Little-Known Abolitionists Profiled in New Book by Local Authors
Photo: Olive Branch Press
Authors to Participate in Book Group Discussion September 10
On February 14, 1783, months before the official end of the American Revolution, a 70-year-old woman known as Belinda submitted a petition to the Great and General Court of Massachusetts. Belinda, who signed the petition with an X, had been captured in what is now Ghana at the age of 12 and enslaved by Isaac Royall of Medford until he fled to England at the start of the Revolution. She was requesting a pension for herself and her disabled daughter—reparations, essentially, for her lifetime of unpaid labor—from the Royall estate.
In 1848, Robert Morris, the first Black attorney in America to argue a case in front of a jury, sued the Boston school committee on behalf of Sarah Roberts, who was denied enrollment in all-white public schools. Roberts v. Boston was ultimately decided in favor of the city and was later cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” decision, but Morris’s arguments foreshadowed the court’s 1954 reversal in Brown v. Board of Education. In 1851, Morris was tried for treason under the Fugitive Slave Law for his role in helping an enslaved person to escape.
These are just two of the remarkable stories featured in Tom Weiner and Amilcar Shabazz’s new book, In Defiance: 20 Abolitionists You Were Never Taught in School (Olive Branch Press, 2025). This collection of vignettes highlights the contributions of a diverse group of 17th- to 19th-century women and men (10 Black, 10 white) who courageously confronted the evil of slavery in America. Their stories complement the better-known narratives of abolitionist heroes such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth and show the extraordinary impact that “ordinary” people can have. In that sense, it is a book to inspire resistance in our own time as well as to uncover hidden histories.
Book Group at South Congregational Church
The authors will engage in a book group discussion of In Defiance that is free and open to the public at South Congregational Church, 1066 South East Street, South Amherst, on September 10 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. This discussion is part of the church’s Arts and Social Justice series, which included Reading Frederick Douglass Together on July 5. Participants who register at penniman@umass.edu will receive more information about the discussion. Copies of the book are available to book group participants at Amherst Books at a 40% discount thanks to a grant from Mass Humanities.
Weiner, who has previously written books on the Vietnam War draft, microfilmed V-mail in World War II, and men’s and women’s support groups, first conceived of In Defiance over 45 years ago, when he determined “to tell little-known or unknown stories of people who fought for freedom, justice, and equality for African Americans”. Shabazz, whose books include a study of African Americans’ struggle for access to higher education and perspectives on race and gender, is a UMass professor of history and Africana Studies in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. He collaborated on this book to help write the stories of “these venerable ancestors … into the urgency of now”. “With these stories we embrace and add to the radical revising of our collective human history,” he noted.
In addition to the 20 profiles of little-known abolitionists, the book includes an introduction on the “infernal system of slavery” in America and an extensive bibliography.