Confronting "The Monster Prejudice": Interracial Female Antislavery Societies in Boston, Salem, and Philadelphia

Kathryn Angelica, Purdue University Fort Wayne

Antislavery mobilization in the antebellum period included not only dedication to emancipation, but efforts to protect, uplift, and expand the rights of the free Black community. Black feminist abolitionists fought to expand racial equality with a deep understanding of the gravity and personal risk of their cause. They made support for fugitives from slavery and Black community institutions like churches and schools central to radical abolitionism. In contrast, white women activists were shielded by racial privilege in ways that often prevented the creation of truly collaborative interracial spaces. The discrimination experienced by Black women, in addition to the gendered racist violence they witnessed in northern communities, widened the gulf between white and Black abolitionist ideology and practice in the years leading up to the Civil War. This paper examines the methods of resistance employed by abolitionist women in Boston, Salem, and Philadelphia and considers how race, class, region - as well as feminist ideals - shaped their activism. It also considers the opportunities and limitations of collaborative interracial spaces, and the repeated negotiations in which Black women engaged to participate in fluidly interracial communities. Female antislavery societies functioned as training grounds in organization, petitioning, canvassing, and public speaking, but also provided a crucial forum for confronting the societal, institutional, and internalized racism that marred emancipatory movements. While centering the experiences of well-documented Black women such as Charlotte Forten, this project also brings lesser-known Black feminist figures like Salem’s Clarissa C. Lawrence and Philadelphia’s Hester Reckless to the fore. It engages in the work of recovery by making use of fragments to reconstruct Black women’s labor and activism at the local and grassroots level. These three interracial female antislavery societies demonstrate how the varied perspectives and participation of African American women impacted the priorities and outcomes of each.

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 Presented in Session 109. Cruel Optimism? Women Maintaining the Status Quo or Organizing against It