Making a Difference

TomDispatch reprints (from Mother Jones) an Adam Hochschild essay on the abolitionist movement in the British Empire, which Tom calls "the first great human-rights campaign in history." Proof that a handful of determined people can make a difference in the world against all odds. And, apparently, just a fraction of a book on the British anti-slavery movement, which Hochschild discussed at the UC Berkeley Library in 2002. In his remarks, he praised The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament, a memoir of the movement published in 1839 by Thomas Clarkson, calling it "the most stirring memoir of a political organizer ever written."