Description:This extract from the Birmingham Anti- Slavery Society minutes book identifies how a special meeting was held on July 29th, 1846 to accommodate the presence of an important visitor:‘Frederick Douglass’. One of the most important African-American antislavery campaigners of the nineteenth century, Douglass wrote his own autobiography in 1845 to dramatize the story of his escape to freedom. His narrative and the readings and speeches he gave around the world made him a famous black political leader.
The input of visitors such as Douglass was vital to the Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society. For abolitionists based in America, the horrifying spectacle of slavery was placed inescapably on their doorstep. Yet British antislavery activists like Joseph Sturge often faced the issue that many local people perceived slavery as a ‘foreign’ problem. The more immediate issue for the population for Birmingham would have been seen as local overcrowding, slums, poor working conditions, health and sanitation- and not necessarily ‘African slavery’.
This may partly be why an earlier minute book entry on June 29th 1832 makes a special appeal for more personal sources of information on the issue of the slave trade: “any persons who have resided in the British Slave Colonies or in Hayti and communicate from personal knowledge any facts relative to the state of the negro population to send their names”
With this need to provide more direct information about slavery, the appearance in Birmingham of an abolitionist speaker like Frederick Douglass, who had personally experienced slavery, was a powerful reminder of these wider human responsibilities. In a speech entitled 'slavery attacks humanity', Douglass rightly argued that every citizen had a moral duty to push for an end to slavery, wherever in the world it existed.