Interviewees:
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David Brigham
- President and CEO, Historical Society of Pennsylvania
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William Ewald
- John J. O’Brien Professor of Comparative and International Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
James Forten was born free in Philadelphia in 1766 and stood in the statehouse yard on July 8, 1776, when John Nixon read the Declaration aloud—a moment he later called formative. As a teenager he served on the privateer Royal Louis, was captured by the British, and spent seven months on a prison ship before release. He returned to become a sailmaker and eventually the wealthiest African American in Pennsylvania, funding abolitionist causes and helping found the American Anti-Slavery Society. A member of St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, his life traced the arc from the Declaration's promise to the long struggle to realize it. Pennsylvania also produced two antislavery milestones: the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (1775), the first such organization in America, and the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, the first emancipation law passed by any state.
