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THE BLACK COMMUNITY REACTS TO DRED SCOTT
65
●
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) DRED SCOTT DECISION.
Boston
Massacre, March 5th, 1770 . . . Commemorative Festival, at Faneuil Hall, Friday
March 5th, 1858, PROTEST AGAINST THE DRED SCOTT DECISION.
Four
page flyer/program, decoratively printed on pale salmon-colored paper with a vignette
engraving of the Bunker’s Hill massacre at the top.
Boston: William C. Nell, 1858
[1,000/1,500]
A RARE FLYER
,
DESCRIBING AN IMPORTANT EVENT
.
William C. Nell (1816-1874) organized
this evening to commemorate Crispus Attucks and others as martyrs of the Revolution but also
TO
PROTEST THE SUPREME COURT AND JUDGE TANEY
’
S DECISION ON DRED SCOTT
,
whose case
had dragged on for years. Speeches were delivered by Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Dr.
John S. Rock, Charles Lenox Remond, Theodore Parker and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Nell
had also arranged for a number of items to be on display, emblematic of slavery and injustice. Among
these pieces were various receipts for the sale of slaves, as well as this item: “Arabic sentences written
by a Black Man owned by Gen. Owen of Wilmington, N.C.” This was none other than Omar ibn
Said, whose manuscript narrative was rediscovered and sold in these rooms in 1996. Omar’s
Narrative remains the only slave narrative written in an African slave’s own written language, Arabic.
This flyer also bears a long poem “A Parody on Red, White and Blue,” written by Charlotte Forten,
and sung by a male quartet with Amanda Scott. This flyer and the event it describes are discussed at
length in Dorothy and Constance Porter’s monumental work “William C. Nell, Selected Writings
1832-1874,” pages 501-514.