Abolition Season
Season highlights
The abolitionists and resistance
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³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Two screens In Search Of Wilberforce, in which Moira Stuart takes viewers on a personal and epic journey of discovery across three continents in a quest to uncover the truth about the man who was the nation's icon of principled protest.
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In doing so she reveals how William Wilberforce has overshadowed the great work done by many other British people as well as the enslaved Africans themselves.
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³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 broadcasts Wilberforce. Melvyn Bragg provides another view of William Wilberforce – examining the man, the abolitionist, the Christian and the politician – with expert guests and commentary.
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Online history highlights include Wilberforce: The Hero Of Abolition? with The Wilberforce Diaries brought to life on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Local Radio across the country.
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Queen? Legend? Freedom fighter? Who was Nanny Maroon and why do so many black Britons and Caribbeans still speak of her with such reverence hundreds of years after her death?
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Niomi Daley (also known as Ms Dynamite, former winner of the Mercury music prize) goes in search of an African-Jamaican heroine in ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Two's Ms Dynamite In Search Of Nanny Maroon.
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Nanny Maroon is also the subject of a specially commissioned radio drama, Maroon Queen, based on the story of Nanny Maroon for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Local Radio.
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Presented by historian Simon Schama, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Two's Rough Crossings provides a stirring account of the impact of the American War of Independence on the "free" Africans who fought on the side of the British. And of the homeland on the peninsula of Sierra Leone offered to freed people living in Nova Scotia.
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³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Four screens The Extraordinary Equiano. Olaudah Equiano (also known as Gustavas Vassa) was born free in Africa, captured, enslaved and sent to the West Indies. Using his intelligence and charm he managed to buy his freedom and write a best selling book on his life.
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He was a member of the Sons of Africa movement, an influential group who worked with the Quakers, Thomas Clarkson and others to end the slave trade.
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The Road To Abolition, presented by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3, is a dramatised documentary charting the campaign in Britain and the Caribbean to abolish the transatlantic slave trade starting in June 1787 when Thomas Clarkson set off on the first of his many journeys round the UK. It is followed by a discussion on abolition looking at the resonance of these themes today.
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