Fighting Slavery in Early America
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

How do you slay a many-headed monster? How do you destroy an entrenched special interest that profits from treating people like property? In the decades between 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived, and 1787, when delegates in Philadelphia drafted the new Constitution, men and women who were committed to opposing the spread of slavery in North America grappled with these questions. This six-week course offers you the opportunity to meet a large and often unfamiliar cast of characters-both Black and white, enslaved and free-who developed a range of tools and tactics, means and methods to escape slavery or try to resist it.