Richard Newman “Liberty, Slavery, and the Civil War”

Richard Newman explains the importance of primary documents in helping students understand and engage in discussion about the meaning of freedom. In particular, he talks about the contested nature of the meaning of liberty both during slavery prior to the Civil War and  for African Americans after.

Richard S. Newman is a professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of numerous books on African American history and abolitionism, including The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (2002) and Freedom's Prophet: Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (2008).