Word: abolitionists
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...least six of the poets are former slave traders, including John Newton, the slaver turned evangelist amd abolitionist whose famous lyrics about God's "amazing grace . . . That saved a wretch like me" originated as a song of thanks for his deliverance from the sinfulness of slavetrading. Another former slave dealer, James Stanfield, composed an epic of several hundred lines entitled "The Guinea Voyage" (1789), in part of which he depicted the birth of a baby in the wretched squalor of the slave decks. (Art and life were not so distinct: the black poet Ignatius Sancho, who later became a figure...
...abolitionist John Rankin was that recognizable type, a scalding Old Testament moralist dropped into 19th century America, a place that was already a boiling pot. He was also a Presbyterian preacher, but not the type to turn the other cheek. In 1841, after a pro-slavery raiding party attempted to burn his house, he put forward a summation of his principles: "It is as much a duty to shoot the midnight assassin in his attacks as it is to pray...
...time for us to change that. This February, as we celebrate Black History Month, we should devote time not just to learning about and honoring blacks of the past, but to supporting blacks who carry on the struggle against slavery today. You are probably familiar with Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist of the 1800s, but how much do you know about some other former slaves who speak out as abolitionists in Massachusetts right now—people such as Francis Bok of the Sudan and Ahmeimidi Khaliva of Mauritania? I’m guessing that both names...
...based compassion. A former rock manager who represented members of Buffalo Springfield and Peter, Paul and Mary, Mangano says his life changed in 1972 when he saw Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a movie about the life of St. Francis. For Mangano, who calls himself a homeless abolitionist, ending chronic homeless is a moral call. "Is there any manifestation of homelessness more tragic or more visible than chronic homelessness experienced by those who are suffering from mental illness, addiction or physical disability?" he asks...
...embarrassing open secret that, contrary to his hallowed position in the secular sainthood of freedom, Abraham Lincoln was never a particularly passionate abolitionist. But he freed the slaves, and regardless of his real reasons for signing the Emancipation Proclamation, aren’t we glad he did? Likewise, many scholars maintain that knowledge of Hitler’s escalating program of genocide in Europe had very little to do with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to enter World War II on that continent. Do we care in the slightest that he might have been more concerned with getting...