Mapping Antislavery Newspaper Agents, Visualizing Black Agency Across Print Distribution Networks, 1820-1838

William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, held by the Newberry in multiple bound volumes spanning from 1832 to 1865, contains many numbers that indicate the abolitionist newspaper's subscription agents. In this presentation, Graduate Scholar-in-Residence Nathan Jérémie-Brink shares his research mapping these agents of the Liberator and other antislavery periodicals of the 1820s and 1830s, including a number of the earliest African American-edited newspapers. Visualizing these agents shows the creation of remarkably expansive networks before and beyond those of the Liberator, raises questions about relationships among diverse reading communities, and locates complicated exertions of black agency in practices of antislavery print distribution.