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Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives.<\/em><\/p>\n (Samuel Jules) Celestine Edwards was born sometime in late 1858 or early 1859, on the island of Dominica.\u00a0 The youngest of ten children, his free-born French-speaking parents moved to the neighbouring island of Antigua when Celestine was very young.\u00a0 There he went to school until the age of about twelve.\u00a0 He ran away to Gaudaloupe and then to sea.\u00a0 The reason for this is not known, but there are some stories that he was bullied by his older brothers.\u00a0 When at sea, Celestine recalled later that he learned to swear and drink like a sailor.<\/p>\n Although born into a Christian family, it was only when he was working as a sailor that he fully committed to the faith.\u00a0 In 1877, he arrived in the UK, first in Edinburgh where he worked as a labourer.\u00a0 He then moved to live in Sunderland, where he had a career change again and worked as an insurance agent, earning the sum of \u00a380 per year, a sum which is considerably higher than that of the average skilled labourer at that time (about \u00a31 a week).\u00a0 By this time, he was a committed Methodist, and fully embraced the temperance movement associated with this.<\/p>\n Edwards became a passionate speaker in favour of temperance, and spoke at length on religions matters at various locations both in Sunderland and more widely.\u00a0 He was a regular speaker at the new Assembly Hall on Fawcett Street, but also spoke at the Bethesda Chapel on Tatham Street, and at other venues around the city. \u00a0A very tall man at just under 6′ at a time when the average height for men was around 5’6″, he was an imposing figure. From newspaper reports of his many public appearances in Sunderland, it seems he was a very popular and engaging speaker, who was not afraid to argue on points of theology, imperialism and race.\u00a0 He was particularly critical of some of Darwin\u2019s ideas, highlighting the implicit racism of these (perhaps also linking them to Darwin\u2019s eugenicist cousin, Francis Galton).\u00a0 In a speech recorded in the Sunderland Daily Echo<\/em> on 30th<\/sup> September 1891, he is reported to have:<\/p>\n dealt at length with the theory of evolution, and said that Darwin had somehow got the negro race mixed up in his book, and had stated that in his opinion it was somewhere in Africa that the human race first originated from ape. The lecturer then dealt with the various objects raised against the negro, and caused much amusement by the comparison he made between negroes and white men. The lecture was listened to with great attention, and was much applauded, Mr Edwards concluding a fine peroration by saying that the time was coming, and coming fast, when public opinion would be turned, and it would be found that, given equal opportunity and equal time, the negro race would show as honourable a record as any race with which the earth was blest.<\/p>\n Edwards lived only two or three years in Sunderland.\u00a0 Details of his life are somewhat sketchy as he moved around a great deal.\u00a0 Sunderland is one of the few places he actually settled for any length of time.\u00a0 He did move to London in the late 1880s, where he moved around various locations.\u00a0 He helped former slave Walter Hawkins write his autobiography, From Slavery to Bishopric<\/em> (1891).\u00a0 He became editor of the Christian fortnightly magazine, Lux<\/em>, and also the Society for the Recognition of the Brotherhood of Man (SRBM)\u2019s newsletter, Fraternity<\/em>.\u00a0 He thus becomes what is thought to be Britain\u2019s first black editor.\u00a0 He used these publications to fight for racial equality, the demise of imperialism, and of course temperance.\u00a0 In the 10th<\/sup> December 1892 edition of Lux<\/em>, he writes:<\/p>\n As long as such unrighteous deeds as cold-blooded murders are permitted under the British flag, as long as avarice and cupidity prompt the actions of a missionary nation, so long we shall protest against public money being spent in the interest of land-grabbers.<\/p>\n The injustice under which the black man is smarting will come home to his oppressors’ children’s children. He will surprise and disappoint those who never dreamt that the quiet happy-go-lucky black would turn like the worm upon those who wronged him. If the British nation stole no more, they have stolen enough and have sufficient responsibility at home and abroad to occupy her maternal attention for the next hundred years. If the British nation has not murdered enough no nation on God’s earth has.<\/p>\n In this extract, we can see that he is clearly arguing against racial inequality and imperialism, telling uncomfortable truths. It is a message he repeated in Lux<\/em> a few months later, pointing here to the trading habits of the British in their colonising avarice.<\/p>\n The day is coming when Africans will speak for themselves. The day is breaking, and the despised African, whose only crime is his colour, will yet give an account of himself. We think it no crime for Africans to look with suspicion upon the European, who has stolen a part of their country, and deluged it with rum and powder, under the cover of civilisation.<\/p>\n Lux<\/em>, 18th<\/sup> February 1893<\/p>\n Edwards was joined by Ida B. Wells, the American anti-slavery, anti-lynching campaigner who had arrived in the UK at the invitation of Scottish Quakers.\u00a0 She became joint editor of Fraternity<\/em> with Edwards, and took over at his death.\u00a0Edwards continued to travel the country giving popular talks on subjects such as \u201cAmerican Atrocities\u201d, \u201cBlacks and Whites in America\u201d, \u201cThe Negro Race and Social Darwinism\u201d and \u201cLiquor Traffic to West Africa\u201d.<\/p>\n By late 1893, Edwards\u2019 health was deteriorating. He had been accepted as a medical student, but his doctor told him that he needed to slow down.\u00a0 However, rather typically of Edwards, he chose instead to go on a \u2018farewell tour\u2019.\u00a0 This exhausting tour took him the length and breadth of the country, including a final visit to Sunderland in early 1894, where he spoke at the Coffee Tavern on High Street West (in a location now occupied by Sports Direct).\u00a0 His passion for his subject was undimmed, and he spoke at length about the evils of slavery. Rather wistfully, he ended this speech on a note of optimism for the future of the freed Blacks: \u2018Their position today is one over which I proudly rejoice. To their future I look with confidence.\u2019<\/p>\n Whilst visiting the North East on this tour, he encountered Ida B. Wells, who was sponsored by the Quakers to carry out a tour of the North and Scotland. Ida had been born enslaved in the US but was freed under the Emancipation Act of 1862.\u00a0 She was a passionate campaigner against racism, and took over the editing of Fraternity<\/em>.\u00a0 You can read more about Ida here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Celestine Edwards\u2019 health continued to deteriorate, and he returned to the West Indies in May 1894.\u00a0 He died with his family in Dominica on 25th<\/sup> July, 1894.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Useful further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n Bressey, Caroline (2012) Reporting Oppression: racial predudice in Anti-Caste and Fraternity, 1888-1895. Journal of Historical Geography<\/em> 38 (2012) 401-411<\/p>\n Fryer, Peter (1984) Staying Power: the history of Black people in Britain.<\/em> Atlantic Highlands, Nj: Humanities Press.<\/p>\n Lorimer, Douglas (2018) Legacies of Slavery for Race, Religion, and Empire: Celestine Edwards and the Hard Truth (1894). Slavery & Abolition<\/em>, 39:4, 731-755<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives. (Samuel Jules) Celestine Edwards was born sometime in late 1858 or early 1859, on the island of Dominica.\u00a0 The youngest of ten children, his free-born French-speaking parents moved to the neighbouring island of Antigua when Celestine was very young.\u00a0 There he went to school until the age […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1327","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1327"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1723,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1327\/revisions\/1723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}