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Community | Black Literary Figures in the UK

Virtual Tour

Join scholar Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray as she gives a virtual tour of central London, highlighting sites where Black American literary figures frequented.

During the nineteenth century, African Americans and survivors of slavery wrote about their experiences in autobiographical narratives, letters, and pamphlets. Black activists published their life histories in Britain and Ireland too, selling thousands of copies – often more than the famous Victorian authors we know about today. In this tour, we’ll visit some key locations in London where some of these important radical and abolitionist documents were published, and learn about the history of survivors writing themselves into history.

African American activists traveled to the British Isles during the 19th to educate audiences about the brutalities of slavery, to write and publish their narratives,to raise money to legally purchase themselves or family members, or to settle and work there. In their radical and politicized journeys of freedom, they traveled thousands of miles to give lectures in large cities like London and Edinburgh, to small villages like Bakewell, Keswick, and Pembroke.

Whilst some of the buildings visited by these individuals do not remain, it is impossible to deny that we walk past important Black history sites on a daily basis, without realizing the impact these men and women had on British society.

Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray is a historian based at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research focuses on Black activism in the transatlantic. Her first book, Advocates of Freedom: African American Transatlantic Abolitionism in the British Isles was published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press, and her accompanying website, www.frederickdouglassinbritain.com attempts to map as many Black activist speaking locations as possible across Britain and Ireland. She has organized numerous community events including talks, school workshops, heritage plaques, performances, podcasts, plays, exhibitions, and walking tours on both sides of the Atlantic.

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* Presented by Adult Services 

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