By Romy Hildebrand
The artistic and literary creative works of Black abolitionists in the 1840s and 1850s acted as a critical catalyst for the abolition of slavery, said UC Santa Barbara historian John Majewski during a webinar last week that marked the inaugural lecture of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s “Living Democracy” series.
John Majewski, Professor of History, upper left, Susan Derwin, Director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, center, and Katie Voice, ASL interpreter, together on Zoom for the inaugural lecture of the IHC’s Living Democracy series.
Majewski focused on the rise of “creative capitalism” some years earlier, which gave a dollar value to works of arts and letters. “Creative capitalism commodifies creativity. It converts imagination and novelty into goods and services with a market value,” he said.
This, in turn, allowed the anti-slavery message to resonate with those it might not otherwise have reached.
“We might think of creative capitalism as inadvertently building a door to the hearts and minds of the Northern middle class,” Majewski said.
“Black abolitionists managed to push open that door. Their creative labor as writers and lecturers helped convince middle class Northerners that a society built on education, innovation, and free speech was fundamentally incompatible with a society based on slavery, violence, and censorship.”
Majewski, currently on temporary leave from his role as dean of the university’s Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, is an expert on American economic, social, and legal history, as well Southern history and the U.S. Civil War.
James Pennington, 1807-1870. One of the most learned advocates of abolitionism of his time.
His lecture to students and faculty over Zoom last Thursday stressed that creative capitalism- the commodification of arts and letters in the two decades before the Civil War- offered vast opportunities to Black abolitionists.
Majewski detailed several engaging stories of freed men and women, who eventually became key anti-slavery activists and were able to translate their experiences escaping enslavement with the help of literacy and creative capitalism.
One key player at the time, James Pennington, became a voracious student after escaping slavery. He quickly learned to read and write, and in 1849 was granted an honorary doctorate in theology by the University of Heidelberg in Germany, “cementing his reputation as one of the most learned advocates of abolitionism and Black civil rights.”
Protestors in Columbia, SC, advocating for the Black Lives Matter movement , May 31, 2020. UCSB Historian John Majewski drew parallels between Black abolitionist creative communication in the 19th century and recent events.
Photo from the Eastover, SC Daily News.
Majewski wrapped up his lecture with an astute comparison of the pre-Civil War time with current circumstances in 2020, saying that the internet has transformed access to knowledge in ways not unlike the telegraph, steam-powered printing press, and railroad did in the 19th century. “We can certainly hear the echoes of the Civil War period in our own politics. We too are experiencing a form of creative capitalism,” he said.
Majewski finished with a call to action, urging his audience to use technology for creative political action today. “We must continue our creative labors on behalf of democracy and social justice in the hope that circumstances will enable, as Lincoln put it, ‘right to make might’,” he said.
Romy Hildebrand is a third-year Communication major at UC Santa Barbara. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.