Abolition! Anti-Slavery Campaigners Against the Aristocracy of Skin

This walk reveals where many key London events took place in British campaigns against slavery - based on a theory of race and 'aristocracy of skin' - between the mid-1700s and mid-1800s. Fugitive and former slaves, white lawyers, activists and orators -- women as well as men -- along with black activists, authors and musicians come alive in a walk from Chancery Lane to Fleet Street, Lincoln’s Inn and Covent Garden, ending at Embankment Gardens.

The capture in London of escaped slaves led to legal cases that campaigners loudly supported. Slaves were given as gifts by West Indies planters to wealthy Londoners who used them as fashion-accessories. There were small communities of free blacks, many working as servants. Blacks made free by fighting on the British side during wars thronged to London, some becoming beggars but others getting by and even moving up in social class. On the walk you meet Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, James Somerset, Granville Sharp, Sarah Parker Remond, Thomas Clarkson, Ottobah Cuguano, Elizabeth Heyrick, Billy Waters, Samuel Johnson, Francis Barber, Hannah More, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, CLR James and more names now often forgotten.

Event Venue

Pavement at Exit 2 Chancery Lane Station, High Holborn, London, United Kingdom

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

Get App