Skip to main content

The timeline can be navigated by dragging the pointer on the timeline bar, located at the bottom of the screen on the desktop version and on the left of the screen on mobile. To filter by a specific topic, make a selection on the dropdown “Filters” menu or click “Search” to do a keyword search. To learn more, click “Read More” below.

Read More

Abolitionist Theodore D. Weld publishes text calling out medical experimentation on enslaved African people.

Date: 1839

EXP
SLA
MED
RES

In American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, Weld writes: "'Public opinion' would tolerate surgical experiments, operations, processes, performed upon them [enslaved people], which it would execrate if performed upon their master or other whites."

This kind of resistance to medical experimentation on enslaved people is highly unusual among white abolitionists in this period.