Upstate’s forgotten abolitionists: Rev. Beriah Green was abolition’s ’master-thinker and teacher’
Updated Feb 23, 2021;
Posted Feb 18, 2021
Abolitionist Beriah Green was President at the Oneida Institute. National Abolition Hall of Fame and MuseumNational Abolition Hall of Fame
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Upstate New York was a hotbed in the 19th century for the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad. Names like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Gerrit Smith are familiar. But there were also valiant figures from the region, white and Black, who fought for the end of slavery whose names have faded into history.
During this Black History Month, after searching through old newspapers and websites, we take a look back at some of Upstate New York’s forgotten abolitionists.
By Michael Olenick, a research fellow at INSEAD whose recent articles can be found at innowiki.org and Blue Ocean Thinking
I normally research, write, and teach about business along with the occasional consulting gig. During my regular work, I came across a pattern that has ramifications for our modern world, the genesis of evangelical support for the Republican Party and how that’s shifted over time.
Most people know the more mundane part of the story: The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law in 1854 violating the Missouri Compromise and potentially expanding slavery into new territories. The law enraged abolitionists and also more economically-focused anti-slavery northerners leading to the formation of a new political party, the Republicans. In 1857, the Supreme Court released the