An appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans

521 Pages·1833·1.58 MB·English

by  Lydia Maria Child

An Appeal in Favor of That Class of
title:
Americans Called Africans
Child, Lydia Maria Francis.; Karcher,
author:
Carolyn L.
publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
isbn10 | asin: 155849006X
print isbn13: 9781558490062
ebook isbn13: 9780585083278
language: English
Slavery--United States, Antislavery
subject
movements--United States.
publication date: 1996
lcc: E449.C532 1996eb
ddc: 305.896/073
Slavery--United States, Antislavery
subject:
movements--United States.
Page iii
An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans
Called Africans
Lydia Maria Child
Edited with an introduction by
Carolyn L. Karcher
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS
AMHERST
Page iv
Copyright © 1996 by The University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
95-21667
LC
1-55849-006-X (cloth); 1-55849-007-8 (pbk.)
ISBN
Designed by Susan Bishop
Set in Adobe Garamond by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Child, Lydia Maria Francis, 18021880.
An appeal in favor of that class of Americans called
Africans / Lydia Maria Child ; edited with an introduction
by Carolyn L. Karcher.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 1-55849-006-X (cloth: alk. paper). ISBN 1-55849-007-8
(paper: alk. paper)
1. SlaveryUnited States. 2. Antislavery movementsUnited
States. I. Karcher, Carolyn L., 1945 . II. Title.
449.C532 1996
E
305.896'073dc20 95-21667
This book is published with the support and cooperation of the
University of Massachusetts Boston.
The introduction to this book is adapted from Chapter 8 of Carolyn L.
Karcher, The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of
Lydia Maria Child (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994) with
the permission of Duke University Press.
The text of An Appeal here reprinted is that of the first edition
(Boston: Allen and Ticknor, 1833). It has been compared with the
second edition (New York: John S. Taylor, 1836) and emended to
include new material from that edition and to indicate material from
the 1833 edition omitted in the 1836 edition. Obvious errata have been
silently corrected.
Page v
To Joyce Sparer Adler
and Irving Adler
Page vii
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Chronology of Lydia Maria Child xiii
Introduction xix
Suggestions for Further Reading lvii
An Appeal in Fovor of That Class of Americans Called
Africans
Preface 5
Chapter I. Brief History of Negro Slavery.Its Inevitable 7
Effect upon All Concerned in It
Chapter II. Comparative View of Slavery, in Different 36
Ages and Nations
Chapter III. Free Labor and Slave Labor.Possibility of 72
Safe Emancipation
Chapter IV. Influence of Slavery on the Politics of the 99
United States
Chapter V. Colonization Society, and Anti-Slavery Society116
Chapter VI. Intellect of Negroes 140
Chapter VII. Moral Character of Negroes 168
Chapter VIII. Prejudices against People of Color, and Our 186
Duties in Relation to This Subject

Page ix
Preface and Acknowledgments
Lydia Maria Child's Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans
Called Africans (1833) fittingly made its initial comeback at the
height of the Civil Rights movement, when direct action against
racism by masses of African Americans and whites revived memories
of the interracial struggle against slavery that had culminated a
century earlier in the passage of the nation's first civil rights
legislation. Published in 1963, the year of Martin Luther King's March
on Washington, The Abolitionists: A Collection of Their Writings,
edited by Louis Ruchames, included a long extract from the final
chapter of the Appeal: "Prejudices Against People of Color, and Our
Duties in Relation to This Subject." That extract, with its bold call for
ending all forms of racial discrimination, from employment bans and
segregated schools to antimiscegenation laws, introduced me to Lydia
Maria Child. Soon afterward, the Appeal became available to the
public in its entirety, along with many other abolitionist works in the
Arno Press and New York Times reprint series.
Though most of the legal and extralegal discriminatory practices
cataloged by Childstill prevalent at the start of the Civil Rights
movementhave now gone the way of slavery, the Appeal remains as
timely today as in the 1960s. Institutional racism and socioeconomic
barriers continue to operate against the advancement of African
Americans, keeping the number in poverty (and in prison)
disproportionately high, the number in college and in the liberal
professions disproportionately low. Antiblack violence of the type
Child observed in northern cities persists. The myths of black
intellectual inferiority that Child refuted so incisively a century and a
half ago reemerge in pseudoscientific garb with depressing regularity,
hailed by an avid public in each incarnation, as the best-seller status
achieved by The Bell Curve in 1994 testifies.
The enduring relevance of Child's Appeal lies not merely in the
tenacious social ills the book exposes, but in the inspiring model it
provides of how those ills can be curedthrough an interracial solidarity
movement committed to translating the ideals of freedom, democracy,
justice, and equality into reality for all human beings. The example of
Child and her abolitionist comrades, both white and