|
|
 |
|
|
||
|
Thursday May 15th 2008 |
a non-profit education organization | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
Thursday May 15th 2008 |
a non-profit education organization | |
September 2
From Philadelphia of free Black parents Forten served in the Continental Army as a powder boy at the age of fifteen. After being part of a crew captured by the British and spending seven months in prison he returned to America, working as a sail maker for a man named Robert Bridges. Upon the death of his employer, Forten bought the company and as an inventor-entrepreneur of a sail-handling device, he built a highly successful business. He was among those in the city of brotherly love who formed the independent Bethel AME Church in 1787. Forten was an influential figure in the fight against slavery. It was he who convinced William Lloyd Garrison of the ill of European colonization. He was equally forceful in leading the resistance to the state of Pennsylvania’s attempt to restrict the immigration of BLACKS from the South. Forten used his wealth and influence to assist in shaping the black abolitionist movement. In 1817, his speech at Bethel AME Church protesting the American Colonization Society’s attempt to send BLACKS back to Africa. James Forten died in March 1842. Reference: Africana The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience Editors: Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr. Copyright 1999 ISBN 0-465-0071-1 The Anti-Slavery Society
|
||
The African American Registry®, The African American Registry® Copyright 2005, 2006
|
||
