The Freethought Society (FS) is pleased to host Professor Christopher Cameron on Saturday, August 1, 2020 at 3:00 PM (EDT)/Noon (PDT) for an online Zoom presentation  entitled “Black Freethought from Slavery to Civil Rights.” His talk is based on his book,  Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism.

Learn how you can obtain the Zoom link by registering as a member of the FS Meetup.

Cameron’s talk will explore the origins of black freethought among 19^th century slaves, many of whom could not reconcile notions of a loving God with their condition on Earth. The talk will then examine freethought in the 20^th  century as well as cultural and political movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, radical leftist politics, and the Black Power movement. Cameron argues that religious skepticism was prevalent among some of the most prominent voices in African American history, including Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Huey Newton, and Alice Walker. 

Cameron is a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with research and teaching interests in African American and early American history, including slavery, the antislavery movement, religious and intellectual history. His first book, To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement, explored the relationship between Puritan theology and the rise of black abolitionism, arguing throughout the work that African Americans were central to the development of the antislavery movement in America.