ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Black women participated in a process that I term “Africana abolitionism.” I define Africana abolitionism as a shared set of practices that African-diasporic people deployed to dismantle systems of slavery throughout North America, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Africana abolitionism sought to eradicate not simply regional systems of slavery but also racialized epistemologies that justified the enslavement of African-descended peoples. Africana abolitionism bridges the particular and the universal by offering a framework for understanding how localized abolitionist movements facilitated global emancipation. “Black women and Africana abolitionism” first offers a brief overview of the scope of slavery in the Black Atlantic and establishes that different processes of abolition emerged in different geographical regions. Next, it describes obstacles to Black women’s abolitionism, such as white resistance to interracial collaboration and patriarchal impulses among Black male abolitionists. The chapter then discusses Black women’s participation in three arenas of Africana abolitionism: slave revolts; the Black press; and the lecture circuit. Rather than charting a genealogy of Black women’s abolitionism, the chapter identifies how African-diasporic women existed within and destroyed a shared, yet varied, terrain of enslavement. It also emphasizes Black women’s international networks and worldviews.
