Heralded as “one of the most important studies ever made of the rise and fall of chattel slavery in the United States,” U-M historian Dwight Lowell Dumond’s progressive “Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America” made waves in 1961 for speaking candidly about slavery. The work was a hefty 44 chapters and did not shy away from the facts nor the author’s opinion. Contemporary historians criticized him for taking a moral stance in his writing, and he received waves of hate mail that called him a communist, charged him with inciting violence, and echoed racist ideology. However, Dumond was undeterred and he continued writing and speaking about racial injustice until his death in 1967.
— Adapted from “Freedom Writer” by James Tobin, Michigan Today
