University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

Perhaps it is ironic that an historian of women who is writing a biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton has chosen a book that is both by and about a man. But Henry Mayer's biography of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison raises compelling issues for all scholars, intellectuals, activists, and feminists. Mayer, a high school teacher, beautifully describes Garrison's life as an editor and movement leader, his passion for social justice, and his lifelong commitment to expressing the broadest possible principles -- whether in demanding the abolition of slavery, fighting against racism, or advocating women's rights. Although Mayer recognizes Garrison's flaws, he insists on his centrality to a tradition of American radicals who "epitomized the power of a social movement built upon thousands of individual acts of moral witness."