William Hamilton (abolitionist)
William Hamilton (1773 – December 9, 1836) was a prominent African American orator and civil rights activist in the United States.[1] Hamilton was born in New York sometime in 1773, and was reputed to be the son of Founding Father and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.[2][3] William Hamilton made his living as a carpenter, but became well known as a leader in the first wave of American abolitionism.[1][3]
Life and Career
In 1808, William Hamilton co-founded the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, which provided financial support for sick members as well as their widows and children.[1][2][4] In 1820, he became a founding member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New York City.[2][3] In 1827, Hamilton helped found Freedom's Journal, the first black newspaper in the United States.[5] In the 1830s, he participated in and spoke against slavery at the first national conventions of African Americans.[3][5] He also worked with white journalist and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison on his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator.[6][4]
Hamilton's two sons, Robert and Thomas Hamilton, established and edited The People's Press, the Weekly Anglo-African, and the Anglo-African Magazine.[4] The Weekly Anglo-African and Anglo-African Magazine became two of the most influential African American publications in the pre-Civil War period.[7][4] In 1859, the magazine published black nationalist thinker Martin Delany's novel Blake, a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.[3]
Political Thought
Hamilton strongly opposed slavery, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and racial prejudice in the United States, delivering numerous speeches in defense of the rights of enslaved people and African Americans more broadly.[6][5] Hamilton was also an early champion of Pan-Africanism, arguing for the interconnectedness and shared heritage of African people regardless of their nationality or geographic location.[5]
Hamilton opposed the scientific racism of the 18th and 19th centuries, which claimed Africans and African Americans were mentally inferior to whites; he believed education and self-improvement would disprove white Americans' belief "that Africans do not possess minds as ingenious as other men."[1] In an 1809 speech to the New York Society for Mutual Relief, he cited poet Phyllis Wheatley as an example of African American talent, in contrast to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, who denigrated Wheatley in his Notes on the State of Virginia.[1]
Hamilton further opposed the American Colonization Society, a movement among white Americans to send enslaved people and free blacks to the colony of Liberia in west Africa.[2][4] Like many black abolitionists Hamilton sought full equality and civil rights in the United States rather than emigration to Africa.
Notes
- ^ a b c d e Foner, Philip S.; Branham, Robert James, eds. (1998). Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama. pp. 81–85.
- ^ a b c d "Hamilton, William". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|dead-url=(help) - ^ a b c d e Rothman, Adam (April 2016). "The Truth About Abolition". The Atlantic. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|dead-url=(help) - ^ a b c d e Tripp, Bernell E. (2009). Sachsman, David B.; Rushing, S. Kittrell; Morris Jr., Roy (eds.). Seeking a Voice: Images of Race and Gender in the 19th Century Press. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press.
- ^ a b c d Alexander, Leslie M.; Rucker, Walter C., eds. (2010). Encyclopedia of African American History. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO.
- ^ a b Rezek, Joseph (2010). "The Orations on the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the Uses of Print in the Early Black Atlantic". Early American Literature. 45 (3): 655–682 – via JSTOR.
- ^ "Anglo African, The". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
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