In January 1773, Massachusetts slaves submitted the first of four petitions that decade to the legislature of the colony requesting their release from bondage. Around the same time writers such as Phillis Wheatley and Caesar Sarter began to attack both slavery and the slave trade in print.

Many scholars have discussed these individual writers and the petitioning campaign of Boston’s blacks as an example of the ways in which subordinate groups used the rhetoric of Revolution to advance their own claims. In this talk, Christopher Cameron, locates the origins of their political thought even further back in puritan religious ideology.

Join the Congregational Library and Archives for this talk to learn more about the advent of black petitioning and other forms of antislavery writing in the colony, which represented the beginning of the organized abolitionist movement in America.

This event is free and open to all, but registration is required. Click here to register.