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  • Social Sciences x
  • 1801–1860: The Antebellum Era and Slave Economy x
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Article

Ardouin, Charles Nicolas Céligny  

Lesley S. Curtis

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

from a prominent Haitian family of both European and African ancestry. Céligny’s date of birth is listed as 1801 on a birth certificate filed in 1805, which has created some confusion as to his real age. His father was Alexis Antoine Ardouin and his mother was Lolotte Félix Galez. Birth certificates of his younger siblings reveal that he grew up in close contact with his father, his father’s wife, Suzanne Léger Ardouin, and their seven children, including the famous historian Beaubrun Ardouin and the poet Corolian Ardouin. Céligny married Marie Angélique Liautaud in 1823 and had six children.

Céligny’s most significant work, Essais sur l’histoire d’Haïti (Essays on the History of Haiti) was written and published in sections in the late 1830s. It appeared as a revised collection in 1841, but was only published in its entirety in 1865 sixteen years after the author s death Beaubrun ...

Article

Boas, Franz  

Frank A. Salamone

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

pioneer in discrediting the racist concepts that characterized early twentieth-century anthropology and other social sciences. Franz Boas was born in Minden, Germany. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Kiel in 1881, but he soon shifted interest into the field of human geography. In 1883 he conducted his first fieldwork, among the Inuit people of Baffin Island. In 1887 he began research among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. In 1899 he became the first professor of anthropology at Columbia University. When Boas began his anthropological work, anthropology was far from being a scientific field. It was infested with racist practitioners and amateurs. Boas held that too often people developed theories and then sought to gather information to prove their theories.

Article

Boilat, David  

Hilary Jones

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

missionary, parish priest, and religious educator, was born in Senegal on 16 April 1814, the same day that Napoleon Bonaparte left France for exile on the Island of Elba. Two years later Britain ended its occupation of Senegal and returned the fortified island territories of Gorée and Saint-Louis to France. The island of Saint-Louis du Sénégal, founded by France in 1659 as a strategic site in the period of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, gained a reputation as a cosmopolitan Atlantic port city shaped by patterns of intermarriage between African women (Signares) and European administrators, merchants, and soldiers. The son of Marie Monté, a “free mulâtresse,” and Pierre Boilat, member of the merchant marines, David Boilat came from the small but growing class of mixed race inhabitants who closely identified with the Catholic Church and sought the privileges of French education despite their relative isolation from French culture.

In 1816 ...

Article

Burke, Samuel Constantine  

Wigmoore Francis

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

is known primarily for his advocacy on behalf of the black and colored population of Jamaica, for his resistance to Crown rule, and for his impact on constitutional reform in the late nineteenth century. Samuel was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to William Burke, a wealthy watchmaker, and Elizabeth Staines Burke, a housewife. William owned four residences in Kingston’s upscale districts, and together, he and Elizabeth produced ten children, all of whom were colored.

Burke who may have been born on Harbour Street near the Kingston waterfront grew up on Church Street in downtown Kingston at a transitional time when the residential areas there were being overrun by business operations Here the absence of clear lines of demarcation between business and residence and the physical proximity of poorer black families resulted in a motley demographic arrangement of class color and race From a young age Samuel would therefore have been exposed ...

Article

Burton, Richard Francis  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2015

explorer, the son of Colonel Joseph Burton and Martha Beckwith Burton was born on 19 March 1821 in Torquay, Devon, England. As a military officer in the British Army, Joseph Burton traveled regularly, and his son Richard grew up in France and different Italian states. He showed early in life a tremendous gift for learning languages, and he eventually mastered Arabic to the point he regularly passed for an Arab or Persian or an Indian Muslim. Burton was admitted to Oxford University in 1840, but his wild behavior eventually led to his dismissal in 1842. His taste for adventure led him to join the British colonial army in India, and he first visited Africa en route from England via the Cape of Good Hope to Mumbai (Bombay). From 1842 until 1849, Burton mastered Arabic, Farsi, and Hindustani as he served as a British intelligence officer.

Burton ...

Article

Burton, Sir Richard  

Ari Nave

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Sir Richard Burton spoke twenty-five languages and multiple dialects, including Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, Marathi, Punjab, Arabic, and Hindi. During his travels he observed an enormous range of cultural practices, which he documented in forty-three manuscripts. He also wrote two books of poetry and four volumes of folklore.

Born in Torquay, England, Burton was raised by his English parents primarily in France. He briefly attended Trinity College, Oxford, but was expelled in 1842 for insubordination. He then joined the Bombay army, and served in India (in present-day Pakistan) until 1850. Working as an intelligence officer, Burton learned to impersonate Muslim merchants. His reputation was called into question and his military career cut short, however, when a rival officer spread word that Burton had been investigating homosexual bathhouses in Karachi, failing to divulge that Burton had done so under orders from a senior officer.

After returning to France and ...

Article

Dias, Antônio Gonçalves  

Lamonte Aidoo

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
31 May 2017

was born on 10 August 1823 in the town of Caxias in the northeastern Brazilian province of Maranhão to João Manuel Gonçalves Dias and Vicência Ferreira. Among the nation’s most celebrated writers, Dias was one of the foremost proponents of Brazilian Romanticism and the nineteenth-century literary movement known as Indianism.

His father was a Portuguese immigrant and a leader of the Portuguese loyalists against the Brazilians in the final stages of the independence movement Dias s mother was a mixed race woman of Gê Indian and African ancestry and mistress of João Manuel Though Dias is most known for his Indianist or nativist poetry that celebrated Brazil s indigenous populations he never openly acknowledged his heritage Instead his mixed race heritage and the illegitimacy of his birth would haunt him throughout his life as a constant source of shame insecurity and heartbreak When he was 6 years old his father ...

Article

Dillet, Stephen, Sr.  

Patricia Glinton-Meicholas

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
31 May 2017

was born in 1797 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (renamed Haiti following its revolution). He was the son of Mary Catherine Esther Argo (also “Hester Argeaux”), a free woman of African descent. His father was purportedly Etienne Dillet, a French army officer. Naturalized as a British subject of The Bahamas in 1828, Stephen Dillet became a member of one of the earliest organized civil rights pressure groups in The Bahamas, and he was the first Bahamian of color to win election to the colony’s Parliament.

Dillet was a man whose character and social and political pursuits were deeply influenced by events of international import, which supplied the context for his life. His birth in 1797 six years after the outbreak of the Haitian revolution was attended by bloody conflict The chief combatants were the free people of color and enslaved blacks who had rebelled to free themselves ...

Article

Du Bois, W. E. B.  

Thomas C. Holt

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

scholar, writer, editor, and civil rights pioneer, was born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Silvina Burghardt, a domestic worker, and Alfred Du Bois a barber and itinerant laborer In later life Du Bois made a close study of his family origins weaving them rhetorically and conceptually if not always accurately into almost everything he wrote Born in Haiti and descended from mixed race Bahamian slaves Alfred Du Bois enlisted during the Civil War as a private in a New York regiment of the Union army but appears to have deserted shortly afterward He also deserted the family less than two years after his son s birth leaving him to be reared by his mother and the extended Burghardt kin Long resident in New England the Burghardts descended from a freedman of Dutch slave origin who had ...

Article

Ellis, George Washington  

Vernon J. Williams

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

lawyer and social scientist, was born in Weston Platt County, Missouri, the son of George Ellis, a farmer, and Amanda Jane Trace. George Ellis left home after completing elementary school, primarily because Weston Platt County could not provide him with the education or training he desired. He moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he found greater educational opportunities but increased racial hostilities. As a consequence, he soon moved to Atkinson, Kansas, where he completed high school in 1891. Ellis continued his education at the law school at the University of Kansas, receiving an LLB in 1893. While practicing law Ellis pursued a BA at Kansas; it is not known, however, if he completed the requirements for the degree. While at the University of Kansas he was active in Republican politics and debated in Kansas's McKinley Club.

Ellis moved to New York City in 1897 where ...

Article

Lane, Edward William  

Geoffrey Roper

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

British topographer, ethnographer, and philologist in Egypt, was born at Hereford, England, on 17 September 1801, the son of the Reverend Theophilus Lane and wife Sophia (née Gardiner). Having rejected higher education at Cambridge, Edward went instead to London in 1819, and learned the craft of engraving. There he developed an interest in Egypt, possibly stimulated by Belzoni’s spectacular exhibition of Egyptian antiquities in 1821. But he also seems to have shared in the excitement aroused about that time by the decipherment of the hieroglyphs by Jean François Champollion and Dr. Thomas Young.

Having already acquired some knowledge of Arabic, Lane embarked for Egypt in 1825. On arrival at Alexandria, he felt like “an Eastern bridegroom, about to lift up the veil of his bride, and to see, for the first time, the features which were to charm, or disappoint, or disgust him” (Lane, 2000 ...

Article

Layton, Sarah Willie  

Mary Krane Derr

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2012

human-rights campaigner, women organizer, and religious leader, often called S. Willie Layton or Layten, was born Sarah W. Phillips in Grenada, Mississippi, to the minister William H. Phillips and Mary H. Phillips, a housekeeper. William Phillips was born in January 1841 in Virginia, also the birthplace of both his parents. Mary Phillips was born in June 1845 in Mississippi, the birthplace of both of her parents. Very likely, both were born enslaved, as was Sarah at the time of her birth. Layton's parents wed in 1862. The 1900 U.S. Census records Layton as the only surviving child of six. Her father worked for denominational self-determination and professionalized clergy in the black churches. Layton's upbringing stressed the intersection of human rights, especially educational rights, of African Americans and women.

As a teenager, she lived in Memphis, Tennessee, with her parents and attended LeMoyne (now LeMoyne-Owen) College, graduating in 1881 ...

Article

Nabuco, Joaquim  

Aaron Myers

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born in Recife, Brazil, into an aristocratic and politically active family, Joaquim Nabuco spent the first eight years of his life on his family's large Sugar plantation in the northeastern province of Pernambuco. He later moved with his parents to Rio de Janeiro, then attended the prestigious law academies of São Paulo and Recife. At the former he met Antônio De Castro Alves, “the Poet of the Slaves,” and the abolitionist Rui Barbosa. Between 1873 and 1876 he made several trips to Europe and the United States, where he learned about abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, in the process strengthening his belief in abolition.

Nabuco opposed slavery for moral reasons At the age of eight he became aware of the cruelties of slavery when a slave from a nearby plantation approached him and begged to be purchased by Nabuco s family explaining that his ...

Article

Thornton, Henry  

David Dabydeen

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

Banker, economist, close friend of William Wilberforce, and campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade. Owing to his background in financial matters, Thornton was able to be of great help to Wilberforce in terms of managing the monetary aspects of their anti‐slavery campaigns besides providing practical business advice. He was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect, a group of men under the influence of Wilberforce who were devoted to evangelical Christianity and believed that, through their faith in Jesus Christ, they would fight for moral, social, and political justice. The Sect was formed by Wilberforce and Thornton after their proposal for the abolition of the slave trade was rejected in 1789. It was Thornton's idea to create a Christian commune within which those dedicated to religious and political matters could live, exchange, and activate their ideas. In 1792 he purchased Battersea ...

Article

Washington, Fanny Smith  

Denyce Porter Peyton

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

educator and home economist, was born Fanny Smith in Malden, Kanawha County, West Virginia, the daughter of Samuel Smith and Celia. Historical accounts of Fanny Smith do not disclose much detail about her family, for instance whether or not she had siblings. Fanny grew up in Malden, West Virginia, where after the Civil War she became acquainted with Booker T. Washington, whose family settled there after emancipation. Washington began his studies at Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1872 and graduated in 1875. He returned to West Virginia and was Fanny's teacher in Malden, where he taught approximately eighty to ninety students in a day program from 1875 to 1878. Fanny and a few Malden schoolmates, assisted by Washington, gained admittance to Hampton Institute some time before 1878. This small group of students was known primarily as “Booker Washington's boys” (Harlan, 76). Fanny s ...

Article

Wright, Richard Robert, Jr.  

Charles Rosenberg

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2018

exhorter, sociologist, banker, and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, was born in Cuthbert, Georgia, the son of Richard Robert Wright Sr., an educator and banker, and Lydia Elizabeth Howard Wright. He had a brother, Emmanuel, and sisters, Edwina MaBelle, a schoolteacher, and Julia.

Wright attended public schools and the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, founded in 1886 by Lucy Craft Laney, often considered Georgia's most famous African American woman educator. In 1898 he was the first graduate of Georgia State Industrial College, where his father was the first president. After graduating with an A.B. degree, he served briefly as a paymaster's clerk in the Spanish-American War, began graduate study at the University of Chicago, and was licensed to preach by the AME church in 1899. In 1900 he was ordained an AME minister and worked as an enumerator for ...