Runaway testimony carried persuasive power against proslavery ideology

Evidence

THE FIRM POLITICAL and scientific support for slavery made it all the more difficult for the abolitionists to change the minds of the consumers of slavery’s “positive good.” Would the voice of a runaway, expressing his or her own horrific experience, be more convincing? … In 1841, William Lloyd Garrison spent three joyous days with abolitionists on the nearby island of Nantucket. As the August 11 session came to a close, a tall twenty-three-year-old runaway mustered the courage to request the floor. This was the first time many White abolitionists had ever heard a runaway share his experience of the grueling trek from slavery to freedom. Impressed, the Massachusetts Antislavery Society (MAS) offered Frederick Douglass a job as a traveling speaker. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 486

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated testing goal: this is a case where an idea-experience (Douglass’s testimony) preceded and helped change minds — a potential counterexample to Kendi’s policy-first inversion worth noting.