Journo Hero Reaction: William Lloyd Garrison

    William Lloyd Garrison was a journalist in the early 1800s that played a vital role in the abolitionist movement. When he was just 25 he started to become more involved in the movement. He started out by joining the American Colonization Society that wanted to send free blacks back to Africa. At the time, this was what they believed would help the freed slaves they could completely escape slavery in the United States. Later William Lloyd Garrison left the American Colonization Society after realizing that the organization wanted to preserve slavery still and get rid of freed slaves. After leaving the organization, William Lloyd Garrison became an editor for an anti-slavery newspaper called, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. 

    After being there for a couple years, William Lloyd Garrison began his very own anti-slavery newspaper called the Liberator. William Lloyd Garrison used the paper to talk about the immediate emancipation of slaves. At this time talking about having immediate emancipation of slaves was huge and not something that many people agreed with. Adding on, he also believed that once the slaves were free that they would have complete freedoms as the whites in the country had. Before he wrote about those views, people only believed that they should be free and not be completely immersed with the white people so him stating those views publicly and to a huge audience was revolutionary at the time. William Lloyd Garrison’s views were extremely liberal at the time but him publishing his views raised the conversation on emancipation in the country. William Lloyd Garrison was extremely radical at the time, but he made sure that he was not inciting violence. He made it clear he wanted peace, nonviolence, and passive resistance. Later, he created the American Anti-Slavery Society which focused on immediate emancipation. William Lloyd Garrison was a vital part of the emancipation of slaves. He used his strengths of writing to get the word and his views out to raise discussions and help convince people to join his side in helping get the immediate emancipation of slaves. 

Nye, Russel B. William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers. [First edition] ed., Little, Brown, 1955.