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      More a short encyclopedia of American women's history than a biographical dictionary, The Reader's Companion to US Women's History is arranged alphabetically according to topic, such a Abolitionist Movement, Feminism, Reproductive Rights, Slavery, and the Vietnam War Era. Consequently, we will meet several women connected with the issue on the selected topic: The Abolitionist Movement.

from Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, Barbara Smith, Gloria Steinem (eds.), The Reader's Companion to US Women's History [Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998]

      In 1852 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911), a Black abolitionist, teacher, and poet, wrote: "The conditions of our people, the wants of our children, and the welfare of our race demand the aid of every helping hand." Several years later, Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880 ), a white abolitionist, emphasized that the ultimate focus of the abolitionist movement was to destroy slavery "root and branch." The U.S. Abolitionist movement, led by both Black and white men and women, fought for the immediate end of slavery and racism. Efforts to end racial oppression, begun through the resistance of slaves themselves since the beginning of bondage in the seventeenth century, found organized voices among free-born and freed Blacks in the North as well as among sympathetic whites by the late eighteenth century.

      The visions of abolition" by Harper and Mott, two dedicated activists, illuminate the existence of diverging definitions of the movement to abolish slavery between 1817 and 1860. Women, across racial and class lines, had participated in organized abolition since 1817, when Black women and men met in Philadelphia to lodge a formal, public protest against the white-led colonization movement, which proposed to send Blacks 'back" to Africa. Black women abolitionists and Black men shared the view that abolition meant more than simply eliminating the institution of slavery but required obtaining political, social, and economic equality as well. Many Black women abolitionists were also teachers and community activists. Black women's participation in this expanded notion of abolition illustrates that the immediate end of slavery was only one goal of the movement. The continuous participation of Black women and men since the eighteenth century also belies the assumption that "radical" abolition began with the appearance in 1831 of white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and his newspaper, The Liberator.

      Abolitionist women formed both formal and informal networks that sometimes crossed gender, race, and class boundaries. Perhaps the best-known woman abolitionist was Harriet Tubman (1820?-1911), an escaped slave from a Maryland plantation who returned to the South at least nineteen times to rescue approximately three hundred slaves. Black abolitionist Sarah Douglass (1806-1882), whose mother, Grace Bustill Douglass (1782-1842), helped organize the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), devoted forty years to Black education. Early in her teaching career, Douglass operated a school for Black children and adults through PFASS, from which she derived both spiritual and financial support. Although she eventually ran her school independently of the organization, she built and maintained important ties with the women of the Philadelphia abolitionist community. Female abolitionists also routinely worked with male colleagues. Lucretia and James Mott , for instance, were active in antislavery organizations and helped lead the Free produce Movement, which boycotted slave-produced goods from the South, particularly cotton.

      The organization of female antislavery societies reflected the conventional organizational structure present in social reform organizations, in which men formed the leadership and headed the state and national societies, while women were expected to form separate, auxiliary societies. The function of female antislavery societies was similar to that of other female reform organizations of the period, namely, to raise money to support the movement's lecturers and its official newspapers.

      The composition of the female societies varied. In some cases women followed prevailing social conventions of racial separation b forming segregated antislavery societies. Others, such as the women in Boston and Philadelphia, struggled to break down racial barriers by organizing racially integrated societies. Historians believe that these societies were biracial as opposed to multiracial.

      The issue of challenging the custom of race segregation sometimes erupted into heated public debates among men and women in the movement. In Fall River, Massachusetts, for instance, the predominantly white female antislavery society nearly disbanded when white abolitionist sisters Elizabeth Buffum Chace (1809-99) and Lucy Buffum Lovell (n.d.) invited "a few very respectable young colored women" to join as members. A number of white members threatened to quit, arguing that while the Black women could sit in on meetings, to offer them membership implied that they were the social equals of white women in the society.

      The debates among white women about admitting Black women into the female antislavery societies illustrated that discourses on racial equality within the movement also implicated gender. Northern abolitionist women constructed a rhetoric of sisterhood that placed Black women, especially slaves, into abolitionist discourse by emphasizing the common bonds of womanhood, particularly motherhood, in order to gain the sympathies of Southern white women. The slogan "Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?" which paralleled the earlier antislavery rallying cry "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" became the rhetorical link between slave women of the South and free women of the North.

      Unlike other reform movements of the time, including temperance and antiprostitution groups, in which such questions rarely arose, by the mid-1830s abolitionist men and women furiously debated the "proper" role of women in public reform movements. The fact that abolitionists were already wrestling with the issue of racial equality as a goal of the movement created a climate ripe for discussions about equality between the sexes. During the 1830s a few women abolitionists began to step outside of the boundaries of "proper" female activities by engaging in traditionally male domains, such as political writing and public speaking. Maria Miller Stewart, a free-born Black from New England, delivered public speeches in Boston between 1831 and 1833 on antislavery and the improvements of economic and educational opportunities for Black women and men. Angelina and Sarah Grimké, white sisters from South Carolina, traveled throughout the Northeast, delivering public addresses condemning slavery. Both Stewart and the Grimké sisters received mixed responses from those who questioned the propriety of women taking the podium and assuming a position of authority. A "Pastoral Letter," circulated by a group of new England ministers, condemned the Grimkés' actions.

      The "Woman Question" contributed to a formal split in the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS) in 1841 after Abigail Kelley Foster, a white abolitionist from Massachusetts, was elected as the first woman to sit on the executive board. Garrison, the acknowledged leader of the AAS, was a vocal supporter of women's rights and had backed the election of Kelley Foster. Those who had opposed her election to the executive board defected from the AAS to form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFAS).

      Some women abolitionists pushed the boundaries of acceptable behavior in public reform by stepping into male domains and expanding discussions about "equality" in the movement. In so doing, this generation of women activists forged a collective legacy for subsequent movements for sexual and racial equality in U.S. society. More important, however, their participation in abolition and women's rights also foretold the continuing struggle over racism, classism, and sexism both within the movements themselves and in society at large.

Article by Shirley J. Yee

References:

      Blanch Glassman Hersh, Slavery of Sex: Feminist-Abolitionists in America [Urbana: University of Illinois, 1978]

      Shirley J. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860 [Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992]

      Jean Fagan Yellin, Women and Sisters: The Anti-slavery Feminists in American Culture [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989]

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