William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which he co-founded in 1831 and published in Massachusetts until slavery was ultimately abolished by Constitutional amendment. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and he persistently and publicly promoted the “immediate and complete emancipation” of all slaves in the United States, stressing the use of “moral suasion,” non-violence, and civil disobedience. Garrison also later emerged as a leading advocate of women’s rights, and in the 1870s became a prominent voice for the woman suffrage movement … Garrison’s outspoken views repeatedly put him in danger. Besides his imprisonment in Baltimore and the price placed on his head by the State of Georgia, he was also the object of public denouncement and frequent death threats. Despite it all, however, he remained undeterred in his quest to see that justice was done and the freedom could ring true.

 

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the pit into which it has fallen, and yet urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard!” ~ William Lloyd Garrison

Filed under: In LOVE with Humanity by Scaughdt