William Lloyd Garrison Character Analysis

Another of the five figures featured in the book, Garrison was a white anti-slavery activist and editor of the influential abolitionist paper The Liberator. Born in 1805, Garrison worked for a newspaper editor as an indentured servant during his teenage years. His interest in the temperance movement soon developed into a passion for abolition. He initially supported the gradual abolition of slavery (as was common at the time) but soon after revised his position and fought for immediate and full abolition. Garrison dedicated his entire life to the anti-slavery project but still harbored racist ideas. After meeting Frederick Douglass at an abolitionist meeting on Nantucket Island, Garrison worked alongside Douglass and wrote the preface to Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Kendi explains that this preface is overflowing with racist ideas, namely revolving around the notion that slavery had severely ruined and corrupted Black people. During the Civil War era, Garrison was skeptical of Abraham Lincoln, whom he perceived as being insufficiently committed to the abolitionist cause. However, Garrison later became more impressed with Lincoln’s actions surrounding the end of slavery. Garrison continued to harbor naïve hopes of racial progress even as it became clear that the Reconstruction era was being replaced by brutal retaliation and the institution of segregation. He died in 1879.