The Fugitive Blacksmith and Other Essential Writings by James W.C. Pennington

This volume recovers the unjustly-forgotten African American abolitionist and minister, James W.C. Pennington. During the antebellum period, Pennington was an internationally-recognized intellectual, an exemplary African American figure. He was Yale Divinity School''s first (unofficial) African American student, and his intellectual achievement took him to Europe, where he published a bestselling slave narrative and received an honorary Doctorate from Germany''s oldest university. His writings, lectures, activism, and direct resistance make him one of the forgotten architects of the American antislavery movement. This volume is the first modern edition of any of Pennington''s works, including his slave narrative and his monumental treatise on Black history, with a variety of his most impactful sermons, activist writings, and correspondence.

By the early 1850s, the former slave James W.C. Pennington had become an internationally prominent African American minister, abolitionist and reformer. With its scathing analysis of the chattel system, gripping account of his escape, and inspirational story of self-education and conversion to an activist faith, Pennington''s autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849), found readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Pennington''s second major work, A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841), pioneered a new kind of Black history. However, during the Civil War era, Pennington''s star declined, and after Reconstruction, he was largely forgotten. This volume offers the first-ever modern edition of The Fugitive Blacksmith and A Text Book, alongside other selections of Pennington''s essential sermons, speeches, and journalistic contributions, and an introduction by the volume editors. The volume provides readers the rich biographical and historical background, as well as the political and intellectual contexts, necessary to appreciate Pennington and his activism. Through these texts, which explore perennial philosophical questions about human nature, the meaning of freedom, and the possibility of a just and inclusive society, we see Pennington in his rightful place as an important part of the Black intellectual tradition in the 19th century.