“Gratuitous Distribution”: Distributing African American Antislavery Texts, 1773-1850

This project highlights the diverse distribution strategies employed by authors, editors, and publishers of African American antislavery texts. Against slavery and pervasive racial discrimination in the early American republic, individuals and communities developed creative methods--private and public, personal and institutional, formal and informal, legal and illegal--to distribute antislavery imprints and the work of black authors and editors. Close reading and material investigations elucidate the alternative practices and activist networks that moved these texts and eventually shaped the broader abolitionist movement.