Gilman Hall 308

The History Department Seminar is pleased to welcome Professor Yesenia Barragan, History, Rutgers University, to present Latin America in the Antebellum Black Press

This paper reveals how Latin America figured prominently in the antebellum African American press. Through an exploration of twenty-four antebellum Black newspapers, it focuses on three core themes circulating within these papers: the slave trade, abolition and emancipation, and racial equality across Latin America. This paper shows how African American newspapers were deeply concerned with the expansion of slavery in the region; how they followed the war against slavery, from the adoption of gradual abolition laws in Chile to the final abolition of slavery in Venezuela, underway throughout Latin America; and spread ideas of the achievement of racial equality and harmony in places as disparate as Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Through newspapers, African American readers came to recognize the countries south of the shifting U.S. border as sites of promise and peril for Black Americans and their brethren.

“Please email Prof. Casey Lurtz ([email protected]) for a copy of the paper”