HILD 7A Key Figures

William Lloyd Garrison

White abolitionist; founder of AASS

• Advocated for immediate, uncompensated emancipation and equal rights

James McCrummell

Black abolitionist leader

• presided over inaugural meeting of AASS; one of the few Black delegates

Robert Purvis

Wealthy biracial abolitionist

• participating co-founder of AASS in Philadelphia

Martin Delany

Black abolitionist and nationalist

• highlighted racial prejudice within abolitionist circles, criticized secondary status imposed on Black members

Frederick Douglass

Black abolitionist

• national leader who engaged in strategic debates alongside Garrison and Delany over tactics for liberation

Maria W. Stewart

Black female author

• Wrote Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart

Charlotte Forten Grimke

Black female abolitionist

• Active participant in female-led anti-slavery movements

Lucretia Mott

White female Quaker and abolitionist

• key organizer anti-slavery auxiliaries and early women’s rights campaigns

Sojourner Truth

Black Female abolitionist

• Connected Christian spiritual equality w/ abolition and women’s rights

Prince Hall

Community leader and nationalist

• Proposed return to Africa plan

Henry Highland Garnet

Black minister and abolitionist

• Promoted black emigration to West Africa and Haiti as a strategy against racial oppression

Alexander Crummell

Black minister

• supported black emigration and African repatriation as alternatives to US racial inequality

Abraham Lincoln

16th US President

• 1860 election → secession of Confederate states

Thomas R. Gray

White lawyer

• Recorded Nat Turner’s jailhouse confession

Nat Turner

Enslaved African American preacher

• Led deadliest and most significant slave rebellion in U.S. history

• 1831 - Leader and a small group of trusted enslaved men launched a revolt in Southampton County

Thomas Moss

Owner of Memphis’s People’s Grocery

• Lynched by a white mob

Hiram Revels

First African American to serve in U.S. Senate

• Took seat vacated by Jefferson Davis in 1870

Robert S. Abbott

Editor of the “Chicago Defender”

• Actively promoted the Great Northern Drive

Octave Johnson

Escaped Louisiana man who survived in the swamps for 18 months before enlisting in the Union army

Joseph Rainey

First Black member elected to U.S. House of Representatives

• Represented South Carolina

Ida B. Wells

Editor of “Memphis Free Speech” who launched an international antilynching campaign in 1892

Harriet Tubman

Union scout and spy who led the Underground Railroad

• Freed over 700 enslaved people

• Known as “Moses”

Harriet Jacobs

African American writer, abolitionist, and reformer

• Escaped enslavement and authored Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the pseudonym Linda Brent

Mansa Musa

Emperor of ancient Mali

• Vast wealth in gold drew European attention

Ruy do Siquiera

Portuguese merchant who obtained permission from Oba of Benin to trade for captives

• Initiated European involvement in indigenous captivity networks

Elizabeth Freeman & Brom

Enslaved individuals in Massachusetts who successfully sued for their freedom under the state’s post-Revolutionary declaration of rights

William Still, David Ruggles, Levi Coffin

Underground railroad operatives

Homer Plessy

Plaintiff in Plessy v. Ferguson

• challenge to train segregation led to the Supreme Court establishing separate but equal

Marcus Garvey

Founder of Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1920s

• Built largest working-class Black mass movement in U.S. history around Black pride and “Black to Africa” emigration

Walter White & Thurgood Marshall

Leaders of NAACP’s national legal strategy

Quock Walker

Plaintiff whose legal victory led the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to declare slavery unconstitutional and illegal statewide

Gabriel Prosser

Organized an extensive armed insurrection conspiracy outside Richmond, Virginia

Charles Deslondes & Quamana

Led largest armed enslaved revolt in U.S. history outside New Orleans