Come to Boston to hear the music of antislavery, including songs from the Hutchinson Family Singers, William Lloyd Garrison, and black author William Wells Brown.

See Abolitionism in Black and White: The Anti-Slavery Community in Cambridge and Boston for more detail.

Or click here for the list of events: PDF Schedule for Abolitionism in Black and White

The Sound of Antebellum Reform

Karl Hagstrom Miller

Scott Gac. Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth- Century Culture of Antebellum Reform. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. 328 pp. Appendix, notes, and index.

When is an abolition song not an abolition song? When it is heard as an ode to familial love or a declaration of American distinctiveness, a crass commercial ploy or an evocation of the Swiss Alps. Scott Gac’s elegant and provocative portrait of the famous antislavery musicians, the Hutchinson Family Singers, reveals both the power and the limitations of music as a political tool within the reform movements of the 1840s. (more…)

Prior to reading this book, why did I know nothing, basically, about the Hutchinson family? And, dear reader, why (in all likelihood) don’t you? (more…)

Mark M. Smith
University of South Carolina

In this book, Scott Gac offers a fresh, insightful, and persuasive account of a surprisingly overlooked component of the antebellum reform movement: the Hutchinson Family Singers, arguably the most popular musical troupe of its day. Gac’s book is a powerful study of antebellum “music, careerism, reform,” the history of religion, communication networks, nineteenth-century consumerism, “and the transformation of American culture” (p. 18). (more…)

Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2008 University of Pennsylvania Press
Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Antebellum Reform. By Scott Gac. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. 328. Cloth, $45.00.)

If Elvis Costello is right that talking about music is like dancing about architecture, Scott Gac shows that music nevertheless provides a fascinating window into American cultural history. (more…)