it is difficult to imagine, looking at the ruined castle...

This section explores the relationship of the North East of England, and in particular Sunderland to the Transatlantic slave trade.

Tyne and Wear Museums’ website, ‘Remembering Slavery’ should be used to extend knowledge and understanding of “the most extensive, brutal example of enslavement in the history of mankind. It involved the kidnap of 10-12 million African people.”

The ‘Remembering Slavery’ website was developed in 2007 by TWMS as part of the bicentennial celebrations of the UK Parliamentary Act to Abolish the Slave Trade in 1807. The website includes opportunities to research, watch films and news reports and create your own online exhibition.

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/slavery/researchhttp://www.twmuseums.org.uk/slavery/online-exhibitionhttp://www.twmuseums.org.uk/slavery/your-exhibitions/make-your-own-exhibition.html

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/slavery/media-zone/

Slide 1: The Hiltons• The story of Sunderland’s ‘Black History’ begins with the Hilton

Family in the 1600’s. The Hilton family home is now known as Hylton Castle (the ‘y’ replaced the ‘I’ in the 1600’s).

• Hylton Castle is a well established landmark in Sunderland. It is an important historical site visited recently by BBC’s popular Time Team. The area of housing surrounding the castle is also known as ‘Hylton Castle’, a well established area in the city of Sunderland.

• It is difficult to imagine, looking at the ruined castle today that it was once the home of a prominent North East family whose wealth, like that of other Sunderland gentry, was built upon the slave trade.

• By the 1600’s the Hilton family were already prosperous. William Hilton was a mariner and salt merchant. In 1621 he left Sunderland for New England as part of a rescue mission for the ‘Mayflower’ settlers. William Hilton was the first person from Sunderland ever recorded to settle in America. He eventually settled in what would become New Hampshire.

• It was common at that time for settlers to name areas of the ‘new world’ after one’s hometown or county e.g. ‘New Hampshire’.

• Can you think of any other famous places in America named after British places? (New York, New Jersey’.)

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• There are a number of County Durham place names in the area where William Hilton settled, suggesting that other people from the north east settled in this area as well.

Activity: Research• Try looking for place names that you may recognise, on a

modern map of America. See if you can recognise the names of British towns or counties.

- Why do you think people called their settlements after these towns?

- Do you think the areas had native American-Indian names – why were these not used?

• You could extend your research to Australia and see if the settlers there did the same.

Activity: Imagine• Imagine you are one of the first settlers on a distant planet.

Draw a fictitious map of an area of this newly discovered land. Name 5 settlements on your map after places you know well.

- Do you think when we start populating planets in the future we will call the settlements after our towns and cities?

Slide 2: And So It Begins...• The Hyltons were seafarers who also forged links with the

Caribbean. Anthony Hylton aquired a tobacco plantation and became governor of St Kitts in 1625. Many more of the Hyltons became settlers and farmers in America and The Caribbean. Their businesses grew and they needed more and more labour to farm the land. Many traders looked towards Africa as a source of free labour.

• The painting on Slide 2 is by Stuart Henry Bell (1823-1896) and shows local people being forcibly taken from their homeland. This painting captures the experiences of the people being forced from their home.

• Imagine the ‘slavers’ arriving in their huge ships carrying men with white skin, wearing strange clothes, speaking an incomprehensible language.

- Did the ‘white men’ bring gifts to gain the confidence of the people? Were they welcomed as friends?

- Could the African people begin to imagine what lay ahead of them as the white men drew their weapons and forced them onto their ships?

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Activity: Write • Look at the painting and imagine you are hiding nearby and

watching what is happening.

• Answer the following questions:

- Who are you? What is your name? My mother named me? I am the son of ???

- Where are you hiding? Among the thick vegetation, low next to the ground.

- What can you see directly in front of you? Three white men drive people from my village forward toward the shore line where a boat is waiting.

- Can you hear anything? The oars in water, a child whimpering, white men shouting in a strange language that I do not understand, the crack of a whip and cry of pain. The birds are silent.

- Describe the time of day – the weather – the temperature? Still, calm, subdued,

- Can you smell anything? The thick scent of jasmine, the sweat of white men, the smell of fear

- What can you see in the distance?

- What do you feel? I am helpless, I can do nothing but hide, what is happening, I do not understand

- What do you do next? I lie weeping silently, weeping for my family who I will never see again.

• Use the responses to create a piece of prose writing or poetry.

Slide 3: People for Sale• Ship owners and merchants soon realised that the forcible

kidnapping of people from the coastal regions of Africa could supply a very cheap source of labour and huge profits could be made.

• Trading in human beings made many people in the North East of England very wealthy. In Europe and America there was a huge demand for commodities such as sugar, tobacco and cotton grown on plantations. This fuelled the demand for labour and created a new trans-Atlantic trading of African people. Once in the Americas, the Africans were sold as slaves to plantation owners at auctions that took place in the ports. The traders quickly became rich.

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• The slaves were often branded and kept in shackles and chains, forged in the Cawley Ironworks in Gateshead, and supplied to the Americas on North East owned merchant vessels.

• Back in Britain, traders, merchants, plantation owners and investors justified their actions by saying that they were improving the life of the African people, that they enjoyed a better life in America than they would have done in their own land.

Activity: Imagine, Role-play and Discuss• Men, women and children were forcibly taken from coastal areas

of Africa and transported on sailing ships in horrific conditions to England and then on to Europe, North America and the West Indies, where they were sold as slaves.

• Imagine someone coming into your home, forcibly taking you away to a strange country and selling you to the highest bidder.

- Does this still happen to people today?

• Set up a role-play scenario to represent the kidnapping of people for slavery. You can set your scenario in either the past or present.

Side 4: The Brookes Ship and Slide 5: Floating Coffins• The diagram on the slide shows the ‘Brookes’ ship. The Brookes

ship was a ‘slaver’ and the diagram shows how people who were to be sold into slavery were transported to the Americas.

• The Slave Trade Act of 1788 stated that the space allowed for a man was 1ft 4inches by 6 ft (40.6 cms x 183cms). Women and children had less space. If you look closely you can see that some of the people are shackled together. Many people died on the journey.

Activity: Discuss• Former slave, Olaudah Equiano visited the North East in 1792.

He spoke at meetings in Durham, Stockton and Newcastle (where Sunderland Quaker representative Thomas Richardson attended) campaigning against slavery. Olaudah supported the Slave Trade Act but others “feared that the act would establish the idea that the slave trade was not fundamentally unjust, but merely an activity that needed further regulation.”

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulated_Slave_Trade_Act_of_1788

• Discuss why Olaudah might have supported the Act.

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Activity: Measure • Sometimes the ships were called ‘floating coffins’.

- Why was this?

• Measure the size of the space that a man was allowed on a piece of paper, cut it out and place it on the floor.

- Do you think this space is acceptable?

• The Brookes Ship poster was used by anti-slavery campaigners to give strength to their argument that the slave trade was inhuman.

- Why do you think the anti-slavery campaigners used this diagram to convince people that slavery was wrong. Do you think people would believe them?

Activity: Role-play and Imagine• Lie down in rows according to the pattern of bodies on the slide.

Imagine being in this position for weeks. Imagine not being able to do anything about your condition for there was no where to run.

- How much room do you have? Are you comfortable?

- What would happen if you were sick? (If slaves were ill they would simply be thrown overboard and left to drown.)

Guilty by association?• Local families like the Hiltons owned or invested in sugar

plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas. Individuals and companies throughout the North East of England grew extremely wealthy as merchant ships from the area transported slave-produced sugar, cotton, mahogany and rum to ports around the world.

• Ships from Sunderland transported coal from local pits to the Caribbean Islands. This coal heated the boilers that converted the raw sugar cane into sugar.

• The successful Crawley’s ironworks at Gateshead made shackles and neck collars for the slave trade as well as simple hoes and axes used in the back-breaking work converting marshland into rice plantations in South Carolina. These goods would be transported to the colonies using local merchant ships.

- Do you think transporting goods such as shackles and tools for slaves is more acceptable than owning a slave? Discuss.

- Is any link to slavery acceptable?

- Why were people happy to listen to the propaganda that slaves were happier in America?

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Activity: Role-play• Role-play a plantation owner and persuade someone to invest in

your company.

Slide 6: James Stansfield• James Field Stanfield (1749-1824), an ordinary sailor from

Sunderland, changed the way people thought of the slave trade. In 1774, James Field Stanfield signed up on the Eagle, for a ‘slaving’ voyage from Liverpool to Benin and then on to Jamaica. The death rate, even for the sailors was shocking. Of the 33 or 34 original crew, only 4 survived the ‘nightmare’ voyage. James Field Stanfield was one of the four fortunate survivors.

• James Field Stanfield was the first ordinary seaman involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade to write about its horrors. James witnessed and recorded many terrible things on the long journey from Africa to the Americas. In 1788 James vividly described his experiences on a “floating dungeon”. His first-hand and well written accounts of what he experienced during the voyage brought him to the attention of people involved in the anti-slavery campaign.

• James’ words were first published in 1789 as a series of letters addressed to a leading anti-slavery campaigner, the Reverend Thomas Clarkson. “Observations on a Guinea Voyage - The direful Voyage to Guinea’s sultry shore And Africa’s wrongs, indignant Muse ‘deplore’”.

• ‘A Poem in Three Books’ – was published the following year. (Sunderland Local Studies Centre has a copy of this book.)

• James Field Stanfield’s role leading to the abolition of slavery cannot be overstated. Few first-hand accounts of life onboard a slave ship were ever given.

- Why was what James did so important?

Activity: Research, Imagine and Write• Research more about the conditions for slaves onboard the ships.

• Write a letter as an ordinary sailor, describing a scene on the ship. You might like to use authentic quill pen dipped in black ink on parchment paper.

• Alternatively write your letter using a computer and select ’Edwardian Script’ text font to provide an authentic look.

• Print out your letter, fold, crumple the pages and stain with tea to give the ‘letters’ an aged effect.

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Unsung Hero• Historian Neil Sinclair has made a study of the life and writings

of James Field Stanfield. You can learn more by reading the following article: “James Stanfield: An unrecognised Hero of the Movement to Abolish the SlaveTrade”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wear/content/articles/2007/03/28/abolition_james_field_stanfield_

feature.shtmlh

• At the time, people argued that life for the slaves was better than the life they had in Africa – but James Stanfield was able to dispute these claims using first hand accounts of what life was really like for the slaves.

“Stanfield’s contribution to the abolition campaign was extremely significant. The middle passage was central to the abolition campaign (for example, the use of the Brookes ship image) yet sailors were previously only ever talked about in the context of the pro-slavery portrayal of them being the ‘nursery of British seamanship’.Stanfield was later able to contradict the pro-slavery argument that the European traders were saving the Africans – he commented that he ‘never saw a happier race of people than those in the kingdom of Benin’ who were living in luxury.” Remembering Slavery: Sunderland’s Links to the trans-Atlantic trade, Tasmin Lilly 2008

• It could not have been easy for James to speak out on behalf of persecuted people.

- What kind of a man do you think James Stanfield was?

- What made him different from other sailors?

• Read the text on the slide together. These words are taken from an article by Neil Sinclair. “James Stanfield: An unrecognised Hero of the Movement to Abolish the Slave Trade.”

• Marcus Rediker, the author of The Slave Ship: A Human History, considers James Stanfield to be “an unrecognised hero of the movement to abolish the slave trade”. Neil Sinclair also thinks James Stanfield is a hero.

- What do you think?

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Activity: Discuss and Write• Use the slide to list all of James’s personal qualities:

- brave, courageous, caring, thoughtful, kind, selfless

- Do you have a hero? What qualities does your hero or heroine have?

• James later left his life at sea to become an actor, appearing on the stage in various towns, joining the Scarborough-Sunderland theatre circuit in 1789. Sunderland was then to be his home for over twenty years. His son is the famous Sunderland artist, Clarkson Stanfield.

Activity: Out and About• Visit the house where James Stanfield lived for 20 years:

Bodlewell House, High Street West, Sunderland

• Look out for the ‘blue plaque’ used to identify where significant people lived.

• James Field Stanfield is less well-known today than his Sunderland-born son, the artist Clarkson Stanfield who James named after the Revd Thomas Clarkson (the publisher of Stanfield’s letters).

• Blue Plaques are awarded by Sunderland City Council to denote important heritage sites. This is the wording on James Field Stanfield’s Blue Plaque:

BODLEWELL HOUSE Site of the home of

James Field Stanfield (1749 – 1824),seaman, actor and campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade.

His son Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1847), seaman, landscape and marine artist, scene painter

and Royal Academician was born here.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.h.skinner/Blue_Plaques_of_Sunderland/ABC_Blue_Plaques.html

- Do you know someone who lives in Sunderland and who deserves a blue plaque award?

• Create your own Blue Plaque inscription for this person.

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• As the century progressed and people like James Field Stanfield gave eye-witness accounts of the terrible conditions forced upon slaves, other people in the North East of England and the rest of the country were ready to join a growing movement to abolish slavery.In 1795 Sunderland grocers boycotted the sale of sugar grown in slave plantations. Many ordinary people from Sunderland joined the cause.

- What would you have done if you had lived at that time?

Activity: Write and Role-play

“James Stanfield appealed to women with descriptions of infants being ripped from their mothers breasts. This kind of language spoke directly to the emotions of women. John Newton used metaphors to describe enslaved Africans lying in rows – they were packed in ‘like books upon a shelf…I have known them so close that the shelf would not, easily, contain one more’. In contrast, Stanfield relied more on realistic images such as the ‘floating dungeon’ and descriptions of the ‘gorged cell of dim disease’, and enslaved Africans being shackled to their dead companions.”

• Write an anti-slave trade speech.

• Research the points you wish to make. Make your speech short but powerful, keeping to the points you wish to press home.

• Try and give your speech feeling.

• Role-play a scenario where you are giving a speech as an anti-slave trade campaigner. People may ‘heckle’ you from the audience. Keep your head and speak from your heart

Slide 8: Women Abolitionists• Women’s activities to abolish the slave trade were restricted

by culture, protocol and law. They were not allowed to sign petitions but were active at meetings and used their purchasing power to boycott sugar grown by slaves and to buy objects for the home that carried anti-slavery messages.

• In the late 1788 Mary Morris Knowles, who was a Quaker (1733-1807), designed a poem for a tobacco box. The tobacco was grown by slaves.

Tho various tints the human face adornTo glorious Liberty Mankind are born;O. May the hand which rais’d theis fav’rite weedBe loos’d in mercy and the slave be freed!

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- Why do you think Mary chose to place her design on a tobacco box? (To be seen and read by men.)

• In the same year, women such as Hannah Moore wrote ‘Slavery, a Poem’ in 1788, her friend Margaret Middleton was closely associated with Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce.

• Women began wearing objects such as Wedgwood’s cameos featured the image of a kneeling, chained, black slave. Wearing these cameos as bracelets or hairpins ‘told’ everyone that you supported the anti-slavery cause.

• As women were not allowed to vote they were restricted in using their ‘influence’ and ‘feminine wiles’ as they were often referred to, in order to persuade men to represent them. This was difficult for many women to accept, and writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 in the ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’ objected to this likening men’s domination of women to the Planter’s domination of slaves.

‘Is one half of the human species, like the poor African slaves, to be subject to prejudices that brutalise them...only to sweeten the cup of men?’ ..Mary Wollstonecraft

- Do you agree with her statement?

Activity: Read and Design• The slide shows a section of a local poster advertising an

Abolitionist Meeting.

• Author, John Charlton has used this poster as part of Tyne and Wear Museum Service’s ‘Remembering Slavery; Archive Research Project. The text of this booklet is an excellent source of further information. Contact TWMS for a copy.

Activity: Design a poster • Design a poster advertising an ‘abolitionist’ meeting in your

local area. You can either use the language of the day or your own words to raise awareness of something that you are concerned about today.

Slide 9: We are All Brothers• The slide shows a ‘token’ produced in 1787, ten years prior to

the abolition of the slave trade.

- What message does the reverse side of the token convey? The words are difficult to read. What do you think they say?

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• Coins and medals were often used to communicate anti-slavery messages as they could be mass-produced and widely distributed. They were also used to circulate announcements and changes in the law. This medal is owned by a Sunderland resident and was exhibited in the ‘Remembering Slavery’ 2007 exhibition at Sunderland Museum.

• A medal was produced in 1814 to commemorate the 1807 abolition of the slave trade. This shows an African man and a European man shaking hands. In the background is a view of huts and people dancing. The Arabic inscription reads: SALE OF SLAVES PROHIBITED IN 1807, CHRISTIAN ERA, IN THE REIGN OF GEORGE III; VERILY, WE ARE ALL BROTHERS.

• The use of Arabic on the coin suggests that it was intended to be distributed in Sierra Leone, which in 1808 became a base for campaigning against slave ships.

• On the reverse, WE ARE ALL BRETHREN. SLAVE TRADE ABOLISHED BY GREAT BRITAIN 1807 is inscribed.

- Talk about the language used on the medal and the token. How would you write a message today?

Slide 10: Both Sides of the CoinActivity: Discuss, Design and Write• Spend some time discussing things that you feel are important to

you.

- What cause would you create a ‘medal’ or a ‘token’ for?

• Design a medal and write your own message on the medal to commemorate the beginning or end of something that you consider to be important.

Activity: Research• Research further the work of William Wilberforce and Thomas

Clarkson leading to the passing of the law to abolish the slave trade.

Slide 11: Runaways • Despite the UK’s Abolition of the Slave Trade, slaves were

not given their freedom. In Britain as well as America, slaves continued to be seen as an extremely valuable commodity, vital to the economic wellbeing of America and to businesses in Britain.

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• The slave trade continued under the American, Spanish and Portugese flags and progress toward the abolition of slavery was painfully slow. It is easy to understand why slaves on American plantations decided to runaway rather than continue without hope of freedom.

• Rewards were high for the capture of runaway slaves. If a slave was caught then punishment would be severe. They may flogged or worse or even have limbs cut off to prevent them from escaping again, and as a lesson to others.

• However some slaves did escape, often helped by local people who put their own lives at risk. Some made their way north to Canada and a few of these fugitive slaves travelled around Britain and Europe raising awareness of their plight.

• The fugitive slave Frederick Douglass, tirelessly campaigned on behalf of his fellow African slaves. Frederick came to speak at the Sunderland Assembly Rooms (see Slide 1: ‘Same but Different’ section of this resource).

• Mary Ann Macham was a runaway slave who arrived in North Shields on Christmas Day in 1831. She had escaped from Virginia in the United States where she was born in 1802 to an enslaved woman and a slave-owner.

• Mary was taken in by the Quaker Spence family and worked as a domestic servant in the homes of various members of the family. You can find out more about Mary from Tyne and Wear Museum Service’s ‘Remembering Slavery’ website.

Activity: Read• ‘The Last Runaway’ by Tracy Chevalier gives an insight into the

world of runaway slaves. She tells the story of a young Quaker woman as she struggles with her faith and family to help escaped slaves use ‘The Underground Railroad’.

• Quakers played a major role in the Abolition of Slavery both in the UK and America. Like other churches Quakers were very active in the campaign but their strong pacifist beliefs meant that they could not support violence and war. In Britain, campaigners raised funds to buy ‘freedom’ and in America an ‘Underground Railroad’, was set up. This was a system of safe houses where slaves could go to when running away.

- Would you physically fight for what you believe in?

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• The Quakers do not believe in using violence. Would you use other ways like them, to help e.g. antislavery activism and antislavery literature or assisting slaves in their travels using ‘the Underground Railroad’ to freedom?http://www.quaker.org.uk/quakers-and-abolition-slave-trade

Research• Research the ‘Underground Railroad’ in America.

Slide 12 Slide 13 and Slide 14: Domestic Protest• The 1820’s jug in the slide carries a poem protesting against

slavery. “Many of the buyers of this type of product were women. Although they were not allowed to take an active part in the political debate, ten per cent of the entire financial support for the anti-slavery movement came from women. This shows the material nature of the anti-slavery propaganda and its domestic setting.” Tamsin Lilly: Sunderland’s Links to the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade

• Read the poem together.

Sons of Britain hear my storyMercy well becomes the braveHumanity is Britain’s gloryOh pity and protect the slaveFreeborn daughters who possessingEyes that conquer hearts that saveGreet me with a sisters blessingOh pity and protect the slave.

- Do you think it was written by an Edmund or Emily King?

- Do you think the message is powerful? Do you think anyone would take notice of it?

Activity: Write• Writing messages like this is a form of advertising. Can you think

of any modern day advertising campaigns to raise awareness of issues?

• Write your own short poem to campaign against something you believe is wrong.

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• Slide 13 shows a design with a couple and their dog in the foreground. Standing in the background is their slave. The cup and saucer are part of the collection of artefacts at Washington Old Hall.

• Slide 14 shows a glass rolling pin. Sunderland was well known for the quality of its glassware and it is likely that such rolling pins made their way to households across the country. The rolling pin includes another poem:

Health to the sick,Honour to the brave,Success to the lover,And freedom to the slave.

Activity: Out and About• Visit Sunderland’s Museum and Winter Gardens to see some of

the domestic ware for yourself.

• Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens is a municipal museum in Sunderland, England.

Address: Burdon Rd, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear SR1 1PPHours: Monday hours 10:00–17:00Phone: 0191 553 2323

• The Abolition of Slavery law was at last passed in 1833 freeing slaves, even then it was with the proviso that there was a period of ‘apprenticeship’, (essentially meaning that people could be retained as slaves) for 6 more years.

Women spoke out in force against the apprenticeship: “A national women’s petition was organised on behalf of the apprentices and addressed to Queen Victoria. The petition carried 700,000 signatures of women, which was described as ‘unprecedented in the annals of petitioning’.” ‘Women: From Abolition to the Vote’ by Elizabeth Crawford.

• Protests by both women and men were so great that the apprenticeship statement was removed in 1838. The government paid £20 million in compensation to the plantation owners to cover their loss of property.

• The abolition of slavery in the UK was not fully achieved until 1840, after decades of campaigning by men, women and children, many of whom lived in Sunderland.

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• Women were prominent in keeping the abolition movement going after 1838 with their attentions directed toward the United States.

Slide 15: Sunderland’s Anti-Slavery Campaigners• In America, black African men, women and children continued

to have no rights by law. They were often referred to as inferior, dirty, ignorant and dispensable. Women suffered greatly, often being forced to go with white plantation ‘overseers’, who were instructed by Plantation owners to make them pregnant thereby providing a free source of labour. Mary Ann Macham was a child of such a relationship.

• Campaigners such as Celestine Edwards continued to visit Sunderland and spoke at meetings attended by activists such as Edward Backhouse, a Sunderland Quaker. Together they lent their voice to the struggle for the freedom.

Research• Use the Tyne and Wear Museum website to research more about

the lives of famous anti-slavery campaigners who lived and worked in the North East of England.

Activity: Time Line• Look at Appendix: ‘Sunderland and Slavery’. Research more

about some of the people who are unfamiliar to you and extend the time line into the present day.

- What is Sunderland’s present attitude to Africans who live here?

- Why might it be important to understand what has happened in the past?

Slide 16: The Orange Grove• Following the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain (1807),

the trade in human beings continued illegally. Often British ships flew the American flag as trading in slaves was still legal under American law.

• The painting on the slide shows the Orange Grove, a British ship, flying the American Flag. It demonstrates that when the painting was created, British ships were still involved in the slave trade.

• The was a ship was built in 1812. It is not certain, but likely that The Orange Grove was a ship built in Sunderland and likely that the ship originally traded in fruit from Caribbean Islands but it later became involved in the slave trade.

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• The Sunderland artist Stuart Henry Bell (1823-1896) produced six paintings relating to The Life of the Slaver ‘Orange Grove’ - including it ‘Leaving Sunderland Harbour’ and later being ‘Chased by an English Frigate’. All six paintings are at Wilberforce House Museum in Hull.

• The painting is entitled, ‘Cut Out By the Frigate Boats’, and shows the Orange Grove about to be inspected by the British Navy for evidence of illegal trading in slaves. The Orange Grove is shown fl ying the American fl ag as it leaves Sunderland Harbour!

Activity: Paint• Be inspired by the painting of Stuart Hentry Bell and create your

own painting of the ‘Orange Grove’. Visit Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens to look at more marine paintings of this period.

Activity: Out and About• Wilberforce House is the birthplace of William Wilberforce, the

British politician, abolitionist and social reformer, located in the High Street, Kingston upon Hull, England.

Address: 23-25 High Street, Hull HU1 1NQHours: Monday hours 10:00–17:00Phone: 01482 300300

Slide 17: Your Protest• Slavery in the United States was eventually abolished in 1865.

You can see a timeline showing how slavery continued in other parts of the world . Today Anti-Slavery International continues to campaign for human rights drawing attention to the traffi cing of children from Benin and Gabon areas of Africa. The fi ght against slavery continues today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline

Activity: Design and Write“Campaigns against human rights abuses in slavery have continued until today. They are led by the modern day equivalent of SEAST (Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade) : Anti-Slavery International. Current campaign tactics include the development of a strong ‘fair trade’ movement which had its origins in the boycott campaigns of the abolitionist movement.” Dr Alan Rice: Revealing Histories http://revealinghistories.org.uk/who-resisted-and-campaigned-for-abolition/articles/slavery-

over-time-and-the-abuse-of-human-rights.html

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• Design your own contemporary anti-slavery jug, plate, rolling pin or an object of your choice. Try writing your own poem and include it in your design.

• Alternatively write a message on your jug about something you care strongly about e.g equality for all, employment for all, anti-drugs.

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Appendix 1: Sunderland’s Anti Slavery Campaign Time Line

In the 1700’s a small number of British people began to argue that slavery was immoral. They exposed the terrible conditions on transport ships that resulted in high death rate. They exposed the miserable working conditions of slaves on plantations. Thus began years of Sunderland’s anti-slavery stance:

1780’s and 90’s The anti-slavery campaign attracted more support around the country.There was popular support in Sunderland for an end to slavery as shown in the 1790s by petitions and the fact that Sunderland’s grocers had agreed to cease selling sugar produced in the slave plantations of the West Indies.

1791Sir Ralph Milbanke was elected an MP for the County Durham constituency (which atthe time included Sunderland) and moved his home to Seaham Hall. He took up the cause ofabolition of the slave trade and was soon in correspondence with John Dodgson, a DarlingtonQuaker who had organised a petition against the trade.

1792 Milbanke’s wife wrote that the only reason that he was remaining in London was because he wished to take part in the vote against the slave trade. Sir Ralph continued to support William Wilberforce’s bills to abolish the slave trade.

1789 James Field Stanfield writes Observations on a Guinea Voyage.

1792Notice of a petition to Parliament for the Abolition of the Slave Trade by the inhabitantsof Sunderland. The petition was signed by the people of Sunderland calling for West India slave holders to treat the enslaved people they owned more humanely. The petition describes the slave trade as ‘one of the greatest evils at this day existing upon the earth’.

1795Michael Longridge and James Field Stanfield of Sunderland are active in the Anti–Slavery movement and in the establishment of a permanent library in Sunderland. Stanfield hosted a meeting at his own house.

1795Sunderland grocers make the decision to sell goods that were not produced by enslaved people. The handbill stating this was written by Granville Sharp, the chairman of the Committee, who was born and educated in Durham. At that time Sunderland was part of County Durham.

1807 Campaign leaders succeed in persuading Parliament to pass the UK’s 1807 Act of Parliament which stopped ships carrying slaves to British colonies.

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1808James Field Stanfield’s ‘The Guinea Voyage’ is published. The book is dedicated to Sir Ralph Milbanke, MP for Durham, whom Stanfield records as seconding Wilberforce’s successful bill.

1828Sunderland Anti-Slavery Association is shown in a list of subscribers to Anti-Slavery Monthly.The entry shows a total of 5 pounds 16 shillings and 0 pence from publication sales.

1831-56Newcastle Society of Friends minutes (mens) outline all monthly meetings across the region showing delegates attended from Sunderland.

1833Act of Parliament passed abolishing slavery in the UK.

1838Enslaved workers were granted full freedom.

1840 Anti-Slavery Convention - Several delegates from the North East of England area attended the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention in London. The delegation includes Michael Longridge whose father (also named Michael Longridge) is listed on a Sunderland petition in 1814.

1834 -1850Anti slavery meetings in Sunderland as referenced in the Sunderland Herald:August 9 1834: Public meeting to celebrate the granting of freedomMay 12 1838: Great public anti-slavery meetingSeptember 25 1848: Meeting addressed by Frederick Douglass (fugitive slave)October 4 1850: Meeting addressed by both Henry Highland Garnet and J.C. Pennington

1851The Free Produce Movement in the 1850s was co-ordinated by Anna Henry Richardson, a Quaker in Newcastle. The Free Labour Associations included Sunderland.

1891The Dominican Celestine Edwards briefly lived in Sunderland before moving to London. He gave speeches across England on the subject of slavery and in September 1891 he spoke in the Sunderland Assembly Hall.

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it is difficult to imagine, looking at the ruined castle...

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