Freedom in Print: Books and Antislavery History at the Chatham-Kent Black Mecca Museum
In the 1850s and 1860s, the town of Chatham, Canada West (present-day Ontario) was home to one of the most important Black abolitionist communities in the Atlantic world. African American political activists based in Chatham wrote, edited, printed, and published a vast range of books, newspapers, stories, poems, personal narratives, and political essays, all aimed at the destruction of racial oppression and the securing of human freedom.
Our project addresses this challenge by focusing on the rich archive of books and other print material that was written by Chatham-based Black abolitionists in the 19th century, and that is now part of the special collections at Western University, the University of Guelph, and Oberlin College. Seeking to reach a wide academic and public audience with new research about the vibrant intellectual history of Chatham's Black community---the ideas that moved the world toward the end of racial slavery in the United States---our project treats books and other printed works as material artifacts of the 19th-century's greatest struggle for human freedom.
By reconnecting these artifacts with the historical communities and context in which they were written, the project seeks to illuminate Chatham's antislavery past and address anti-Black racism in the present through the restorative act of repatriating community memory.