Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

History
University of Pennsylvania
1993

Master of Arts (M.A.)

History
University of Pennsylvania
1987

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

History
Kingston University, England
1984

Editorial Board, Virginia Magazine of History & Biography; 2022

Distinguished Faculty Award for Service, COAS, Howard University; 2020-21

Rebellious Passage

Rebellious Passage: The Creole Revolt and America’s Coastal Slave Trade

In late October 1841, the Creole left Richmond with 137 slaves bound for New Orleans. It arrived five weeks later minus the Captain, one passenger, and most of the captives. Nineteen rebels had seized the US slave ship en route and steered it to the British Bahamas where the slaves gained their liberty. Drawing upon a sweeping array of previously unexamined state, federal, and British colonial sources, Rebellious Passage examines the neglected maritime dimensions of the extensive US slave trade and slave revolt. The focus on south-to-south self-emancipators at sea differs from the familiar narrative of south-to-north fugitive slaves over land. Moreover, a broader hemispheric framework of clashing slavery and antislavery empires replaces an emphasis on US antebellum sectional rivalry. Written with verve and commitment, Rebellious Passage chronicles the first comprehensive history of the ship revolt, its consequences, and its relevance to global modern slavery.

Freedom’s Seekers

Freedom’s Seekers: Essays in Comparative Emancipation

Drawing on decades of research into slave and emancipation societies, Kerr-Ritchie is attentive to those who sought but were not granted freedom, and those who resisted enslavement individually as well as collectively on behalf of their communities. He explores the many roles that fugitive slaves, slave soldiers, and slave rebels played in their own societies. He likewise explicates the lives of individual freedmen, freedwomen, and freed children to show how the first free-born generation helped to shape the terms and conditions of the post-slavery world.

Rites of August First

Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World

In Rites of August First, J. R. Kerr-Ritchie provides the first detailed analysis of the origins, nature, and consequences of this important commemoration that helped to shape the age of Anglo-American emancipation. Combining social, cultural, and political history, Kerr-Ritchie discusses the ideological and cultural representations of August First Day in print, oratory, and visual images.

Black Abolitionists, Irish Supporters, and the Brotherhood of Man

Black Abolitionists, Irish Supporters, and the Brotherhood of Man

Much of the scholarly attention toward black abolitionists in the British Isles has focused on celebrity lecturers in Britain. Yet Ireland was an important location for several black activists who helped shape the transatlantic abolitionist movement. The crowds at antislavery events are usually depicted as a faceless mass. Why they were drawn to these speakers as well as how they differed according to region, religion, and class is examined in detail below. Moreover, Daniel O’Connell and Frederick Douglass are traditionally viewed as nationalist heroes (Irish, Catholic, American, African-American, etc.) but this article illustrates the extent to which they also operated and were respected as committed internationalists. Douglass supported Irish independence. O'Connell advocated slave emancipation in the United States. In contrast to prevailing views of inevitable racial tensions between the Irish and Blacks, it traces a more internationalist consciousness through lectures, speeches, writings, public pronouncements, and popular reactions. The article seeks to illustrate the cross-border dimensions of emancipation as well as the utility of transnational historical analysis.

Samuel Ward and the Gordon Rebellion

Samuel Ward and the Gordon Rebellion

This article examines American ex-slave and Baptist minister Samuel Ringgold Ward's response to the Morant Bay Rebellion. It focuses on Ward's pamphlet Reflections on the gordon Rebellion as well as his testimony to the Jamaica Royal Commission in February 1866. It seems to explain why Ward condemned the rebellion. It argues that Ward's opposition was the logical consequence of the thought and actions of a long-term Black loyalist for whom a powerful Empire guaranteed freedom and promised future reform.