When it comes to the 19th century, the numbers are even worse. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman have only a handful of biographies, and none of them were written by Black historians. Biography matters: It reveals the importance of individual experiences and contributions. Too often, the Black abolitionist movement gets boiled down to the leadership of Douglass and Tubman—and while their lives were long and their contributions innumerable, there are dozens of other Black abolitionist leaders who have earned the right to be household names, such as Lewis Hayden, Charles Lenox Remond and his famous sister Sarah, Charlotte Forten Grimke, William Cooper Nell, and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. Yet very few have had books written about them—and the hard truth is that this dearth of biographies is not always about a lack of sources.
Yale University Press’s new “Black Lives” series seeks to address this hard truth. Over time, it plans to publish a set of biographies of remarkable but overlooked Black figures. Fittingly, the first in this series is R.J.M. Blackett’s book on the abolitionist, newspaper editor, and minister Samuel Ringgold Ward. Ward is an interesting choice for a number of reasons. His was not exactly a “rags to riches” story, and he had only a few professional victories. In fact, he struggled for most of his life, working as a teacher, preacher, lecturer, and editor. Ward had a nomadic lifestyle, and his multiple jobs suggest that he never managed to make a enough money to sustain himself and his family. But as an activist, he pushed both white and Black Americans to rethink what freedom should entail. He challenged the United States and even Canada to live up to a creed of liberty and equality. As Blackett demonstrates, Ward’s life was one of precarity and hardship. By telling his complicated story, Blackett also helps us understand Black persistence in the face of slavery and inequality. Despite the challenges Ward faced, he never quit his fight for justice.
Like Douglass and Tubman, Samuel Ringgold Ward was born enslaved on the eastern shore of Maryland. In 1818, when he was 3 months old, his parents escaped slavery with their child in tow, heading first to New Jersey and later settling in New York. Yet even in the “free” North, Ward grew up in a world darkened by the violence of slavery and fierce racial discrimination. Though he lived free and was educated in the African Free School in New York City, he was a fugitive in the eyes of the law.