In LOVE with Humanity

Hero #059: William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, suffragist, and social
reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which
he co-founded in 1831, and published in Massachusetts until slavery was ultimately
abolished by Constitutional amendment. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-
Slavery Society, and he persistently and publicly promoted the ―immediate and complete
emancipation‖ of all slaves in the United States, stressing the use of ―moral suasion,‖ nonviolence,
and civil disobedience.
Garrison also later emerged as a leading advocate of women's rights, and in the 1870‘s
became a prominent voice for the woman suffrage movement … Garrison's outspoken views
repeatedly put him in danger. Besides his imprisonment in Baltimore and the price placed on
his head by the State of Georgia, he was also the object of public denouncement and
frequent death threats. Despite it all, however, he remained undeterred in his quest to see
that justice was done and the freedom could ring true for all.
―I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not
cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On
this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! Tell a
man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue
his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe
from the pit into which it has fallen, and yet urge me not to use moderation in a cause
like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will
not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard!‖ ~ William Lloyd Garrison
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