Black Women and the Abolition of Slavery
“Rachel Weeping for Her Children”: Black Women and the Abolition of Slavery by Margaret Washington
Photograph of Sojourner Truth, 1864. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)
During the period leading up to the Civil War, black women all over the North comprised a stalwart but now largely forgotten abolitionist army. In myriad ways, these race-conscious women worked to bring immediate emancipation to the South. Anti-slavery Northern black women felt the sting of oppression personally. Like the slaves, they too were victims of color prejudice; some had been born in Northern bondage; others had family members still enslaved; and many interacted daily with self-emancipated people who constantly feared being returned south.
Anti-slavery women such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman were only the most famous of the abolitionists. Before either of these heroines came on the scene and before anti-slavery was an organized movement, black women in local Northern communities had quietly turned to activism through their church work, literary societies, and benevolent organizations. These women found time for political activism in between managing households, raising children, and working.
In the late 1820s, Zion’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in New York City, Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and the African Meetinghouse in Boston were centers of female anti-slavery activity. Black women proclaimed that their cause was “let the oppressed go free.” They organized bazaars to promote the purchase of goods made from free labor, met in sewing circles to make clothing for those fleeing bondage, and raised money for Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first black newspaper. In 1830, when Boston editor William Lloyd Garrison proposed his idea of publishing a newspaper devoted solely to immediate emancipation, a committee of black women began raising funds for it. The first copy of the Liberator appeared on January 1, 1831, with strong financial backing from black
Photograph of Sojourner Truth, 1864. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)
During the period leading up to the Civil War, black women all over the North comprised a stalwart but now largely forgotten abolitionist army. In myriad ways, these race-conscious women worked to bring immediate emancipation to the South. Anti-slavery Northern black women felt the sting of oppression personally. Like the slaves, they too were victims of color prejudice; some had been born in Northern bondage; others had family members still enslaved; and many interacted daily with self-emancipated people who constantly feared being returned south.
Anti-slavery women such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman were only the most famous of the abolitionists. Before either of these heroines came on the scene and before anti-slavery was an organized movement, black women in local Northern communities had quietly turned to activism through their church work, literary societies, and benevolent organizations. These women found time for political activism in between managing households, raising children, and working.
In the late 1820s, Zion’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in New York City, Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and the African Meetinghouse in Boston were centers of female anti-slavery activity. Black women proclaimed that their cause was “let the oppressed go free.” They organized bazaars to promote the purchase of goods made from free labor, met in sewing circles to make clothing for those fleeing bondage, and raised money for Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first black newspaper. In 1830, when Boston editor William Lloyd Garrison proposed his idea of publishing a newspaper devoted solely to immediate emancipation, a committee of black women began raising funds for it. The first copy of the Liberator appeared on January 1, 1831, with strong financial backing from black