Black Americans in Victorian Britain by Jeffrey Green

Author:Jeffrey Green [Green, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, General, African American & Black Studies, sociology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General
ISBN: 9781526737601
Google: H_rLDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-09-30T23:46:36.400916+00:00

Chapter 8

Slavery Narratives

The Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery was published in 1837; Moses Grandy’s Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy: Late a Slave in the United States of America was published in London in 1842; the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was published in Dublin in 1845 and James Pennington’s The Fugitive Blacksmith was published in London in 1849. The Narrative of William W. Brown, an American Slave written by Himself had a British edition in 1849. Box Brown’s Narrative of the Life of Henry ‘Box’ Brown: Written by Himself was published in Manchester in 1851. A second edition was published in Bilston near Wolverhampton in 1852.1 The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, was in its third edition in England in 1851. The Narrative of the Life of James Watkins was published in Bolton in 1852, William G. Allen’s The American Prejudice against Colour: An Authentic Narrative in London in 1853 and John Brown’s Slave Life in Georgia in 1855. Douglass wrote about his twenty-one months in Britain and Ireland in his My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Samuel Ringgold Ward’s Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada, and England was in print by 1855. William Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery appeared in 1860.

There were also publications which were less personal but presented the African American experience to the British and Irish. For example Christians of the Evangelical Alliance split over the unwillingness to exclude churches which had slaveholding members. Their summer 1846 international conference in London involved Molliston Madison Clark. Born free in Delaware he was a delegate of the African Methodist Episcopal church. He was in Britain for months, and his Tract on American Slavery by the Rev. M. M. Clark, a Coloured Man, Now on a Visit to England from the United States of America was published by Wardman in Bradford in 1847.

Clark noticed that the church had compromised with the slaveholders. His Tract and lectures, and his resignation from the Alliance, show that he became firmly in favour of emancipation. He was in Norwich in September 1846 and Brighton in October. He acquired fame in America where he died in 1872. Who purchased his Tract ? Indeed, who purchased the other tracts? The market was substantial for William Wells Brown’s now-illustrated edition of his narrative Life and Escape was said to have sold 14,000 copies. Brown had a collection of slave songs published in Newcastle in 1850. His Three Years in Europe appeared in 1852. James Pennington edited A Narrative of Events in the Life of J. H. Banks, an Escaped Slave, From the Cotton State of Alabama, in America which was published in Liverpool by Rourke in 1861. John Jacobs, the brother of Harriet Jacobs, had his ‘A True Tale of Slavery’, in four issues of The Leisure Hour (London) in February 1861.

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