Women Abolitionists

The above engraving, “Am I not a Woman and a Sister?”, appeared in an 1837 tract by George Bourne. It highlighted the connections between the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements and became ubiquitous in leaflets, posters, and pamphlets.

As white and black women became more active in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s, they took key roles as lecturers, petitioners, and meeting organizers. They knew illustrative representations were more likely to draw support for their cause, so, in appealing for interracial sisterhood, they used a variety of images portraying the female activist theme in newspapers and broadsides, as well as on handicraft goods sold at fund-raising fairs.

The abolitionist and women's rights advocate Isabella Baumfree was born around the turn of the nineteenth century. Enslaved until she was an adult, she was freed in 1827 by the New York Gradual Abolition Act. She worked as a domestic for eighteen years. Then, in 1843, she came to understand that God was calling her to travel around the nation – sojourn – and preach the truth of his word. She became Sojourner Truth. Her calling cards read:

Ye wives and ye mothers, your influence extend--
Ye sisters, ye daughters, the helpless defend--
The strong ties are severed for one crime alone,
Possessing a colour less fair than your own.

  

An abolitionist as well as a suffragist, Susan B. Anthony referred to Harriet Tubman as a "most wonderful woman". Tubman escaped slavery and helped to establish the Underground Railroad.

A biographer of Tubman wrote, “Harriet was now left alone, . . . She turned her face toward the north, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, and committing her way unto the Lord, she started again upon her long, lonely journey. She believed that there were one of two things she had a right to, liberty or death.”

After making her own escape, Harriet Tubman returned to the South nineteen times to bring over three hundred fugitives to safety, including her own aged parents.

Next blog will continue the subject of 'Women and Abolition".