A Deep Interest in Your Cause: The Inter-American Sphere of Black Abolitionism and Civil Rights

Since as early as the 1960s scholars have associated the terms “Black abolitionism” and “civil rights” with African American community activism in the US. Likewise, transnational Black activism in the nineteenth century has long been equated with the African American activists who travelled across the North Atlantic, giving speeches, sermons and lectures in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere. However, the theatre of transnational Black activism in this period was far more complex and multifaceted. It extended well beyond the Anglophone North Atlantic and the narrow corridor of Black activism between the US and Britain. Regional and linguistic biases in the historiography have overshadowed a parallel and equally important inter-American sphere of Black resistance. Travelling across national and imperial boundaries, Spanish, French and Portuguese-speaking Black activists from Latin America and the Caribbean were as active as their African American peers in the Atlantic-wide fight against slavery, segregation and racism. They brought fresh ideas, perspectives, lessons and strategies of resistance, helping to radicalise abolitionist and civil rights discourses. Many of these encounters and dialogues occurred in the US Northeast, the regional epicentre of radical abolitionism as well as an axis on which the inter-American sphere of Black activism pivoted. In cities such as Boston, New York and Washington D.C., Black Latin American and Caribbean activists lived, worked and resisted alongside African Americans. Through four case studies of individual activists and families, this thesis examines the fundamental contributions they made to securing Black freedom and equality, not just in the US, but also across the Americas. It also seeks to understand how, why and when these inputs, which were highly acclaimed by contemporaries, have since been forgotten.