James W.C. Pennington

Essays Toward Rediscovering a Great African American Intellectual and Reformer

By: Jan Stievermann (Editor), Caitlin B. Smith (Editor), Eddie S. Glaude (Editor)

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eText | 7 November 2025 | Edition Number 1

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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 is unjustly overlooked today. Written by an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplines, these essays illuminate different parts of Pennington's life and career after escaping from slavery in 1827, discussing his role as reformer, political activist, and theologian. They discuss Pennington's major works including A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841) and his autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849), and explore Pennington's understanding of and fight for human rights, his selective engagement with Romantic ideas of historicism and culture, and his concept of Black perfectionism. 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.