William Whipper was a leading famed abolitionist, shrewd businessman and banker. Whipper, advocated moral suasion and non-violence, which he defined as the most effective way to eradicate racism in America. He is considered to be the forerunner of a civil rights movement who preceded the works of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. He was born free in Little Britain, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on February 22, 1804, the son of a White Pennsylvania businessman and a Black woman who was his servant. The Whipper children (there were four of them) received good educations and were well known for keen and philosophical minds. Early in life, he was given the opportunity to acquire sound principles of financial management. His father left him a small lumberyard when he died. After moving to Philadelphia in the 1820s, he began focusing on business pursuits. During 1834 he opened a free labor and temperance grocery store.
In conjunction with his support for the temperance movement, Whipper began actively participating in the antislavery movement. In 1835 Whipper relocated to Columbia, Pennsylvania, with fellow Black entrepreneur Stephen Smith. Their business holdings included real estate, railroad cars, and a steamship- all of which were frequently used to help fugitive slaves escape to the north. Their organization accumulated a great wealth, and the two men were considered to be two of the wealthiest African-Americans in antebellum America. Whipper used his newfound wealth to further his personal fight for moral reform and abolition. He focused his efforts in helping Black people to improve their status in society through education and economics.
When the Freedman’s Bank established an operation in Philadelphia, Whipper managed the office. Whipper used his newfound wealth to further his personal fight for moral reform and abolition. He was also involved in the Philomathean Institute of Philadelphia, a literary organization which included Frederick Douglass, and Izaiah Weir. Whipper demonstrated his dedication to the notion of moral reform via the creation of the American Moral Reform Society. In Philadelphia in 1835, he attended the annual convention of the Improvement of Free People of Color. He urged delegates to adopt a resolution, which ended the usage of the word “colored”. Because of his persistence, the delegates decided to organize a society that would have no racial boundaries.
The convention gave birth to the American Moral Reform Society, and gave Whipper credit as a founding father. The American Moral Reform Society attempted to promote general aims such as educating Blacks, establishing a Black press, and printing histories of African Americans. Whipper was the prime mover of the “Moral Reform Society”, designed to unite “free people of color.” This was done either by helping people of color adopt agricultural pursuits in the United States, or by helping them move to the Province of Canada. For more than a decade Whipper used his own money and collected funds from his White friends to assist the Society in its efforts. He was responsible for passing hundreds of slaves to the land of freedom and contributed $1,000 annually to the cause from 1847 to 1860.
Whipper’s ideology regarding antislavery was very different than most people. He believed that prejudice against Blacks came from the condition in which Black people were in, not due to the color of their skin. Whipper stipulated that “Blacks had to improve their mental, economic, and moral situations.” By making such improvements, Blacks would seemingly conform to White standards of living, making social acceptance more attainable. On September 16, 1837, at age 24, he published his “An Address on Non-Resistance to Offensive Aggression“, in The Colored American pamphlet. In the article he outlined his commitment to a non-violent response to the evils of slavery. He claimed that non-violence “is not only consistent with reason, but the surest method of obtaining a speed triumph of the principles of universal peace.“
This address has been a considered a precursor to what would become some of the same nonviolent strategies followed during later civil rights movements. Whipper’s address was written twelve years before the appearance of Thoreau’s famous essay on nonviolent resistance, “Civil Disobedience.” Despite similarities in their viewpoints, there is no indication that Whipper in any way influenced Thoreau—rather, they were both part of the liberal tide of their day. Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, the conditions in Lancaster, Philadelphia became unfavorable for African Americans. This prompted Whipper’s move to Canada where he continued as a prosperous businessman. Whipper returned to Philadelphia after the Civil War and resumed his advocacy of the rights of African Americans through newspaper articles and speeches. He gave considerable sums of money to help slaves and to aid the Union army during the Civil War.
Many of the slaves when he had helped to freedom and also his relatives wanted William to join them in Canada after several attempts had been made to burn his lumber yard by pro-slavery terrorists. William Whipper felt that he held family ties on both sides of the American and Canadian borders simply because he felt that all Blacks were brothers and sisters. Whipper wrote and produced many essays dealing with abolition of slavery. He contributed numerous articles and letters to various abolitionist papers such as the Liberator and the North Star. Whipper never received any formal awards for his writings. Whipper chose to share his wealth with the Black movement. In 1870, Whipper stated “I would prefer to be penniless in the streets, rather than have withheld a single hour’s labor or a dollar from the sacred cause of liberty, justice and humanity.“
In the 1880’s Whipper devoted much of his personal time and money to the Negro Convention Movement, the first nationwide effort of Blacks to plead their cause in America. Whipper was dedicated to nonviolence and rational persuasion. His actions before and after the Civil War contributed significantly to the fight for freedom and equality for Black people throughout the nation. He was a model of the positive attributes northern freedom offered to the African American people. Whipper never received any formal awards for his writings, but he is considered to be the forerunner of a civil rights movement who preceded the works of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. He showed a tremendous concern for change in the way humanity treated humanity. He died in Philadelphia, in 1876 as a respected entrepreneur, abolitionist, and thinker. His doctrine of non-violence is still practiced by many contemporaries.