A Tribute for the Negro facts for kids
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| Author | Wilson Armistead |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Subject | Anti-slavery |
| Genres | Political philosophy |
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Publication date
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1848 |
| OCLC | 51815739 |
| LC Class | HT1581 .A6 |
| Text | A Tribute for the Negro at Internet Archive |
A Tribute for the Negro: Being a Vindication of the Moral, Intellectual, and Religious Capabilities of the Coloured Portion of Mankind; with Particular Reference to the African Race is an 1848 work written by the Leeds-based British abolitionist Wilson Armistead, that published indictments of scientific racism, as well as slavery, and included biographies of a number of prominent campaigners including Henry Highland Garnet and Phyllis Wheatley. It was one of a number of anti-slavery books published in the 1800s by social reformers. The book was dedicated to James Pennington, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, "as well as many other elevated noble examples of elevated humanity of the negro". Its purpose was to argue and present evidence for the accomplishments of African Americans and act as a treatise of support. One of the didactic tools used by Armistead in the book is to draw comparisons between Britain's Roman past and its cruelties, to argue for more progressive views on abolition.
Historiography
Historian Herman E. Thomas has emphasised the importance of the book, both in the study of the reception of James Pennington, but as a text providing positive examples of African American life. Nevertheless, historian Jasmine Cobb has described how the poor depiction of African American people in works such as A Tribute for the Negro perpetuated misconceptions of them to audiences, despite the positive intentions of the authors. Meanwhile, critic and historian, Henry Louis Gates Jr. classified the depictions as a series of racist caricatures that Douglass spoke out on. Julia Sun-Joo Lee has discussed how criticism of the portrait in Britain came from Charles Dickens, although it is unclear whether his objections were the same as Douglass' or were based more on an exoticisation of Douglass, and other black abolitionists, that was popular at the time.
The book has also been analysed as part of a study that used machine learning to examine 'culture word' vocabulary in Civil War-era texts. The results demonstrated the A Tribute for a Negro had the highest volume of this kind of vocabulary, demonstrating that the author was purposely using vocabulary that white readers would respect.
