TIP Professor Highlights Role of Women in Antislavery Movement June 22, 2023 – Posted in: Uncategorized

A new book by recent TIP seminar leader Kathleen Brown shows that women—and especially Black women—led the way in the abolition of slavery. Brown’s book Undoing Slavery: Bodies, Race and Rights in the Age of Abolition corrects the conventional view that abolitionists were mostly White and motivated by their religious beliefs. The book points to the contributions of Black, female activists who drew attention to the physical harm inflicted on women as part of the slave system. Professor Brown recently discussed the book in-depth in an interview in Penn Today.

Brown is David Boies Professor of History in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, and a member of TIP’s University Advisory Council. She led the 2020 TIP seminar New Approaches to the History of Slavery: The View from the Penn and Slavery Project, which investigated Penn’s connection to the slave trade. The seminar introduced teachers to the evidence of these connections unearthed beginning in 2017 by student researchers in the Penn and Slavery Project. Units of study teachers wrote in the seminar can be viewed in the curriculum units section of TIP’s website.