assertion and self-reflection. While blacks were active in their liberation, as stories of the Underground Railroad attest, it was equally important for them to define their existence as free people fully conscious of their worth. These three papers examine several dimensions of this transformation. Newby-Alexander considers the determination of blacks who braved severe punishments to seek freedom in northern territories; Lewis shows how the agency of blacks instilled the fear of rebellion and race war in the minds of slaveholders; and Alexander shows how several black Atlantic writers, inspired by the Haitian Revolution, developed ideas of black identity and connection with Africa that prepared the way for the négritude movement of the early twentieth century.

Sub Unit

• 102nd Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History

Chair

• Willilam Alexander, Norfolk State University

Individual Presentations

• The Price of Liberty: Abolitionism, the Underground Railroad, and Colonization of Liberia - Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Norfolk State University

• “We Must and Shall Be Free”: The Power of Knowledge in the African American Experience - Kay Wright Lewis, Howard University

• From Baron de Vastey to Jean Price-Mars: Voices of Haitian Exceptionalism - Willilam Alexander, Norfolk State University

Commentator

• ASALH Audience, .