Slavery and Abolition: A Guide to Resources

“Every Birmingham man will rejoice to learn that this town
took an active part in the noblest philanthropic labour of the age”
(Langford, ‘A Century of Birmingham Life’)

This guide is designed to uncover the legacies of slavery and abolition in Birmingham:

• What is the real story of Birmingham’s involvement with the slave trade?
• In what ways did the industrial West Midlands profit from slavery; and, how did antislavery organisations develop to resist the trade?
• What do archives tell us about the personal lives caught up in one of the most important and destructive 'trades' in human history?

Chapters in this research guide include:

• Birmingham: For or Against Slavery?
• The Galton Family, Gun Making and the Transatlantic Trade
• Resistance to Plantation Life
• The Sturge Family and Nineteenth Century Antislavery Campaigning
• Black Antislavery Activists in Birmingham

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People and places mentioned in this research guide include: Joseph Sturge; Abolition of the Slave Trade Act; Samuel Galton; Samuel Galton Jnr; James Farmer; Lunar Society; Quakers; Mary Anne Schimmelpennick; Jamaican Slave Rebellion; Samuel Sharpe; Female Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves; Olaudah Equiano; Frederick Douglass; Amanda Smith; Ebenezer Chapel; Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society; and, Revd Peter Stanford.

Further links and research:

Slavery / Antislavery Resources

Lists of resources at Birmingham Archives & Heritage, including a list of the Antislavery Pamphlets Collection.

Birmingham Antislavery

Connecting Histories learning package on 'Birmingham Antislavery', covering The Origins of Antislavery in Birmingham, Ladies Antislavery Societies, The Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society, and Black Abolitionists.