Samuel Ringgold Ward

“Blackett has produced a masterful biography. He has managed, working with many fragments, to piece together a picture of Ward’s activism and the admiration many people had for him. . . . Ward’s struggles to find freedom, equality, peace, and belonging are still shared by many African Americans today.”—Kellie Carter Jackson, The Nation

“Ward played more of a pivotal role in the development of African American political thought than most of the history books recognize. . . . Blackett deserves credit for telling us, in an even-handed way, about a life we would like to turn to for inspiration, yet back away from as a cautionary tale.”—Andrew E. Barnes, H-Net Reviews

“An excellent read for anyone of any age.”—Terri Schlichenmeyer, Tennessee Tribune

“Samuel Ringgold Ward’s fascinating life is emblematic of the netherworld between slavery and freedom that many Black Americans navigated during the nineteenth century. Smart and well told, Blackett’s biography gives us a truly diasporic account of the struggles of one such important figure.”—Claude A. Clegg III, author of The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia

“This peripatetic former slave, abolitionist, journalist, and preacher who crossed nineteenth-century American, Canadian, British, and Jamaican borders has long eluded biographers. No longer. Through studious research, window-pane prose, and sober judgments, eminent historian R. J. M. Blackett finally grasps the fascinating Samuel Ward.”—Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie, author of Rebellious Passage: The Creole Revolt and America’s Coastal Slave Trade

“Ward emerges from Richard Blackett’s superb biography as a towering presence in the international antislavery movement who never shrank from ‘troubling the waters’ in his pursuit of racial justice.”—Julie Winch, author of A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten