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from Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Vol II M - Z [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993] pp. 972-974

      "I appeal on behalf of four millions of men, women, and children who are chattels in the Southern States of America, Not because they are identical with my race and color, though I am proud of that identity, but because they are men and women. The sum of sixteen hundred millions of dollars is invested in their bones, sinews, and flesh -- is this not sufficient reason why all the friends of humanity should not endeavor with all their might and power, to overturn the vile systems of slavery." Sarah Parker Remond, a lady of no ordinary character, made this statement during a lecture on slavery that she was giving in Warrington, England, in 1859. A free person of color, she was touring throughout England hoping to impress the English people on the evils of slavery in the United States and to implore them to endorse propositions protesting this evil as a blot on the civilized world.

      Sarah Parker Remond was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on June 6, 1826, one of eight children of John and Nancy Lenox Remond. She received a limited education in the primary school and was primarily self-educated by reading newspapers, books, and pamphlets, she borrowed from friends or purchased from the anti-Slavery Society depositories, which sold many titles at a cheap price.

      Raised in a family that included many abolitionists, Remond from childhood learned of the horrors of slavery and witnessed many incidents involving the Underground Railroad. Her home was a haven for Black and white abolitionists. She regularly attended antislavery lectures in Salem and Boston. Charles Lenox Remond, her older brother, was a well-known antislavery lecturer in the United States and Great Britain. Along with household duties, cooking and sewing, Nancy Remond taught her daughters to seek liberty in a lawful manner and that to be Black was no crime, but an accident of birth.

      Sarah Remond determined early in life to fight the prejudice she constantly faced because of her color. In May 1853, she was denied a seat, for which she had a ticket, to attend a performance of the opera Don Pasquale at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston. Remond was forcibly ejected from the theater and pushed down the stairs, from which she suffered an injury. She sued the managers of the theater and won her suit. The small award of $500 she received did not compensate for her injury and embarrassment. Her object, however, was not to make money on the case but to vindicate a right.

      In 1856, Remond accompanied her brother Charles on his antislavery lecture tour in new York State. She spoke briefly at some of the meetings, gaining confidence in her ability to lecture. She addressed several antislavery meetings in New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania between 1856 and 1858. Sarah and her brother faced prejudice on many occasions. Some boarding houses and hotels refused to accept them, and special accommodations for them had to be found in private homes.

      On December 28, 1858, Sarah Parker Remond left Boston in the steamer Arahia for Liverpool to enlist the aid of the English people in the American antislavery movement. Accompanied by Samuel May, Jr., she arrived in Liverpool on January 12, 1859, after a frightening trip. The ship had been covered with ice and snow. It rolled and tossed so much that many of the passengers were sick, including Remond, who regained her strength after a few days of recuperation in the home of William Robson in Warrington.

      At Tuckerman Institute on January 21, 1859, Remond gave her first antislavery lecture on the free soil of Britain. Without notes she eloquently spoke of the inhuman treatment of slaves in the United States. Her shocking stories of atrocities brought tears to the eyes of many listeners.

      Between 1859 and 1861, Remond gave over forty-five lectures in eighteen cities and towns in England, three cities in Scotland, and four cities in Ireland. Everywhere the press reported her speeches and the reactions of her audiences. In spite of a heavy lecture schedule, Remond, desirous of furthering her education, attended classes at Bedford College for Ladies, later a part of the University of London, from October 1859 to mid-1861. She studies history, elocution, music, English literature,, French, and Latin.

      At the end of the Civil War, Remond lectured on behalf of the freedmen. She was an active member of the London Emancipation Society and the Freedman's Aid Association in London. These organizations solicited funds and clothing for the ex-slaves.

      In 1856, she published a letter in the Daily News protesting attacks on black people in the London press after an insurrection in Jamaica. One lecture that she delivered in London, "The Freeman or the Emancipated Negro of the Southern States of the United States," was published in The Freedman (London) in 1867.

      Remond visited Rome and Florence on several occasions while living in England. In 1866, she left London and entered the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy as a medical student. She received a diploma certifying her for professional medical practice in 1871. She practiced medicine in Florence, Italy, for more than twenty years.

      In Florence, on April 25, 1877, Sarah Parker Remond married Lazzaro Pintor, a native of Sardinia.

      This remarkable woman from a unique African-American family died on December 13, 1894. She was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.

      [See also ABOLITION MOVEMENT]

Bibliography
      DANB; May, Samuel J. Diary (January 1-10, 1859), Anti-Slavery Collection, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York; NAW; Porter, Dorothy B. "The Remonds of Salem, Massachusetts: A Nineteenth-Century Family Revisited," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, October 16, 1985 (1986), and "Sarah Parker Remond, Abolitionist and Physician," Journal of Negro History (July 1935); Protestant Cemetery Archives, Rome, Italy; Warrington Times (January 29, 1859).

DOROTHY PORTER WESLEY

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