Years in England helped bring issue of slavery into focus

by Ann Marie Deer Owens
Like Frederick Douglass and many of the other African-American leaders of the 19th century abolition movement, Richard J.M. Blackett has spent time in England. For Douglass and his contemporaries, life in England influenced their perspective on the restrictive American society of their day. For Blackett, his time there, especially during his graduate studies, continues to have a profound effect on his extensive research on slavery and abolition.

Blackett joined Vanderbilt this semester as the Andrew Jackson Professor of History. A native of Trinidad and Tobago, he earned his master’s degree in American Studies in 1973 from the University of Manchester, England, and his undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Keele in Staffordshire, England.

“I have a longstanding interest in the intellectual perceptions of slavery and what led the British to free the slaves in 1833, many years before the same action in the United States,” said Blackett, whose most recent book, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War, focuses on British reactions to that 19th century conflict.

Of Douglass and the others who fought to eliminate slavery in the United States, Blackett said, “By traveling to England, the black leaders gained temporary freedom from the daily oppression still occurring for them in the United States.”

Blackett came to Vanderbilt from the University of Houston, where he had been the Moores Distinguished Chair of History and African-American Studies since 1996. Previously, he was a faculty member at the Indiana University Department of History, where he served for a time as editor of the Indiana Magazine of History and also as acting editor of the Journal of American History.

Blackett will be on leave in the spring to work on a forthcoming study about community resistance to the enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. “That resistance was an important way that our nation began to debate the issue of slavery,” he said.
When asked what he thinks about the emerging debate about reparations for African Americans, Blackett said there is a strong need for Americans to have this discussion. He noted that America is the only society where slaves were given the instant right to vote, but still faced longtime barriers to acquiring property.

Posted on 9/23, 2002 at 12:30 p.m.

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