Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  American History/Black History

February is Black History Month and I would like to write about a person that gets NO respect when it comes to history.  We can teach all about Douglass and Dred Scott and Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, Jr, and I do not want to take anything away from these important figures in the fight against slavery and champions of civil rights, but there are those people that began the fight even earlier than mentioned.

The very beginning of the history of this country was a pivotal time and it could have been a historic time in the anti-slavery movement….wait!  Until 1775, there was NO anti-slavery movement.  There may have been those people that thought it was a despicable practice but if they did they kept their thoughts and opinions to themselves…that is until the arrival of one Thomas Paine, who later became famous for his pamphlet, “Common Sense” which is credited for the whole independence movement.

In November of 1774 Paine arrived in the Colonies from England with a letter of introduction from Ben Franklin.  He then set about acquiring work as a printer and writer.  One of his first published works was an essay entitled “African Slavery In America”….in which he set about condemning the practice harshly….one of the first to do so publicly in the Colonies.  History teaches us that several of the founding fathers detested the practice and even cursed it privately, but NONE did anything about it.  Paine did!

Shortly after the publishing of Paine’s condemnation of slavery, the first anti-slavery society was formed in Philadelphia in the Sun Tavern on Second Street in April 1775.

Later in our history it was Abraham Lincoln that gave us the Emancipation Proclamation, but if you read Paine’s anti-slavery essay you will see that Lincoln had the second proclamation;  he was not that original.

Everyone is taught that 22 September 1862, Lincoln issued the first Emancipation Proclamation and no where is the essay by Thomas Paine taught or even remembered.  For without Paine the anti-slavery movement would have been longer in coming to the forefront of American society.

Once again I say that I am NOT trying to lessen or ignore any of the people and their attempts in the area of civil rights, only that everyone involved should be acknowledged and celebrated and held in high esteem for ending an institution that makes people slaves……