Happy (Late) Birthday William Lloyd Garrison
Born on December 12, 1805 in Newburyport, MA, Garrison was one of our nation’s leading abolitionists and reformers. He produced the anti-slavery newspaper the Liberator and founded the American Antislavery Society as well. As one of the most outspoken radical abolitionists, he demanded the immediate emancipation of all slaves and rejected America’s constitution because he considered it a pro-slavery document. One of Garrison’s most important contributions to the Abolitionist Movement was his emphasis on the contradiction between the rhetoric of freedom espoused by the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence, on the one hand, and the institution of slavery in America, on the other hand—a paradigm that ultimately helped “convince millions of Northerners that slavery was indeed evil and must be eradicated from American life,” says Bill Rogers, Affiliate Professor of History and Associate Dean of the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies at Drew University and author of “We Are All Together Now”: Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and the Prophetic Tradition. Additionally, Rogers maintains that Garrison was at the “heart” of the Abolitionist Movement because “when others faltered, he kept right on writing, speaking, and agitating—the Liberator never missed an issue in its nearly 35 years of existence.”
While Garrison earned a name for himself as one of the most outspoken opponents of slavery, he also advocated equal rights for women, in fact he insisted that women be admitted into his Antislavery Society on equal grounds with men even though a majority of the organization’s members opposed the policy. One of Garrison’s most lasting contributions to America’s tradition of dissent was his emphasis on nonviolent, passive resistance. After the abolition of slavery, Garrison continued to be active in other reform movements, including women’s suffrage and temperance. He died in New York City in 1879.
The media’s neglect of Garrison’s bicentennial was brought to HNN’s attention when one reader, in a letter to the editor, complained, “Garrison has always been out of popular and scholarly fashion. His bicentennial…has gone almost completely unnoticed.” Perhaps the problem is that even though most Americans today are ‘abolitionists’ by any standard, Garrison is, in fact, still portrayed in modern caricature as ‘incendiary’ and ‘fanatic’ (as was the case in his own time). Rogers says Garrison lacked the "nobility of a Frederick Douglass." And he embraced an aggressive evangelical Protestantism that makes him a “less than popular figure for the modern historian” (not to mention his anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic prejudices).
The mainstream media’s neglect of Garrison may be due in part to the country's general reluctance to celebrate leftist-radical leaders and the movements they led. As Harriet Alonso (CUNY), the author of Growing Up Abolitionist: The Story of the Garrison Children, points out, “Our country tends to want to forget that such a tradition exists in our history. How many people do you know who can name leaders of antiwar movements (from the Spanish-American War to the present) or free speech leaders or labor leaders or civil rights leaders outside of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks? Or the women's movement leaders outside of Susan B. Anthony?”
Alonso also explains, “Garrison and his ‘gang’ were very nontraditional. They experimented with health remedies and diet and dress reform. They supported feminism and were against violence. They tended to socialize, court, and marry within the community. So, in some ways, I guess they could be seen as a bit isolated much like utopianists at the time. Today, people (even Garrison's descendants) see Garrison as a stiff-backed religious zealot.” And, of course, “there is also the issue of race,” Alonso maintains. “The abolitionist movement was interracial and wildly unpopular during its time.”
Henry Mayer, the author of All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of American Slavery, asserts that Garrison has faded from Americans’ memories because most have forgotten the “depth of opposition Garrison encountered” in 19th-century America. In fact, even though President Lincoln ultimately embraced emancipation, his policy was explosively unpopular and many Union soldiers simply left the field because of it.
Whatever the reason for his neglect, it is a fact. One of the only major public events hosted in Garrison’s honor took place in Boston. That city’s Museum of Afro-American History in conjunction with the Boston Public Library featured two exhibits to celebrate the anniversary of his birth. One explores his career, and the other tells the history of the Liberator. (The museum’s exhibit runs from August to April; the library’s exhibit began in August and ended in October.) The museum and library also hosted a number of events to commemorate Garrison's life and his contribution to the Abolitionist Movement, including not only lectures, but also a family reunion (to which Alonso and a few other scholars, including David Blight, were also invited). That event took place this past August and did happen to attract some media attention, including an article in the New York Times.
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies is also sponsoring a lecture series in honor of Garrison’s bicentennial. The first lecture in the four-part series was given on December 8 (presented by James Brewer Stewart—the James Wallace Professor of History at Macalester College). The remaining three lectures in the series will take place in February, March, and April.
While some, including Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center, the Boston Public Library, and Boston’s Museum of Afro-American History, have certainly not neglected Garrison this year at all, it seems that most, and in particular, the popular press, have simply forgotten the life and times of one of this country’s leading abolitionists on his 200th birthday. Perhaps this is alarming given that there is still much to be learned from Garrison and his fellow abolitionists’ legacy, as there is certainly still much to learn from other “radicals” in American history.