William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He founded and edited the anti-slavery newspaper *The Liberator*, first published in 1831, and used it to demand the immediate emancipation of enslaved people. A prominent public speaker and organizer, he helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and became one of the movement’s most uncompromising voices. Garrison advocated nonviolent moral persuasion and condemned slavery as a national sin, positions that made him both influential and controversial. After the Civil War, he supported the abolition of slavery and later reform causes.