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Women Abolitionists
by Roberta McCutcheon
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Background
Women always played a significant role in the struggle
against slavery and discrimination. White and black Quaker
women and female slaves took a strong moral stand against
slavery. As abolitionists, they circulated petitions,
wrote letters and poems, and published articles in the
leading antislavery periodicals such as The Liberator.
Some of these women educated blacks, both free and enslaved,
and some of them joined the American Anti-Slavery Society
and founded their own biracial organization, the Philadelphia
Women's Anti-Slavery Society.
The little-known history of most of these women is a fragmented one. While several of the most well-known activists are mentioned in accounts of the abolitionist movement, there is scant reference to most other female abolitionists. Some brief biographies make reference to
the births and deaths of the lesser-known women but offer only limited mention of their work. Through research and analysis in the classroom, students will learn about the diversity of women who participated in antislavery activities, the variety of activities and goals they pursued, and the barriers they faced as women.
A more thorough discussion of the abolitionist movement can be found in a good textbook or at this website:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/subtitles.cfm?titleID=24
Objectives
Students will:
- Examine primary documents, essays, and biographies in order to gather information on women abolitionists.
- Be able to identify race and class of the women activists.
- Analyze the historical information to determine gender expectations and constraints of the nineteenth century.
- Gain an understanding of the implications of the intersection of race, class, and gender in the abolitionist movement.
- Be able to bring fragmented pieces of history together to see if it is possible to develop a more cohesive picture of the women's abolitionist movement by "creating" (developing ideas and materials for) a simulated national women's antislavery organization.
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