Faculty

Richard J. M. Blackett
Andrew Jackson Professor of History

MA, Manchester, 1973

19th Century US History, with emphasis on the antebellum period particularly the abolitionist movement; African American history; Caribbean history.

Telephone: 615-343-7769
Email: Richard.j.blackett@vanderbilt.edu
Office Hours: None during summer, email for an appointment
Office: Benson Hall 212

Richard Blackett is a historian of the abolitionist movement in the US and particularly its transatlantic connections and the roles African Americans played in the movement to abolish slavery. He is the author of Building an Antislavery Wall. Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (1983); Beating Against the Barriers. Biographical Essays in Nineteenth-Century Afro-American History (1986); Thomas Morris Chester. Black Civil war Correspondent (1989); Divided Hearts. Britain and the American Civil War (2001); editor, Running A thousand Miles for Freedom. The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery.(1999). At present he is working on a study of the ways communities on both sides of the divide organized to support or resist enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the ways slaves by escaping influenced the politics of slavery.

Blackett taught previously at the University of Pittsburgh (1971-85), Indiana University (1985-1996); University of Houston where he was the John & Rebecca Moores professor of history and African American Studies (1996-2002).

He has been Associate Editor of the Journal of American History (1985-1990), Acting Editor (1989-1990); editor of the Indiana Magazine of History (1993-1996). He is also past president of the Association of Caribbean Historians.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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