Leeds Anti-Slavery Association

Leeds Anti-Slavery Association was an abolitionist society established in Leeds in 1853 and founded by Wilson Armistead. It was the first such organisation to allow women to be members and to take committee roles. The association was active in Leeds, Yorkshire and North America, supplying abolitionist pamphlets to people on the east coast.

Leeds Anti-Slavery Association
Leeds Anti-Slavery Association
Formation1853
FounderWilson Armistead

History
Wilson Armistead

The Leeds Anti-Slavery Association was founded in 1853 by Wilson Armistead, a Quaker abolitionist who had visited America to see the experiences that enslaved people faced and to meet with other abolitionists there.[1] Armistead was a notable abolitionist who in 1848 published A Tribute for the Negro.[2] It was the first organisation of it kind to enable women to take an active role in its campaigning.[3] Women as well as men were officers and committee members, and also comprised the majority of its membership.[3][4] Its librarian was Mary Bragg, who was the wife of its president and founder, Wilson Armistead.[1]

The Association organised meetings that hosted notable abolitionists and speakers including Harriet Beecher Stowe and Samuel Ringgold Ward.[5]

The association ran its own journal which published the accounts of enslavement and abolitionist texts.[1] The Leeds Anti-Slavery Series was a series of 82 anti-slavery tracts, which, according to historian Kimberly Blockett, were published not with home readers in mind, but in order to overwhelm "the eastern shores of the United States with a half million prints of anti-slavery sentiments from England".[6] The publications were also gathered together and published in a single volume.[1] The Association published the Leeds Anti-Slavery Juvenile Series, aimed at children.[7] Armistead used his own business at Water Hall in Holbeck as a distribution centre for his abolitionists pamphlets.[2]

In 1854 the association launched an essay competition, with prizes of 200 guineas and 100 guineas for first and second place.[8] The title entrants had to write to was "On the sinfulness of slavery, the mode of terminating it and the benefits that would result therefrom".[8] The Association hosted talks and hosted meetings, with notable abolitionists coming to speak.[9] Speakers included the author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who stayed at the home of Edward Baines.[10] On 10 December 1855 a meeting was held at Belgrave Chapel, where the speakers included Parker Pillsbury, an American abolitionist.[11] This built on an existing programme of abolitionist speakers visiting Leeds; one such speaker was Frederick Douglass who delivered a lecture entitled "England Should Lead the Cause of Emancipation" on 23 December 1846.[12]

In 1857 the Association established the Leeds Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society, of which Armistead was Honourable Secretary.[9][13][14]

References
  1. "Wilson Armistead (1819 – 1868) - They Lived in Leeds - Thoresby Society". thoresby.org.uk. Retrieved 1 July 2021.
  2. Bennett, Bridget (2 July 2020). "Guerrilla inscription: Transatlantic abolition and the 1851 census" (PDF). Atlantic Studies. 17 (3): 375–398. doi:10.1080/14788810.2020.1735234. S2CID 221052014.
  3. BBC. "Leeds leads the way". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 1 July 2021.
  4. Midgley, Clare (September 1993). "Anti-Slavery and Feminism in Nineteenth-Century Britain". Gender & History. 5 (3): 343–362. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.1993.tb00184.x.
  5. "American Slavery. - Meeting and Lecture in Leeds". Leed's Times. 15 October 1853. p. 3. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
  6. Blockett, Kimberly (September 2015). "Disrupting Print: Emigration, the Press, and Narrative Subjectivity in the British Preaching and Writing of Zilpha Elaw, 1840-1860s". MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. 40 (3): 94–109. doi:10.1093/melus/mlv027.
  7. Anti-Slavery Society (1860). Leeds Anti-Slavery Juvenile Series. [Leeds Anti-Slavery Society]. JSTOR 60227884. OCLC 654351727.
  8. "ANTI-SLAVERY PRIZE ESSAY". The Anti-Slavery Reporter. London. 2 (6): 127–129. June 1854. ProQuest 2931607.
  9. Wright, D. G. (June 1974). "Leeds Politics and the American Civil War". Northern History. 9 (1): 96–122. doi:10.1179/nhi.1974.9.1.96.
  10. "MRS. H. B. STOWE". The Anti-Slavery Reporter. London. 1 (10): 220–226. October 1853. ProQuest 2935344.
  11. 'Guilty or not guilty?': A few facts and feelings regarding the religious bodies of America in the matter of slavery; being a report of an anti-slavery meeting held in Belgrave Chapel, Leeds, December 10th, 1855. Edward Baines & Sons. 1855. JSTOR 60227866.
  12. "Douglass in England - Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland". frederickdouglassinbritain.com. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
  13. Rice, C. Duncan (September 1970). "III. 'Humanity Sold for Sugar!' The British Abolitionist Response to Free Trade in Slave-grown Sugar". The Historical Journal. 13 (3): 402–418. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00009250. S2CID 162070932.
  14. Bennett, Mark (September 2014). "CONFEDERATE SUPPORTERS IN THE WEST RIDING, 1861–1865: 'CRANKS OF THE WORST ENGLISH SPECIES'". Northern History. 51 (2): 311–329. doi:10.1179/0078172X14Z.00000000067. S2CID 159689747.
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