James W.C. Pennington: Essays Toward Rediscovering a Great African American Intellectual and Reformer

In tandem with its companion volume, The Fugitive Blacksmith and Other Essential Writings by James W.C. Pennington, this collection of new essays seeks to recover and reappraise James W.C. Pennington (1808–1870), a truly remarkable figure of Black intellectual and political history who has been unjustly overlooked. Written by an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplines, the collection illuminates different parts of Pennington’s life and career after escaping from slavery in 1827. The essays discuss his role as a reformer, theologian, and political activist, who was deeply involved in national as well as international endeavors and events, notably the Colored Conventions Movement, abolitionism, evangelical missions, the peace cause, and the 1848 Revolutions. Various chapters examine Pennington’s major works, A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841) and his autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849), but also his sermons and journalistic writings. They explore Pennington’s interpretation of the Calvinist tradition, his fight for human rights, his engagement with Romanticism and religious skepticism, his concept of Black perfectionism, and his struggle with the trauma inflicted by slavery. Together, the essays bring to life Pennington not just as a historical figure but as a thinker deeply relevant to contemporary conversations about, among other things, the entanglements of race and religion, human rights, democracy, and America’s unfinished reconstruction.