Joel W. Lewis

Joel W. Lewis was a prominent African-American businessman and abolitionist. He was among the best known and respected reformers in antebellum Boston.[1][2]

He was the son of Job Lewis (?–1797), a former slave who served in the Continental Army.[3] He was a brother of author and entrepreneur Robert Benjamin Lewis.[4] After attending Hosea Easton's vocational school, he went on to become the owner of a large and successful blacksmith shop in Boston, which employed both black and white mechanics.[3] The shop operated from the 1830s to at least 1870.[4] In the years before the Civil War, he lived at 4 Southac Street in Boston's West End.[5]

In 1833 Lewis became the first vice-president of the Boston Mutual Lyceum, one of several educational and cultural organizations co-founded by William Cooper Nell (apparently separate from the Boston Lyceum, which was founded in 1829).[6] In 1836 he was elected president of the Adelphic Union for the Promotion of Literature and Science, another group founded by Nell; also known as the Adelphic Union Library Association,[7] the group held weekly lectures and debates at the Abiel Smith School on Belknap Street. The Adelphic Union rented a hall in the center of town, rather than in a predominantly black neighborhood, to encourage white Bostonians to attend their lectures and pave the way for black Bostonians to attend lectures at white institutions.[8]

Lewis was active in the abolitionist movement and aided refugees from slavery. In 1840, he was the Chairman of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.[9] In the 1850s he was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee.[7] A moderate, he opposed the use of violence, believing it would only reinforce white stereotypes of blacks as uncivilized.[10] He was also involved in the temperance movement, and opened a temperance boarding house in 1839.[11]

References

  1. ^ Horton, James Oliver; Horton, Lois E. (1993). "The Affirmation of Manhood: Black Garrisonians in Antebellum Boston". In Jacobs, Donald M. (ed.). Courage and Conscience: Black & White Abolitionists in Boston. Indiana University Press. p. 128. ISBN 0-253-20793-2.
  2. ^ Price, George R. (2006). The Easton family of southeast Massachusetts: The dynamics surrounding five generations of human rights activism 1753-1935 (PhD dissertation). University of Montana. p. 150.
  3. ^ a b Nell, William Cooper (1855). The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution: With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: to which is Added a Brief Survey of the Condition and Prospects of Colored Americans. Boston: R.F. Wallcut. p. 35.
  4. ^ a b Price (2006), p. 68.
  5. ^ Jacobs (1993), p. 226.
  6. ^ Jacobs (1993), p. 214.
  7. ^ a b Horton, James Oliver (1973). Black Activism in Boston, 1830-1860. Brandeis University. pp. 84–85.
  8. ^ Porter, Dorothy B. (1936). "The Organized Educational Activities of Negro Literary Societies, 1828-1846". The Journal of Negro Education. 5 (4): 570. doi:10.2307/2292029. JSTOR 2292029.
  9. ^ "Meeting of Colored Citizens". The Liberator. May 22, 1840. p. 83. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  10. ^ Jacobs (1993), p. 137.
  11. ^ "Temperance Boarding House". The Liberator. June 29, 1839. Retrieved November 6, 2017.