This chapter scrutinizes early frontispieces contained within books by Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano and then proceeds to examine the illustrated antislavery books of Moses Roper and Henry Bibb (both of which also contain frontispieces as well as other types of illustrations). Although Roper’s book was published in 1837 and Bibb’s in 1849, this chapter argues that both men (being born in 1815 and having participated in the antislavery movement) were responding to the abject treatment of the enslaved in earlier antislavery materials. The words of the text interact with its visual optic to interpellate the reader and envision a figurative mode of agency and self-possession for the enslaved body and the freed Black subject. The chapter concludes with a forward glance at artworks by Kara Walker and Glen Ligon that also attempt to excavate (although in a more abstract way) the trace of a resistant visual tradition within African American literature and US visual culture.

Chapter 1 opens with Moses Roper’s lecturing tour in the British Isles. While not an invisible figure in historical scholarship, historians have rendered Roper peripheral in their discussions. Using new evidence, I uncover Roper’s previously unexplored performative techniques, and how he employed adaptive resistance with mixed success. He refused to compromise on his brutal descriptions of slavery, and his experience of torture proved either too upsetting for audiences or invited criticism. Since Victorian racial dynamics decreed that formerly enslaved individuals had to be supported by white networks, Roper’s lecture tour was hindered by his lack of white testimonials, and I analyze how white sabotage affected Roper’s tour. Therefore, his exploitation of the triad of performance, print culture, and abolitionist networks proved difficult compared to individuals such as Frederick Douglass.