“Samuel Ringgold Ward and the Struggle Against Slavery”
Richard Blackett, Vanderbilt University, brings light to Samuel Ringgold Ward’s (1817–c. 1869) life, whose story has been lost and largely untold. After escaping enslavement, Ward would become a leading figure in the struggle for Black freedom, citizenship, and equality. He was a newspaper editor, Congregational minister, advocate for the temperance movement, and was considered one of the leading orators of his time. Blackett is the Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt and author of the forthcoming book from Yale University Press, Samuel Ringgold Ward: A Life of Struggle.
About the Speaker
Richard J. M. Blackett is the Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is a historian of the abolitionist movement in the U.S. and particularly its transatlantic connections and the roles African Americans played in the movement to abolish slavery. His two newest books include The Captive’s Quest for Freedom. Fugitive Slave, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and the Politics of Slavery (2018) and Samuel Ringgold Ward. A Life of Struggle, which will be published in March 2023. Blackett was named the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University for the 2013-14 academic year. He taught previously at the University of Pittsburgh (1971-85), Indiana University (1985-1996); University of Houston where he was the John & Rebecca Moores professor of history and African American Studies (1996-2002).
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