The Department of Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville is committed to producing and disseminating interdisciplinary knowledge about Africa, African Americans, and the African Diaspora around the world. We promote creative and critical thinking skills through rigorous research, teaching, service, and publication on the cultures, arts, institutions, histories, political economies, and philosophies of African peoples and peoples of African descent worldwide.
Africana Studies is a multicultural, interdisciplinary, and transnational paradigm that anchors its scholarship on a local, regional, national, and global scale. It conceives of the Africana world as extending from Africa to North America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Asia, and Europe. The Department of Africana Studies provides students with a comprehensive education and critical knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the Africana experience in its multiple dimensions.
Library Collection of The Emancipator
Published in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by Elihu Embree, The Emancipator was the first newspaper in the United States “to advocate the abolition of slavery, and to be a repository of tracts on that interesting and important subject.” (Vol.1, No.1) The first issue appeared on April 30, 1820. The previous year, as a member of the Manumission Society of Tennessee, Embree published the weekly, Manumission Intelligencer, which printed local news as well as news about the Society.
The Emancipator was distributed widely outside of Tennessee, and when publication ceased upon Embree’s death in October 1820, circulation had surpassed 2,000.
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