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This article presents a comparative analysis of African American and Australian Aboriginal political protests from 1830 to 1865. It argues that British ethnologist James Cowles Pritchard's evolutionary ethnology was critical to understanding the various reform movements and organizations against the trans-Atlantic slave trade and in favor of Aboriginal Australian rights. Commentary is given regarding the points at which African Americans and Australian Aborigines both encountered issues of settler colonialism. A background of Pritchard and evolutionary ethnology is also included, as well as those of defenders of aboriginal equality.