A Gentleman of Color
A Gentleman of Color

Author: Julie Winch

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-06-05

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9780195347456

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Winch has written the first full-length biography of James Forten, a hero of African American history and one of the most remarkable men in 19th-century America. Born into a free black family in 1766, Forten served in the Revolutionary War as a teenager. By 1810 he had earned the distinction of being the leading sailmaker in Philadelphia. Soon after Forten emerged as a leader in Philadelphia's black community and was active in a wide range of reform activities. Especially prominent in national and international antislavery movements, he served as vice-president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and became close friends with William Lloyd Garrison to whom he lent money to start up the Liberator. His family were all active abolitionists and a granddaughter, Charlotte Forten, published a famous diary of her experiences teaching ex-slaves in South Carolina's Sea Islands during the Civil War. This is the first serious biography of Forten, who stands beside Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Martin Luther King, Jr., in the pantheon of African Americans who fundamentally shaped American history.

The Prison-Ship Adventure of James Forten, Revolutionary War Captive
The Prison-Ship Adventure of James Forten, Revolutionary War Captive

Author: Marty Rhodes Figley

Publisher: Graphic Universe ™

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 1467750646

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Captured at sea . . . a young man must choose between his country and his freedom. The Atlantic Ocean, 1781. James Forten is a free African American sailor on an American ship, the Royal Louis, during the Revolutionary War. After his ship is captured by the British, he becomes a prisoner on the Amphion. James worries that he will be sold as a slave. Will James ever see his home again?

Between the Devil and the Sea
Between the Devil and the Sea

Author: Brenda A. Johnston

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

Published: 1974

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13:

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A biography of the free black man who became a wealthy Philadelphia sailmaker and active abolitionist.

Now Is Your Time!
Now Is Your Time!

Author: Walter Dean Myers

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-10-06

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0061985619

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A Coretta Scott King Award winner that is more timely than ever—excellent narrative nonfiction that's "history at its best."* Like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, Now Is Your Time! explores American history through the stories of the people whose experiences have shaped and continue to shape the America in which we live. History has made me an African American. It is an Africa that I have come from, and an America that I have helped to create. Since they were first brought as captives to Virginia, the people who would become African Americans have struggled for freedom. Thousands fought for the rights of all Americans during the Revolutionary War, and for their own rights during the Civil War. On the battlefield, through education, and through their creative genius, they have worked toward one goal: that the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness be denied no one. Fired by the legacy of these men and women, the struggle continues today. "Portrays the quests of individual Africans against the background of broader historical movements. Instead of a comprehensive, strict chronology, Myers offers, through freed slave Ibrahima, investigative reporter Ida Wells, artist Meta Warrick Fuller, inventor George Latimore, artist Dred Scott, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and others, history at its best—along with deeper understanding of past and contemporary events. Readers will grasp reasons behind incidents ranging from bewildering Supreme Court decisions to the historical need for the black extended family. Intriguing and rousing." (Publishers Weekly starred review*). Walter Dean Myers was a New York Times bestselling author, Printz Award winner, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, two-time Newbery Honor recipient, and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Maria Russo, writing in the New York Times, called Myers "one of the greats and a champion of diversity in children’s books well before the cause got mainstream attention."

Pamphlets of Protest
Pamphlets of Protest

Author: Richard Newman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-26

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1136687254

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Between the Revolution and the Civil War, African-American writing became a prominent feature of both black protest culture and American public life. Although denied a political voice in national affairs, black authors produced a wide range of literature to project their views into the public sphere. Autobiographies and personal narratives told of slavery's horrors, newspapers railed against racism in its various forms, and poetry, novellas, reprinted sermons and speeches told tales of racial uplift and redemption. The editors examine the important and previously overlooked pamphleteering tradition and offer new insights into how and why the printed word became so important to black activists during this critical period. An introduction by the editors situates the pamphlets in their various social, economic and political contexts. This is the first book to capture the depth of black print culture before the Civil War by examining perhaps its most important form, the pamphlet.

James Forten
James Forten

Author: Julie Winch

Publisher:

Published: 2011-01-14

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780983206903

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James Forten's rags-to-riches life was about more than a quest for wealth. He was a patriot who risked his life for the cause of independence. He was also a tireless foe of slavery and an outspoken champion of civil rights. He helped pave the way for the Emancipation Proclamation. His children and grandchildren would follow in his footsteps.

Let This Voice Be Heard
Let This Voice Be Heard

Author: Maurice Jackson

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2010-11-24

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0812202341

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Anthony Benezet (1713-84), universally recognized by the leaders of the eighteenth-century antislavery movement as its founder, was born to a Huguenot family in Saint-Quentin, France. As a boy, Benezet moved to Holland, England, and, in 1731, Philadelphia, where he rose to prominence in the Quaker antislavery community. In transforming Quaker antislavery sentiment into a broad-based transatlantic movement, Benezet translated ideas from diverse sources—Enlightenment philosophy, African travel narratives, Quakerism, practical life, and the Bible—into concrete action. He founded the African Free School in Philadelphia, and such future abolitionist leaders as Absalom Jones and James Forten studied at Benezet's school and spread his ideas to broad social groups. At the same time, Benezet's correspondents, including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Abbé Raynal, Granville Sharp, and John Wesley, gave his ideas an audience in the highest intellectual and political circles. In this wide-ranging intellectual biography, Maurice Jackson demonstrates how Benezet mediated Enlightenment political and social thought, narratives of African life written by slave traders themselves, and the ideas and experiences of ordinary people to create a new antislavery critique. Benezet's use of travel narratives challenged proslavery arguments about an undifferentiated, "primitive" African society. Benezet's empirical evidence, laid on the intellectual scaffolding provided by the writings of Hutcheson, Wallace, and Montesquieu, had a profound influence, from the high-culture writings of the Marquis de Condorcet to the opinions of ordinary citizens. When the great antislavery spokesmen Jacques-Pierre Brissot in France and William Wilberforce in England rose to demand abolition of the slave trade, they read into the record of the French National Assembly and the British Parliament extensive unattributed quotations from Benezet's writings, a fitting tribute to the influence of his work.

Forging Freedom
Forging Freedom

Author: Gary B. Nash

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780674309333

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This book is the first to trace the fortunes of the earliest large free black community in the U.S. Nash shows how black Philadelphians struggled to shape a family life, gain occupational competence, organize churches, establish social networks, advance cultural institutions, educate their children, and train leaders who would help abolish slavery.

Pathfinders
Pathfinders

Author: Tonya Bolden

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2017-01-03

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1613129734

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Discover the lives of 16 extraordinary Black Americans in this engaging collection from Coretta Scott King Honor Award winner Tonya Bolden Untold numbers of Black men and women in America have achieved great things against the odds. In this insightful book, award-winning author Tonya Bolden commemorates the lives of sixteen Black individuals who dared to dream, take risks, and chart courses to success. They were Pathfinders. In these pages you will meet Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who was instrumental in putting U.S. astronauts on the moon; Venture Smith, an African man who was enslaved in America but later bought his own freedom; Richard Potter, a magician whose methods paved the way for entertainers like Harry Houdini; Sissieretta Jones, an opera singer who captivated audiences all over the world with her enchanting voice; James Forten, a powder boy then prisoner of war during the Revolution who grew up to be one of Philadelphia’s leading abolitionists and wealthiest citizens; James McCune Smith, the first Black university-trained physician in the United States; Mary Bowser, a spy during the Civil War; Allen Allensworth, town founder; Clara Brown, one of the first Black women to settle in what would become Colorado; Maggie Lena Walker, the first Black woman to run a bank; Charlie Wiggins, a race car driver; Eugene Bullard, a combat pilot in World War I; Oscar Micheaux, filmmaker; Jackie Ormes, cartoonist; Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, an economist and attorney who fought for civil rights; and Paul R. Williams, architect of luxury homes and many iconic buildings in Los Angeles.