William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown ( born November 6, 1814 near Lexington, Kentucky, † November 6, 1884 in Chelsea, Massachusetts) was an American abolitionist, lecturer, novelist, playwright and historian. In the southern states born into slavery, Brown escaped to the North, where he joined the cause of the abolitionists and worked as an author. Brown was also a pioneer in various literary genres, including the travel writing and drama. He is the author of the work, which is considered the first novel by an African- American.

Biography

Brown's mother Elizabeth, who belonged to a Dr. Young had seven children by different fathers (except William nor Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Millford and Elizabeth ). Brown's father was the white plantation owner George Higgins, who was a relative of the owner of the plantation, saw the light of day on the Brown.

Before he was 20 years old, Brown has been sold several times, but spent most of his life until then in St. Louis. Then his owner verheuerten him to work on the Missouri River, which was an important transportation route for the slave trade at the time. He made several attempts to escape, and on New Year's Day 1834, he was able to successfully exit a steam ship in the port of Cincinnati (Ohio ). He took the name of a friendly Quaker to gain his freedom. He spent nine years in the Underground Railroad and worked as a steam boatman on Lake Erie - he used this position to bring runaway slaves across the lake to freedom in Canada. Brown was active in the abolitionist movement and joined several groups against slavery and the Negro Convention Movement.

Speaker and author for the Abolition

Brown's original concern was the Prohibition, but he then concentrated on efforts against slavery and held in New York and Massachusetts speeches that reflected his belief in the power of moralsuation and the importance of a non-violent solution. He often attacked the presumed American ideal of democracy and the use of religion as a justification for the subservience of slaves. Brown fought for life the idea that blacks were subjects of the white race. The early 1850s, he traveled to the United Kingdom, where he wooed supporters for the affairs of the American abolitionists. A newspaper article in the Scotch Independent reported:

"Shaken By dint of resolution, self - culture, and force of character, He Has rendered himself a popular lecturer to a British audience, and vigorous expositor of the evils and atrocities of system did Whose chains He Has so off triumphantly and forever. We june safely pronounce William Wells Brown a remarkable one, and a full refutation of the doctrine of the inferiority of the negro. "

" He has made himself a popular lecturer for a British audience by stability, self-education and strength of character, and an energetic commentators of the evils and atrocities of the system whose chains he has shaken off so triumphantly and final. We can safely proclaim William Wells Brown as a remarkable man and a complete refutation of the doctrine of the inferiority of the Negro. "

Partly thanks to his reputation as a powerful narrator Brown was invited by the National Convention of Colored Citizens, where he met other prominent abolitionists. When the Liberty Party was formed, he decided to remain independent, because he believed that the abolitionist movement should avoid political grave struggles. He continued his support of the approach of William Lloyd Garrison and shared his personal experiences and observations of slavery in order to bring others in support of the cause.

Literary works

His advocacy of abolitionism was not only limited to giving lectures. Brown published in 1847 his life story under the title Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, which became a bestseller and was similarly sold well as the life story of Frederick Douglass. In it he criticizes especially the lack of Christian values ​​in the slave owners and the brutal use of force in the relationship between slave owners and slave. During the time spent in the UK time Brown published more texts, including travelogues and plays.

His first novel titled Clotel, or, The President 's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is considered the first published by an African- American novel. Because the book was published, however, in the UK, it is not the first published in the United States novel of a African- American. This property is due to either Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859 ), which was rediscovered in 1982 by Henry Louis Gates Jr. or Julia C. Collins's The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride (1865 ), which was discovered by the Professor of English Literature William L. Andrews of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the history professor Mitch Kachun from Western Michigan University in 2006. Andrews and interpret Kachun Our Nig as an autobiographical novel and argue that Collins ' book is the first fully fictional novel by an African American, which was published in the United States.

Most literary scholars agree that Brown was the first African-American playwright whose plays have been published. Brown was the author of two plays, The Experience; or, How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone (1856, unpublished and now lost) and The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (published 1858), which he read at meeting of abolitionists instead of the usual lectures.

Brown also wrote several works as a historian, including The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements ( 1863), The Negro in the American Revolution (1867 ), The Rising Son (1873 ) and another volume of his autobiography, My Southern Home (1880 ).

Later life

After British friends had bought him the freedom to Brown returned to the United States, where he continued to hold lectures. Presumably through in the 1850s for blacks increasingly dangerous mood in the United States, he swung around and became a supporter of the African American emigration to Haiti. Like some other abolitionists came Brown to conclude that militant actions were required to come into the matter forward. During the American Civil War and the following decades, Brown continued to publish fictitious and nichtfiktive works, thus securing the reputation of one of the most prolific African American writers a time. Even during the Civil War, he plays his part, when he joined the abolitionist Frances George Shaw introduces a native of Bermuda soldiers Robert John Simmons. Shaw was the father of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

William Wells Brown died in 1884 in Chelsea.