Skeptics in the Pub with Professor Bruce Baker - 1867 cafe bar

Recognized More and More: Frederick Douglass and Newcastles role in ending slavery in the United States

Everyone knows that Newcastle had a strong tradition of reform in the nineteenth century, from land reformer Thomas Spence to political reformer Lord Grey, to the campaigning editor Joseph Cowen, and the city has made much of its connection to the abolitionist Frederick Douglass in recent years. But Newcastles connection to the campaign to end American slavery was in place long before Douglass arrived, and it included a range of actors, both local and visiting. This talk will give a sense of who those people were, what they did, and what difference it made to the end of slavery in the United States.

Bruce E. Baker is Professor of American History and African American Studies at Newcastle University and has written widely on the history of the American South. Since 2020, he has worked closely with Fionnghuala Sweeney, an expert on Frederick Douglass, to research the life and career of Moses Roper, a fugitive slave from North Carolina, who came to Britain and campaigned against American slavery several years before Douglass.