A professor teaching in the United States will shed light on the history of Bermudian human rights at a history lecture sponsored by the Bermuda Archives.

Bermudians Dr. Clarence Maxwell, a professor at Millersville University in Millersville, Pennsylvannia, and Theodore Francis, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago will give the fourth lecture in the History Speaks Summer Lecture Series.

Their topic will be 'The Push for Equality Prior to Emancipation: Early 19th Century Black Religious Teachers and the Humanitarian Revolution'.

The lecture series celebrates Bermuda's 400th anniversary by looking at significant historical events in Bermuda's history.

The lecture will be held at Wesley Methodist Church Hall at 7.30 p.m. tonight.

"We will be looking at the Humanitarian Revolution of the 19th Century and its impact on Bermuda, with regard to moving the civil rights agenda forward and the abolution of slavery, and improving the political and scivil rights of free blacks," Dr. Maxwell told The Royal Gazette.

He said the term 'Humanitarian Revolution' was first offered by Caribbean historian Edward Brathwaite to describe a series of changes in the wake of the Anglo-American revolution and the Saint-Domingue Uprising/Haitian Revolution (1791 to 1804) that sought to improve the conditions of peoples of African descent.

"Religious education was a part of this, but in the lecture I will use it to describe one, the movement for abolition of slavery (and the slave trade) and two, as the attempt to improve the civil and political rights of free blacks and peoples of colour in Bermuda."

Dr. Maxwell will also be looking at the period before the Humanitarian Revolution, by touching on various Acts of Parliament passed in the 1700s which limited the rights of black Bermudians, both enslaved and free.

"There were several acts," he said. "For example, there was the Act of the Better Government of Negroes passed in 1764. It was passed in the wake of a slave uprising conspiracy in 1761.

"There were also a series of complicated acts that regulated both bond and freed blacks from 1764 onward."

Some of these acts prevent Some of these acts prevented black Bermudians from giving evidence against white Bermudians in a court of law.

"That meant that if a black Bermudian had a civil case against a white person, they couldn't give evidence against whites," said Dr. Maxwell.

Dr. Maxwell and Mr. Francis, part of a group of writers, are working on a book about the Age of the Humanitarian Revolution and its impact in Bermuda.

"Interest in this topic just grew," said Dr. Maxwell. "My interests was actually in late 18th and early 19th century history of people of African descent in Bermuda.

"Out of this came an interest in the Humanitarian Revolution."

Dr. Maxwell teaches a course in Atlantic World history at Millersville.

"Bermuda is right in the middle of the Atlantic World, and so has many connections to history," said Dr. Maxwell.

The History Speaks lecture series is free and open to the public.