For our next meeting will be discussing Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (2006) a history of “the first human rights campaign,” the British abolitionist movement.

In early 1787, twelve men—a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery—came together in a London printing shop and began the world's first grassroots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens' movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft chronicle of this groundbreaking antislavery crusade and its powerful enemies, Bury the Chains gives a little-celebrated human rights watershed its due at last.

“Bury the Chains is by far the most readable and rounded account we have of British antislavery, a campaign that...helped to change the world and can be seen as a prototype of the modern social justice movement”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

If you are interested in joining the group, please email [email protected].

Click here to see the list of books previously read by the Racial Equity Book Group.