SOURCE: Goodman, Paul. “The Assault on Racial Prejudice, 1831-1837.” In Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality, pp. 54-64. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Goodman centers on Garrison's Thoughts on African Colonization as among the reformer's most critical efforts to educate the American public about race, promote absolute racial equality, and denounce the nineteenth-century movement in favor of black American colonization of Africa.

In June 1831, full of optimism, William Lloyd Garrison made a tour of urban black communities, including New York City and Philadelphia, to speak directly with those who provided the Liberator with the bulk of its support. Garrison hoped to win additional black subscribers for the Liberator, now his mainstay. During the tour, he certainly won the personal devotion of many African Americans. Never before had they heard a white man vindicate the race so boldly, with a promise...