George Thompson (1804 - 1878)

Mon Jun 18, 1804

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George Donisthorpe Thompson, born on this day in 1804, was a prominent British anti-slavery orator and activist who gave lecturing tours and worked for abolitionist legislation while serving as a member of Parliament.

Thompson grew up in a household that directly profited from the slave trade. His father worked on ships that transported enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and the Americas, and stories connected to this experience convinced him slavery had to be abolished.

Thompson became one of the most prominent and influential abolitionists and human rights lecturers in the United Kingdom and the United States. He was friends with Frederick Douglass and met with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. On one visit to the United States, Thompson had to flee the country due to threats of violence from pro-slavery parties.

Thompson was also an advocate of free trade, Chartism, nonresistance, the peace movement, and East Indian reform, helping form the British India Society in 1839.