June 18, 2014 • 35 mins
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, and in recognition, Cristen and Caroline discuss the often unsung women who helped set an enslaved people free, despite tremendous race- and gender-based prejudice.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never told You. From how Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and we're doing this episode as a
celebration of June teenth, which is the oldest known celebration
(00:23):
commemorating the end of slavery in the US that took
place on June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five, right, and this
is when Union soldiers led by a major General, Gordon Granger,
brought the news of emancipation to Galveston, Texas. And you're thinking, wait,
I'm not listening to a history podcast. What's going on. Well,
we want to talk about not only the celebration of Juneteenth,
(00:46):
but we want to talk about what led up to
the end of slavery into emancipation and women had a
huge role in that exactly. Um So, just to give
you a little bit of a timeline, just to drive
home the fact that it took so long, which is
horrifying to think about as an American, it took so
long for us to finally uproot slavery in the United States.
(01:10):
Anti slavery sentiment began during colonial times. The Mennonites. Actually
we're speaking out against it in the late seventeenth century.
And then fast forward to seventeen seventy three and we
have Phyllis Wheatley who becomes the first African American to
publish a book and it's called Poems on Various Subjects
Religious and Moral. Yeah, and I mean not not the
(01:32):
first African American woman just alone, just the first African
American person to publish a book. Um. And it's not
until the next year that the Continental Congress adopts a
resolution calling for a ban on all American participation in
the international slave trade. And that would go back and forth.
You would have different states like South Carolina reopening trade
(01:55):
international slave trade with people in Africa. Um. But if
we move forward to eighteen hundreds, so the turn of
the century, we see kind of the birth of a
few separate movements that are all well, I shouldn't say separate,
because they're all pretty interrelated. But you have the Second
Great Awakening, which is a wave of religious fervor that
(02:17):
ends up sparking the temperance movement, the abolition movement, and
the suffrage movement. They're also tied in together. What's the
common denominator women women women? Yeah, this is sort of
if you if you listen to the podcast. Earlier this year,
we did a semi two parter on Susan B. Anthony
(02:37):
and the suffrage movement and then looking at black women's
role in the suffrage movement, and there is some overlap
with this, but this is really kind of the precursor
to those episodes on suffrage because it is the abolition
movement that first engages women in these kinds of activist roles, right,
(02:58):
And so it's not until eighteen six d three that
we finally get the Emancipation Proclamation, and in January eighteen
sixty five, the Thirteenth Amendment is passed. So when you
look at the fact that it took Union soldiers until
June of eighteen sixty five to get the word to
people in Texas, I mean that that was a six
month lag in slavery finally ending. And so because of
(03:21):
that very strange murky staggered ending of this institution, Juneteenth
the sort of a more general name for just the
period during which slavery finally ended and it took so
much concerted effort to uproot it. And like you said, Caroline,
women were incredibly influential in the abolition movement as well
(03:45):
as all of these reform movements of the time that
also included temperance and suffrage. And if you look up north,
you have middle and upper class women, including free black women,
who got involved in abolition part purally, starting in the
eighteen thirties, right like that period about thirty years before
the Civil Wars when things really start to get heated.
(04:07):
This is when you see a lot of abolitionists newspapers
coming up, people speaking out both men and women, white
and black. And so the fact that these women were
getting involved. PBS points out that suffragists oh a substantial
debt to the anti slavery movement, which had served as
the most important training ground for its leaders and the
most important repository for ideas of sexual as well as
(04:31):
well as racial emancipation in the decades before the Civil War.
And it's a similar pattern that you see two if
you fast forward to the fifties and sixties, how the
civil rights movement really starts to fuel what becomes second
wave feminism. Um. But speaking back now to the Antebellum years,
the abolitionists materials that were targeted at women really appealed
(04:54):
to their sympathetic feelings as wives and mothers, basically like
reaching out to them on behalf of slave women who
might be separated from their husbands and children. Right, And
so here's that that appeal to women's familial ties and
their their primary role in society as a wife and mother,
(05:16):
to say, hey, but these are women too. It's a
very early use of gender to try to convince white
people that enslaving black people was wrong. It was also
a technique used a lot by anti slavery writers who
favored slower changes to the system as opposed to the
more radical abolitionists who will talk about in a little bit.
(05:37):
And when it comes to this intersection of gender and
race at the time, it does get kind of complicated. Um,
you have and this is a quote from the website
US History Scene. You have Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd
Garrison obviously like abolitions of the time, and the pro
slavery and anti slavery writers operating in in a mirror
(06:00):
where gender denoted one's place, rights, privileges, and status, and
where conservative gendered hierarchies were jealously and fearlessly guarded and
they were acutely aware of it. I mean all of this.
It was like marketing in a way of like, Okay,
we need to appeal to your feminine instinct, your maternal
(06:21):
instinct so that you can back this cause. Yeah. The
thing that absolutely fascinated me about this was just how
gender dynamics, gender norms, gender expectations were all used by
both pro slavery and anti slavery advocates to suit their
own purposes. I mean, gender was politicized by both whites
(06:41):
and blacks, and so gender Truth, for instance, used it
in her ain't I a woman's speech, as did William
Lloyd Garrison when he called all male slaves true men.
Because gender, being a man was linked with certain rights,
and it was linked with personhood, and it was linked
with manhood which had a very specific meaning, and for
(07:01):
women that equated with family and all of that together
equals rights because they're using gender. The people who were
opposing slavery were using gender to say, give these these
women are women, they deserve to have a family. These
men are men, they should be at the head of
that family exactly. And meanwhile, you also have pro slavery
(07:21):
Southerners also politicizing gender for their own purposes, lumping together
slavery with their anti suffrage stance. Essentially this logic of, well,
if you can't control your slaves, then you won't be
able to control your wife, so you need to keep
both of those both unfortunately literally and figuratively, on lockdown, right,
(07:42):
And this this basically kept poor whites who didn't even
own slaves in support of slavery too, because how do
you tell a man who doesn't own slaves, he's not
a part of this, this institution or the system. How
do you convince him that slavery needs to stay put?
You tell him that if we can't maintained control of
our slaves, then our women are just going to be
(08:03):
running around crazy too. And speaking of this gender hierarchy,
there were also the anti slavery activists, like some Garrisonians,
who would disambiguate between the quote unquote unnatural order of
slavery that, like you said, prevented African American families from
(08:24):
being able to have like male head of household women
with children, with the quote unquote natural hierarchy of gender,
essentially arguing okay, well we must free slaves to also
help restore that natural hierarchy, right, Yeah, When Garrison is
arguing about manhood. It's very interesting because you know, if
(08:47):
you're if you're marketing something, if you're trying to sell
an idea, you have to pray on the social structure
of the time, the morays of the time, and the
patriarchy was definitely a lot even well around the Civil War,
and so when Garrison and others talk about male slaves manhood,
it's definitely a loaded term, especially because being a man
(09:09):
was linked with having authority over women, and so if
you ended slavery, you would restore the rightful gender balance,
because when you look at a country in which slavery exists,
there's this just untenable, weird tiered system where there's white
men above white women, but white women are above black men,
and then black men can't be above black women because
(09:30):
they're enslaved. And so there are a lot of good
arguments out there for ending slavery, and a lot of
people who are passionate about doing so, but some of
the arguments that they wanted to use to achieve this
were questionable. Well yeah, I mean, it's just it's definitely
a product of his time of its time, because you
also see that just because men were pro abolition did
(09:54):
not mean that they were also pro suffrage, or at
least pro women's vocal and public involvement in the abolition movement,
because there was actually, for example, a gender split that
happened in the eighteen thirties on the heels of women's
increase involvement in abolition, which led to in eighteen thirty nine,
(10:16):
anti Garrisonians Louis and Arthur Tappan splitting off from William
Lloyd Garrison's New England Anti Slavery Society to form the
American and Foreign Anti Slavery Society, which prohibited women from
participating publicly. They were fine with women hanging out in
the background of kind of doing their things, staying in
(10:38):
their own female anti slavery societies because those existed are
staying in their sewing circles and you know, organizing in
that way. But the mixing of the two also reflets
and feathers. It sure did um. In May eight, for example,
Pennsylvania Hall was burned down the day after the Anti
(11:00):
Slavery Convention of American Women held their second national meeting. Yeah,
we brought this up, I believe, in our episode on
Susan b. Anthony and people were so outraged that women
were getting up on stage to speak publicly about suffrage.
And this was also a group of both white and
black women who were together. And so this mob essentially
(11:23):
attacked Pennsylvania Hall. The women were able to escape, but
then the next day it was burned down. But that
didn't stop them. I mean, this was also just fueling
the suffrage movement as well, but that certainly didn't stop them, because,
as we've mentioned a number of times now on the podcast,
it was this kind of gender based discrimination that women faced,
(11:46):
particularly during the abolition movement, that led to the Seneca
Falls Convention, which kicked off first wave feminism, because in
forty you have the World Anti Slavery Convention barring Elizabeth
Katie Stanton, Lucretia Mott and a few other women from
having a seat on the convention floor. And so they
were like, you know what, we will do our own thing. Yeah,
(12:10):
doing your own thing feminism. Um, But it's not just
the white men who were trying to keep the white
women from participating in the abolition movement as active advocates.
Black men were not necessarily pleased about black women's involvement either.
Many wanted them to stay behind the scenes. And we're
not necessarily talking about African Americans who were enslaved. We're
(12:31):
talking about freed people up in the Northeast, for instance.
A lot of them accused Black women protesters in New York,
I think they were protesting something going on in court
of bringing everlasting shame and remorse on the community. There
were just so many men, black and white, who basically said,
we cannot accomplish anything with you women in the way.
(12:53):
You're hurting our cause. Yeah. I mean, because at the time,
the very idea of women being out and demonstrating in
public was a major violation of their appropriate normative gender role.
And the whole protests in New York was related to
this case where I think two slaves had escaped to
(13:15):
the North and because of the Fugitive Slave law that
was enacted, they were then being they were gonna they've
been captured and they were gonna be sent back, And
so these women came out to protest that, and the
fact that their husbands were so outraged by that only
speaks to how deeply entrenched these gender issues were at
the time. As deeply entrenched as these abolition issues happening,
(13:39):
um so let's talk though, more about women abolitionists and
highlight some women you've probably heard of, but also some
women you haven't heard of, such as British abolitionist revolutionary
who I hadn't heard of before researching for this episode. Uh,
this woman named Elizabeth hay Rick, who in wrote a
(13:59):
pamphlet called Immediate Not Gradual Abolition, which was the first
widely circulated assertion of what was called immediatism, essentially the
idea that hey, you need to free all slave immediately.
Don't do this gradually. We've got to do it all
at once. Yeah. And if you'll remember from our Susan B.
Anthony podcast, Uh, it was this conflict, this tension between
(14:24):
the desire to do it gradually and the desire to
do it immediately that caused splits within the suffrage movement
and within the women's rights movement itself. But abolitionist Wendell Phillips,
whose side note, did not join the abolition movement until
he witnessed William Lloyd Garrison being attacked by a mob.
But when Wendell Phillips said that, little progress was made
in the anti slavery cause until Heyrick saw and publicly
(14:48):
acknowledged the principle of immediate and universal emancipation. Then that
great anti slavery truth flew through the land of shooting
arrows into every heart. Now that is widest statement to make,
but that happened in What I think often goes untalked
about in this history of abolition is the work on
(15:10):
a smaller but no less significant scale of Black women,
particularly in the North, who were organizing, who were developing
these centers of female anti slavery activity, typically centered around churches, right, yeah.
Margaret Washington read about this for the Guilder Laman Institute,
(15:31):
and she talks about black churches and meeting houses being
these centers of activity for Black women and how the
domestic sphere sort of came in and and interacted quite
well with abolition advocacy. She talked about how black women
would organize sales of goods made or food grown with
free labor as opposed to uh slave labor, holding sewing
(15:54):
circles to make clothes for people fleeing slavery, and raising
money for Freedom's Journal, the nation's for black newspaper, and
when William Moore Garrison, white abolitionist, proposed the idea for
his pro abolition paper The Liberator. He received strong financial
backing from these black women who use their organization to
help fund raise for initiatives like this right. And so
(16:19):
we did mention earlier in the podcast that the eighteen
thirties was like a huge sort of pressure cracker moment
in history leading up to abolition. And we're going to
get into the eighteen thirties when we come right back
from a quick break. So we've been moving through this
abolition timeline and we're now into the eighteen thirties, which
(16:40):
is when things really start happening. By this point, you
have thousands of women involved in the movement to abolish slavery.
We're writing articles for abolitionist papers, circulating abolitionist pamphlets, and
also circulating, signing and delivering petitions to Congress calling for abolition.
And on top top of that, you also still have
(17:02):
these kinds of anti slavery sewing circles and that free
produced movement tied into the domesticity aspect of this movement
of sort of you know, women doing what they could
in their roles at the time to contribute to abolition. Well,
so let's get into some of these names that you
(17:22):
may or may not know. A lot of them were
unfamiliar to me, and so we we want to give
you some we obviously can't give you all, or this
podcast would be more like a book on tape. But
in eighteen thirty one, Boston's Maria Stewart, a middle class,
free black woman, became the first woman of color to
publicly speak on political issues, and she ended up setting
the oratorical stage basically for Francis Ellen Watkins Harper who
(17:46):
was a poet and teacher, sojournal truth and Harriet Tubman.
So their two names that are much more familiar. Yeah,
And speaking of Stewart and sort of from the twenties
when we're talking about the organizing that black women were doing,
she got her start her initial platform with Boston's African
American Female Intelligent Society, one of those groups that they
(18:08):
had started up, and that was where she got comfortable
talking in front of groups of people. Um. And then
in eighteen thirty two we have Maria W. Chapman, who
helped organize the Boston Female Anti Slavery Society and also
began editing William Lord Garrison's paper The Liberator, and in
she spoke with Angelina Grimkey, who will talk about in
(18:30):
a moment at the Anti Slavery Convention of American Women
in Philadelphia. Right. And a year later she wrote the
pamphlet Right and Wrong in Massachusetts that argued differences in
opinion about women's suffrage were directly tied to divisions among abolitionists.
And then in eighteen thirty three, backing up a little,
(18:50):
Lucretia Mott found the first female Anti Slavery Society. Lucretia
Mott is a Quaker. She is a member of this
group that has been part of the abolition movement from
the get go, well not the get go. They weren't
as early as the Menna Nights on it, but the
Quakers very early on adopted resolutions saying that we will
(19:12):
not own slaves. It's not the right thing to do.
She was also a feminist who lectured on a number
of reformer causes, and she attended the founding convention of
the American Anti Slavery Society in eighteen thirty three and
then established its women's auxiliary, the Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society.
And of course, she, along with Elizabeth Katie Stanton, helped
(19:34):
organize the Cynecal Falls Convention in eighty eight after they
were not allowed a seat at the World Anti Slavery
Convention in London. Um and still in eighteen thirty three.
I don't know what was in the water in eighteen
thirty three, but it was instead of fire in your
belly apparently, because you also have Prudence Crandall, who was
a white Quaker school teacher in Canterbury, Connecticut, who ended
(19:57):
up transforming her school in one for black girls because
she got a letter from uh this the parents of
I think she was a teenage black girl who just
wanted better schooling. And so she said, sure, a hed
come to school. That's totally fine. And the townspeople flipped
out and that was an awakening for her of like, Okay,
(20:20):
well you know what I'm gonna do. I am going
to move and also started school specifically for this group
because y'all are crazy. Yeah, well, you know what. And
she persevered and people were harassing her, they were throwing
things at her. The only thing that stopped her and
made her actually like move away completely the town's residents
(20:43):
up and destroyed her house in eighteen thirty four, The
Pennsylvania Holder, I mean, people were oh it was intense
back then. Yes, I'll say that, Caroline. Well, that same year,
eighteen thirty three, Lydia Murrie Child publishes an appeal in
favor of that ass of Americans called Africans, which included
a history of slavery and demanded equality for blacks both
(21:05):
in education and employment. It was the first book length
work of its kind, and Child, we should mention was
an abolition to author, obviously, who wrote anti slavery pamphlets
and also edited the National Anti Slavery Standard from eighteen
forty one to eighteen forty nine. And around this time
we also have to talk about the grim Key sisters,
(21:27):
Angelina and Sarah, who ended up they actually this is
kind of a fascinating story because they grew up in
a Charleston, South Carolina home that had a number of slaves,
and Sarah, the older sister, was like, Hey, this is
so messed up. I'm going to move to Philadelphia and
become a Quaker, which she did in one and then
(21:47):
Angelina followed in her footsteps, and through I guess becoming
a Quaker and living that lifestyle, they really became active abolitionists,
Angeline a more so than Sarah, who kind of retired
sort of early on into a quieter life, But Angelina
wrote a couple of books and also spoke out a lot.
(22:11):
She was actually the first American woman to address a
legislative body, the Boston State House in the late eighteen thirties,
and also spoke at Pennsylvania Hall the day before it
was torched Man also in eighteen forty nine. This is
when Harriet Tubman makes her escape from slavery. She was
(22:32):
born Aramanta Ross and she ended up guiding some three
hundred fellow runaway slaves to freedom as one of the
most famous and successful conductors on the Underground Railroad. And
you know, it's it's important to mention that Margaret Washington
article for the Guilder Laerman Institute also touches on how
important women were, whether they were out there guiding people
(22:55):
through the woods or not, they were often the ones
who were at home opening those late night and box
letting people into their homes to hide or get food
or get clothing. But so Tubman, in addition to all
of the stuff she's doing for the Underground Railroad, also
worked for Union forces in South Carolina as a scout
cook and laundress and after the war, she ended up
(23:15):
opening the Harriet Tubman Home for indigent aged Negroes. And
I would just like to say that she was doing
all of this underground rail road work and the scouting
work when there was a price on her head. People
knew who she was and knew what she was doing,
and there was essentially a bounty out for her, but
she just kept on doing it, doing the right thing.
(23:36):
Um And by the time Harriet Tubman made her escape
in eighteen forty nine, So Journal Truth, another very familiar
name has been speaking for a while, um And and
her name, her star essentially is starting to rise within
the abolition movement, and by the eighteen fifties she's pretty
famous because she's you know, speaking at suffrage movements as
(23:58):
well as abolition of events, and you know, obviously is
one of the most famous female African American abolitionists of
the nineteenth century. She was freed from slavery in eighteen
seven and adopted the names to Journal Truth in eighteen
forty three, and she was wooed by white suffragists, as
(24:18):
we talked about in the Susan B. Anthony episode, to
get involved with women's rights and her you know, she
has the famous line of a I Woman and it
was actually Francis Dana Gauge, a white woman and suffrage activists,
who wrote that line that so Journal Truth became famous for,
and it was based on a speech that so Journal
(24:40):
Truth had given. Yeah, and I mean that that kind
of blows your mind to think about, because we always
associate A and I woman with coming directly from Sojournal Truth.
And it's not that it didn't. It's not that she
never said it and that things weren't based on that
on her actual speeches. But around this time too, you
have a lot of white women, most the time putting
(25:01):
words in the mouths of black women or publishing things
for black women just to try to sort of woo
the audience to their cause. And this is also wrapped
up in efforts to portray both black men and women
as sort of this harmless other, like, look, how wonderful
(25:21):
they are, don't they deserve Aren't they cute and plucky?
Don't they deserve freedom? Yeah? Yeah, there there's been this
question now among more contemporary historians looking back at this
era and the participation of black women um in the
abolition movement, but more so within the suffrage movement UM
(25:42):
and this question of whether whether or not they were
exoticized a bit for their you know, the color of
their skin essentially. Because there's also Harriet Beecher Stowe, author
of Uncle Tom's Cabin, who will talk about in a second.
She wrote this essay called Libyan Sybil about so journal
truth and it's been criticized for quote unquote romantic racialism,
(26:05):
essentially oversimplifying the black female experience and sort of using
it for their own cause. Because in terms of Francis
Dana Gage, you know, writing and really publicizing that an
I a woman quote that was more a bit of
you know, the fact that she wanted to um to
(26:28):
find almost like a tagline that could resonate well among
other other people, to re elevate the profile of this
movement happening, right, Because there again is that politicization. I
think I said that right of gender and of reinforcing
with your audience that you may think of these people
as slaves and as less stan, but they are women.
(26:50):
This this is a woman that we're talking about, just
like you or me, And so again sort of relying
on the cultural perceptions of the day to win people
to your CAUs. Yeah, and not to say that so
Jouner Truth and others didn't have agency in their speaking
engagements and in their public roles, but simply to point
out the fact that, you know, none of the It's like,
(27:13):
neither the abolition movement nor the suffrage movement at the
time were perfect in terms of their treatment of black people. Yeah. Sure,
And speaking of Harry beecher Stone, in eighteen fifty two,
she publishes Uncle Tom's cabin She sells five hundred thousand
copies in the first year, and it's the most popular
book of the nineteenth century aside from the Bible. Yeah,
(27:35):
and she really made very little money off of it,
even though it was hugely popular, probably because she was
a woman. And she got the idea though for writing
the book after the death of a child, because it
got her thinking about slavery and the routine loss that
would have been a part of enslaved women's lives, being
(27:57):
separated from their kids. Yeah, exactly. Well so the following
year after Uncle Tom's Cabinet is published in eighteen fifty three,
Mary Anne Shad Carrie, who is a free writer, educator, lawyer, abolitionist,
and the first black newspaper woman in North America, founded
Canada's first anti slavery newspaper, the Provincial Freeman. Yeah, she
(28:21):
was one of the more radical abolitionists and actually fled
up to Canada and encouraged people to come to Canada.
Um and her family called her the Rebel because she
was so fearless in everything that she did. And fun fact,
her family nicknamed her the Rebel because she was so
(28:44):
completely fearless and everything that she did. And I think
she also went on to become after all of this,
as if becoming the first black newspaper woman in North
America wasn't enough, she also went on to become one
of the first black female lawyers in Canada or maybe
in North America altogether. And so we started off this
(29:04):
detailed timeline in seventeen seventy three with Phillis Sweetly becoming
the first African American to publish a book. And we're
going to now sort of tie up this timeline with
eighteen sixty one with Harriett Jacobs book Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl, which she published under the
pen name Linda Brent sort of book and how much
(29:28):
how much happened? It's like we we started at one
place and sort of ended at the same place because
it took yet again so long for abolition to truly happen. Yeah,
and and to watch as slavery ends, you know, in
eighteen sixty three, you get the Emancipation Proclamation, and to
(29:49):
watch as just the fight for freedom, let alone civil rights,
but just the fight for freedom ended up giving birth
to all of these other movements because there were black
and white, these women who believe so strongly that the
institution of slavery had to end, but they couldn't even
have a voice. They weren't even permitted to speak to
(30:11):
be a part of this movement. And and to watch
that as it as it grew in snowballed into other
movements as pretty incredible. Yeah, as they found their voice
through abolition and you know, started writing things and speaking
publicly and organizing and even just doing things, you know,
down to the level of you know, the smaller, smaller
(30:32):
sewing circles, whatever it might be contributing in all these
different ways. It's pretty incredible to consider women's roles in abolition.
The thing that breaks my heart the most so is
that it even had to happen, and that it took
so long um and where we leave off now in
sixty three with the Emancipation Proclamation is essentially, you know,
(30:53):
the precursor to the two previous podcasts we did earlier
this year, a controversial woman on Susan Biantha and Black
women striving for suffrage because it, by no means was
this an unnessy process, and there was still a lot
to work out because you know, even though slavery had
ended with Juneteenth, uh there, you know, women still had
(31:17):
very few rights exactly they had, They still had a
long long way to go. Yeah. So, but we wanted
to take this opportunity to celebrate Juneteenth, talk about some
women who probably don't get talked about very often, and
hopefully fill in some historical or historical gaps that might
(31:38):
be there. Yeah, So send us your letters. We want
to hear from you, especially if you have any other
historical information you want to share, or if there are
any other fantastic women abolition advocates out there that you
think we should know about, yeah, or if you're related
to any We want to know everything. Mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is our new email address
where you can contact us, but you can all tweet
(32:00):
us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and
we've got a couple of messages to share with you
right now. In fact, so we've got a couple of
letters here about our episode on teaching and how it
became women's work. I have one here from Gemma, who
writes I like to listen to the podcast on my
(32:22):
way to work and was thrilled to see a topic
I feel passionate about. I'm a primary school teacher here
in the UK and over here there's been a push
for trying to persuade men to join the profession, although
the majority of teachers or women. I don't feel that
there's a shortage of men. However, I do work in
central London and can't talk for the rest of the country.
I agree that focusing on the gender of the teacher
(32:44):
in relation to learning seems irrelevant and ill informed. If
we were to consider the gender of the teacher, where
would it stop. Would we have to consider what effect
the religion, ethnicity or sexuality of the teacher has. Like
you said, it's far more relevant to consider the skill
of the teacher. Furthermore, a child's learning is affected by
a whole range of other factors and she says, PS
(33:07):
love the show. Thanks for keeping me company while stuck
in London traffic. I couldn't resist a bit of a
London lived there. Well. I have a letter here from
a gentleman who did not provide his name, talking about
our Teachers episode, and he said some print and backstory
about me. I am a full time competitive ballroom dancer
(33:28):
in New York and I coach young competitive children for
the bulk of my income. I teach in the deeply
conservative Russian community, and it's fascinating to see how female
teachers and coaches are treated versus male coaches. If I
had to generalize, and it's not hard to do so
given my great wealth of admittedly anecdotal data, I would
say that male teachers are treated as more general authorities
(33:49):
and better sources for the quote unquote finer elements of
dance education, musicality, high level technical training, and choreography, whereas
women are perfect for making cosmetic changes like correcting tiny
details of focus or arm styling, is working on relationship
or designing costume. While there's no inherent reason obvious to me,
while these generations should hold true in my experience, they
(34:12):
tend to. Possibly it's because ballroom dancing as a profession
attracts the most heteronormativity inclined among us, yours truly excluded.
On another note, I also work very occasionally with an
arts residency company that uses social ballroom dancing to teach
social development in New York City public schools. I'll go
in occasionally as a dancing celebrity to assist female teaching
(34:33):
artists who generally are not dancers themselves, but rather artists
from another medium. I have noticed that many problems students
behave much better in my presence. My theory is that
they have been socialized to respect mail authority. And while
I enjoy capitalizing on this advantage and annoys me to
no end that very capable female teachers have to work
double hard to assert their authority because of the gender
norms with which so many children are raised. And then
(34:56):
he says, thanks love the show, by the way, I
would love an episode on women in country and full music. Well,
my dear, you should listen to our Dolly Partner episode
in the meantime, and thank you for writing in, and
thanks everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff at How
Stuff Works is where you can email us and re
links to all of our social media and all of
our blogs, videos, podcasts, including Got Dollary Partner episode There's
(35:18):
One Place to Go And It's Stuff Mom Never told
You dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics, does It, How Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never told You. From how Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and we're doing this episode as a
celebration of June teenth, which is the oldest known celebration
(00:23):
commemorating the end of slavery in the US that took
place on June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five, right, and this
is when Union soldiers led by a major General, Gordon Granger,
brought the news of emancipation to Galveston, Texas. And you're thinking, wait,
I'm not listening to a history podcast. What's going on. Well,
we want to talk about not only the celebration of Juneteenth,
(00:46):
but we want to talk about what led up to
the end of slavery into emancipation and women had a
huge role in that exactly. Um So, just to give
you a little bit of a timeline, just to drive
home the fact that it took so long, which is
horrifying to think about as an American, it took so
long for us to finally uproot slavery in the United States.
(01:10):
Anti slavery sentiment began during colonial times. The Mennonites. Actually
we're speaking out against it in the late seventeenth century.
And then fast forward to seventeen seventy three and we
have Phyllis Wheatley who becomes the first African American to
publish a book and it's called Poems on Various Subjects
Religious and Moral. Yeah, and I mean not not the
(01:32):
first African American woman just alone, just the first African
American person to publish a book. Um. And it's not
until the next year that the Continental Congress adopts a
resolution calling for a ban on all American participation in
the international slave trade. And that would go back and forth.
You would have different states like South Carolina reopening trade
(01:55):
international slave trade with people in Africa. Um. But if
we move forward to eighteen hundreds, so the turn of
the century, we see kind of the birth of a
few separate movements that are all well, I shouldn't say separate,
because they're all pretty interrelated. But you have the Second
Great Awakening, which is a wave of religious fervor that
(02:17):
ends up sparking the temperance movement, the abolition movement, and
the suffrage movement. They're also tied in together. What's the
common denominator women women women? Yeah, this is sort of
if you if you listen to the podcast. Earlier this year,
we did a semi two parter on Susan B. Anthony
(02:37):
and the suffrage movement and then looking at black women's
role in the suffrage movement, and there is some overlap
with this, but this is really kind of the precursor
to those episodes on suffrage because it is the abolition
movement that first engages women in these kinds of activist roles, right,
(02:58):
And so it's not until eighteen six d three that
we finally get the Emancipation Proclamation, and in January eighteen
sixty five, the Thirteenth Amendment is passed. So when you
look at the fact that it took Union soldiers until
June of eighteen sixty five to get the word to
people in Texas, I mean that that was a six
month lag in slavery finally ending. And so because of
(03:21):
that very strange murky staggered ending of this institution, Juneteenth
the sort of a more general name for just the
period during which slavery finally ended and it took so
much concerted effort to uproot it. And like you said, Caroline,
women were incredibly influential in the abolition movement as well
(03:45):
as all of these reform movements of the time that
also included temperance and suffrage. And if you look up north,
you have middle and upper class women, including free black women,
who got involved in abolition part purally, starting in the
eighteen thirties, right like that period about thirty years before
the Civil Wars when things really start to get heated.
(04:07):
This is when you see a lot of abolitionists newspapers
coming up, people speaking out both men and women, white
and black. And so the fact that these women were
getting involved. PBS points out that suffragists oh a substantial
debt to the anti slavery movement, which had served as
the most important training ground for its leaders and the
most important repository for ideas of sexual as well as
(04:31):
well as racial emancipation in the decades before the Civil War.
And it's a similar pattern that you see two if
you fast forward to the fifties and sixties, how the
civil rights movement really starts to fuel what becomes second
wave feminism. Um. But speaking back now to the Antebellum years,
the abolitionists materials that were targeted at women really appealed
(04:54):
to their sympathetic feelings as wives and mothers, basically like
reaching out to them on behalf of slave women who
might be separated from their husbands and children. Right, And
so here's that that appeal to women's familial ties and
their their primary role in society as a wife and mother,
(05:16):
to say, hey, but these are women too. It's a
very early use of gender to try to convince white
people that enslaving black people was wrong. It was also
a technique used a lot by anti slavery writers who
favored slower changes to the system as opposed to the
more radical abolitionists who will talk about in a little bit.
(05:37):
And when it comes to this intersection of gender and
race at the time, it does get kind of complicated. Um,
you have and this is a quote from the website
US History Scene. You have Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd
Garrison obviously like abolitions of the time, and the pro
slavery and anti slavery writers operating in in a mirror
(06:00):
where gender denoted one's place, rights, privileges, and status, and
where conservative gendered hierarchies were jealously and fearlessly guarded and
they were acutely aware of it. I mean all of this.
It was like marketing in a way of like, Okay,
we need to appeal to your feminine instinct, your maternal
(06:21):
instinct so that you can back this cause. Yeah. The
thing that absolutely fascinated me about this was just how
gender dynamics, gender norms, gender expectations were all used by
both pro slavery and anti slavery advocates to suit their
own purposes. I mean, gender was politicized by both whites
(06:41):
and blacks, and so gender Truth, for instance, used it
in her ain't I a woman's speech, as did William
Lloyd Garrison when he called all male slaves true men.
Because gender, being a man was linked with certain rights,
and it was linked with personhood, and it was linked
with manhood which had a very specific meaning, and for
(07:01):
women that equated with family and all of that together
equals rights because they're using gender. The people who were
opposing slavery were using gender to say, give these these
women are women, they deserve to have a family. These
men are men, they should be at the head of
that family exactly. And meanwhile, you also have pro slavery
(07:21):
Southerners also politicizing gender for their own purposes, lumping together
slavery with their anti suffrage stance. Essentially this logic of, well,
if you can't control your slaves, then you won't be
able to control your wife, so you need to keep
both of those both unfortunately literally and figuratively, on lockdown, right,
(07:42):
And this this basically kept poor whites who didn't even
own slaves in support of slavery too, because how do
you tell a man who doesn't own slaves, he's not
a part of this, this institution or the system. How
do you convince him that slavery needs to stay put?
You tell him that if we can't maintained control of
our slaves, then our women are just going to be
(08:03):
running around crazy too. And speaking of this gender hierarchy,
there were also the anti slavery activists, like some Garrisonians,
who would disambiguate between the quote unquote unnatural order of
slavery that, like you said, prevented African American families from
(08:24):
being able to have like male head of household women
with children, with the quote unquote natural hierarchy of gender,
essentially arguing okay, well we must free slaves to also
help restore that natural hierarchy, right, Yeah, When Garrison is
arguing about manhood. It's very interesting because you know, if
(08:47):
you're if you're marketing something, if you're trying to sell
an idea, you have to pray on the social structure
of the time, the morays of the time, and the
patriarchy was definitely a lot even well around the Civil War,
and so when Garrison and others talk about male slaves manhood,
it's definitely a loaded term, especially because being a man
(09:09):
was linked with having authority over women, and so if
you ended slavery, you would restore the rightful gender balance,
because when you look at a country in which slavery exists,
there's this just untenable, weird tiered system where there's white
men above white women, but white women are above black men,
and then black men can't be above black women because
(09:30):
they're enslaved. And so there are a lot of good
arguments out there for ending slavery, and a lot of
people who are passionate about doing so, but some of
the arguments that they wanted to use to achieve this
were questionable. Well yeah, I mean, it's just it's definitely
a product of his time of its time, because you
also see that just because men were pro abolition did
(09:54):
not mean that they were also pro suffrage, or at
least pro women's vocal and public involvement in the abolition movement,
because there was actually, for example, a gender split that
happened in the eighteen thirties on the heels of women's
increase involvement in abolition, which led to in eighteen thirty nine,
(10:16):
anti Garrisonians Louis and Arthur Tappan splitting off from William
Lloyd Garrison's New England Anti Slavery Society to form the
American and Foreign Anti Slavery Society, which prohibited women from
participating publicly. They were fine with women hanging out in
the background of kind of doing their things, staying in
(10:38):
their own female anti slavery societies because those existed are
staying in their sewing circles and you know, organizing in
that way. But the mixing of the two also reflets
and feathers. It sure did um. In May eight, for example,
Pennsylvania Hall was burned down the day after the Anti
(11:00):
Slavery Convention of American Women held their second national meeting. Yeah,
we brought this up, I believe, in our episode on
Susan b. Anthony and people were so outraged that women
were getting up on stage to speak publicly about suffrage.
And this was also a group of both white and
black women who were together. And so this mob essentially
(11:23):
attacked Pennsylvania Hall. The women were able to escape, but
then the next day it was burned down. But that
didn't stop them. I mean, this was also just fueling
the suffrage movement as well, but that certainly didn't stop them, because,
as we've mentioned a number of times now on the podcast,
it was this kind of gender based discrimination that women faced,
(11:46):
particularly during the abolition movement, that led to the Seneca
Falls Convention, which kicked off first wave feminism, because in
forty you have the World Anti Slavery Convention barring Elizabeth
Katie Stanton, Lucretia Mott and a few other women from
having a seat on the convention floor. And so they
were like, you know what, we will do our own thing. Yeah,
(12:10):
doing your own thing feminism. Um, But it's not just
the white men who were trying to keep the white
women from participating in the abolition movement as active advocates.
Black men were not necessarily pleased about black women's involvement either.
Many wanted them to stay behind the scenes. And we're
not necessarily talking about African Americans who were enslaved. We're
(12:31):
talking about freed people up in the Northeast, for instance.
A lot of them accused Black women protesters in New York,
I think they were protesting something going on in court
of bringing everlasting shame and remorse on the community. There
were just so many men, black and white, who basically said,
we cannot accomplish anything with you women in the way.
(12:53):
You're hurting our cause. Yeah. I mean, because at the time,
the very idea of women being out and demonstrating in
public was a major violation of their appropriate normative gender role.
And the whole protests in New York was related to
this case where I think two slaves had escaped to
(13:15):
the North and because of the Fugitive Slave law that
was enacted, they were then being they were gonna they've
been captured and they were gonna be sent back, And
so these women came out to protest that, and the
fact that their husbands were so outraged by that only
speaks to how deeply entrenched these gender issues were at
the time. As deeply entrenched as these abolition issues happening,
(13:39):
um so let's talk though, more about women abolitionists and
highlight some women you've probably heard of, but also some
women you haven't heard of, such as British abolitionist revolutionary
who I hadn't heard of before researching for this episode. Uh,
this woman named Elizabeth hay Rick, who in wrote a
(13:59):
pamphlet called Immediate Not Gradual Abolition, which was the first
widely circulated assertion of what was called immediatism, essentially the
idea that hey, you need to free all slave immediately.
Don't do this gradually. We've got to do it all
at once. Yeah. And if you'll remember from our Susan B.
Anthony podcast, Uh, it was this conflict, this tension between
(14:24):
the desire to do it gradually and the desire to
do it immediately that caused splits within the suffrage movement
and within the women's rights movement itself. But abolitionist Wendell Phillips,
whose side note, did not join the abolition movement until
he witnessed William Lloyd Garrison being attacked by a mob.
But when Wendell Phillips said that, little progress was made
in the anti slavery cause until Heyrick saw and publicly
(14:48):
acknowledged the principle of immediate and universal emancipation. Then that
great anti slavery truth flew through the land of shooting
arrows into every heart. Now that is widest statement to make,
but that happened in What I think often goes untalked
about in this history of abolition is the work on
(15:10):
a smaller but no less significant scale of Black women,
particularly in the North, who were organizing, who were developing
these centers of female anti slavery activity, typically centered around churches, right, yeah.
Margaret Washington read about this for the Guilder Laman Institute,
(15:31):
and she talks about black churches and meeting houses being
these centers of activity for Black women and how the
domestic sphere sort of came in and and interacted quite
well with abolition advocacy. She talked about how black women
would organize sales of goods made or food grown with
free labor as opposed to uh slave labor, holding sewing
(15:54):
circles to make clothes for people fleeing slavery, and raising
money for Freedom's Journal, the nation's for black newspaper, and
when William Moore Garrison, white abolitionist, proposed the idea for
his pro abolition paper The Liberator. He received strong financial
backing from these black women who use their organization to
help fund raise for initiatives like this right. And so
(16:19):
we did mention earlier in the podcast that the eighteen
thirties was like a huge sort of pressure cracker moment
in history leading up to abolition. And we're going to
get into the eighteen thirties when we come right back
from a quick break. So we've been moving through this
abolition timeline and we're now into the eighteen thirties, which
(16:40):
is when things really start happening. By this point, you
have thousands of women involved in the movement to abolish slavery.
We're writing articles for abolitionist papers, circulating abolitionist pamphlets, and
also circulating, signing and delivering petitions to Congress calling for abolition.
And on top top of that, you also still have
(17:02):
these kinds of anti slavery sewing circles and that free
produced movement tied into the domesticity aspect of this movement
of sort of you know, women doing what they could
in their roles at the time to contribute to abolition. Well,
so let's get into some of these names that you
(17:22):
may or may not know. A lot of them were
unfamiliar to me, and so we we want to give
you some we obviously can't give you all, or this
podcast would be more like a book on tape. But
in eighteen thirty one, Boston's Maria Stewart, a middle class,
free black woman, became the first woman of color to
publicly speak on political issues, and she ended up setting
the oratorical stage basically for Francis Ellen Watkins Harper who
(17:46):
was a poet and teacher, sojournal truth and Harriet Tubman.
So their two names that are much more familiar. Yeah,
And speaking of Stewart and sort of from the twenties
when we're talking about the organizing that black women were doing,
she got her start her initial platform with Boston's African
American Female Intelligent Society, one of those groups that they
(18:08):
had started up, and that was where she got comfortable
talking in front of groups of people. Um. And then
in eighteen thirty two we have Maria W. Chapman, who
helped organize the Boston Female Anti Slavery Society and also
began editing William Lord Garrison's paper The Liberator, and in
she spoke with Angelina Grimkey, who will talk about in
(18:30):
a moment at the Anti Slavery Convention of American Women
in Philadelphia. Right. And a year later she wrote the
pamphlet Right and Wrong in Massachusetts that argued differences in
opinion about women's suffrage were directly tied to divisions among abolitionists.
And then in eighteen thirty three, backing up a little,
(18:50):
Lucretia Mott found the first female Anti Slavery Society. Lucretia
Mott is a Quaker. She is a member of this
group that has been part of the abolition movement from
the get go, well not the get go. They weren't
as early as the Menna Nights on it, but the
Quakers very early on adopted resolutions saying that we will
(19:12):
not own slaves. It's not the right thing to do.
She was also a feminist who lectured on a number
of reformer causes, and she attended the founding convention of
the American Anti Slavery Society in eighteen thirty three and
then established its women's auxiliary, the Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society.
And of course, she, along with Elizabeth Katie Stanton, helped
(19:34):
organize the Cynecal Falls Convention in eighty eight after they
were not allowed a seat at the World Anti Slavery
Convention in London. Um and still in eighteen thirty three.
I don't know what was in the water in eighteen
thirty three, but it was instead of fire in your
belly apparently, because you also have Prudence Crandall, who was
a white Quaker school teacher in Canterbury, Connecticut, who ended
(19:57):
up transforming her school in one for black girls because
she got a letter from uh this the parents of
I think she was a teenage black girl who just
wanted better schooling. And so she said, sure, a hed
come to school. That's totally fine. And the townspeople flipped
out and that was an awakening for her of like, Okay,
(20:20):
well you know what I'm gonna do. I am going
to move and also started school specifically for this group
because y'all are crazy. Yeah, well, you know what. And
she persevered and people were harassing her, they were throwing
things at her. The only thing that stopped her and
made her actually like move away completely the town's residents
(20:43):
up and destroyed her house in eighteen thirty four, The
Pennsylvania Holder, I mean, people were oh it was intense
back then. Yes, I'll say that, Caroline. Well, that same year,
eighteen thirty three, Lydia Murrie Child publishes an appeal in
favor of that ass of Americans called Africans, which included
a history of slavery and demanded equality for blacks both
(21:05):
in education and employment. It was the first book length
work of its kind, and Child, we should mention was
an abolition to author, obviously, who wrote anti slavery pamphlets
and also edited the National Anti Slavery Standard from eighteen
forty one to eighteen forty nine. And around this time
we also have to talk about the grim Key sisters,
(21:27):
Angelina and Sarah, who ended up they actually this is
kind of a fascinating story because they grew up in
a Charleston, South Carolina home that had a number of slaves,
and Sarah, the older sister, was like, Hey, this is
so messed up. I'm going to move to Philadelphia and
become a Quaker, which she did in one and then
(21:47):
Angelina followed in her footsteps, and through I guess becoming
a Quaker and living that lifestyle, they really became active abolitionists,
Angeline a more so than Sarah, who kind of retired
sort of early on into a quieter life, But Angelina
wrote a couple of books and also spoke out a lot.
(22:11):
She was actually the first American woman to address a
legislative body, the Boston State House in the late eighteen thirties,
and also spoke at Pennsylvania Hall the day before it
was torched Man also in eighteen forty nine. This is
when Harriet Tubman makes her escape from slavery. She was
(22:32):
born Aramanta Ross and she ended up guiding some three
hundred fellow runaway slaves to freedom as one of the
most famous and successful conductors on the Underground Railroad. And
you know, it's it's important to mention that Margaret Washington
article for the Guilder Laerman Institute also touches on how
important women were, whether they were out there guiding people
(22:55):
through the woods or not, they were often the ones
who were at home opening those late night and box
letting people into their homes to hide or get food
or get clothing. But so Tubman, in addition to all
of the stuff she's doing for the Underground Railroad, also
worked for Union forces in South Carolina as a scout
cook and laundress and after the war, she ended up
(23:15):
opening the Harriet Tubman Home for indigent aged Negroes. And
I would just like to say that she was doing
all of this underground rail road work and the scouting
work when there was a price on her head. People
knew who she was and knew what she was doing,
and there was essentially a bounty out for her, but
she just kept on doing it, doing the right thing.
(23:36):
Um And by the time Harriet Tubman made her escape
in eighteen forty nine, So Journal Truth, another very familiar
name has been speaking for a while, um And and
her name, her star essentially is starting to rise within
the abolition movement, and by the eighteen fifties she's pretty
famous because she's you know, speaking at suffrage movements as
(23:58):
well as abolition of events, and you know, obviously is
one of the most famous female African American abolitionists of
the nineteenth century. She was freed from slavery in eighteen
seven and adopted the names to Journal Truth in eighteen
forty three, and she was wooed by white suffragists, as
(24:18):
we talked about in the Susan B. Anthony episode, to
get involved with women's rights and her you know, she
has the famous line of a I Woman and it
was actually Francis Dana Gauge, a white woman and suffrage activists,
who wrote that line that so Journal Truth became famous for,
and it was based on a speech that so Journal
(24:40):
Truth had given. Yeah, and I mean that that kind
of blows your mind to think about, because we always
associate A and I woman with coming directly from Sojournal Truth.
And it's not that it didn't. It's not that she
never said it and that things weren't based on that
on her actual speeches. But around this time too, you
have a lot of white women, most the time putting
(25:01):
words in the mouths of black women or publishing things
for black women just to try to sort of woo
the audience to their cause. And this is also wrapped
up in efforts to portray both black men and women
as sort of this harmless other, like, look, how wonderful
(25:21):
they are, don't they deserve Aren't they cute and plucky?
Don't they deserve freedom? Yeah? Yeah, there there's been this
question now among more contemporary historians looking back at this
era and the participation of black women um in the
abolition movement, but more so within the suffrage movement UM
(25:42):
and this question of whether whether or not they were
exoticized a bit for their you know, the color of
their skin essentially. Because there's also Harriet Beecher Stowe, author
of Uncle Tom's Cabin, who will talk about in a second.
She wrote this essay called Libyan Sybil about so journal
truth and it's been criticized for quote unquote romantic racialism,
(26:05):
essentially oversimplifying the black female experience and sort of using
it for their own cause. Because in terms of Francis
Dana Gage, you know, writing and really publicizing that an
I a woman quote that was more a bit of
you know, the fact that she wanted to um to
(26:28):
find almost like a tagline that could resonate well among
other other people, to re elevate the profile of this
movement happening, right, Because there again is that politicization. I
think I said that right of gender and of reinforcing
with your audience that you may think of these people
as slaves and as less stan, but they are women.
(26:50):
This this is a woman that we're talking about, just
like you or me, And so again sort of relying
on the cultural perceptions of the day to win people
to your CAUs. Yeah, and not to say that so
Jouner Truth and others didn't have agency in their speaking
engagements and in their public roles, but simply to point
out the fact that, you know, none of the It's like,
(27:13):
neither the abolition movement nor the suffrage movement at the
time were perfect in terms of their treatment of black people. Yeah. Sure,
And speaking of Harry beecher Stone, in eighteen fifty two,
she publishes Uncle Tom's cabin She sells five hundred thousand
copies in the first year, and it's the most popular
book of the nineteenth century aside from the Bible. Yeah,
(27:35):
and she really made very little money off of it,
even though it was hugely popular, probably because she was
a woman. And she got the idea though for writing
the book after the death of a child, because it
got her thinking about slavery and the routine loss that
would have been a part of enslaved women's lives, being
(27:57):
separated from their kids. Yeah, exactly. Well so the following
year after Uncle Tom's Cabinet is published in eighteen fifty three,
Mary Anne Shad Carrie, who is a free writer, educator, lawyer, abolitionist,
and the first black newspaper woman in North America, founded
Canada's first anti slavery newspaper, the Provincial Freeman. Yeah, she
(28:21):
was one of the more radical abolitionists and actually fled
up to Canada and encouraged people to come to Canada.
Um and her family called her the Rebel because she
was so fearless in everything that she did. And fun fact,
her family nicknamed her the Rebel because she was so
(28:44):
completely fearless and everything that she did. And I think
she also went on to become after all of this,
as if becoming the first black newspaper woman in North
America wasn't enough, she also went on to become one
of the first black female lawyers in Canada or maybe
in North America altogether. And so we started off this
(29:04):
detailed timeline in seventeen seventy three with Phillis Sweetly becoming
the first African American to publish a book. And we're
going to now sort of tie up this timeline with
eighteen sixty one with Harriett Jacobs book Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl, which she published under the
pen name Linda Brent sort of book and how much
(29:28):
how much happened? It's like we we started at one
place and sort of ended at the same place because
it took yet again so long for abolition to truly happen. Yeah,
and and to watch as slavery ends, you know, in
eighteen sixty three, you get the Emancipation Proclamation, and to
(29:49):
watch as just the fight for freedom, let alone civil rights,
but just the fight for freedom ended up giving birth
to all of these other movements because there were black
and white, these women who believe so strongly that the
institution of slavery had to end, but they couldn't even
have a voice. They weren't even permitted to speak to
(30:11):
be a part of this movement. And and to watch
that as it as it grew in snowballed into other
movements as pretty incredible. Yeah, as they found their voice
through abolition and you know, started writing things and speaking
publicly and organizing and even just doing things, you know,
down to the level of you know, the smaller, smaller
(30:32):
sewing circles, whatever it might be contributing in all these
different ways. It's pretty incredible to consider women's roles in abolition.
The thing that breaks my heart the most so is
that it even had to happen, and that it took
so long um and where we leave off now in
sixty three with the Emancipation Proclamation is essentially, you know,
(30:53):
the precursor to the two previous podcasts we did earlier
this year, a controversial woman on Susan Biantha and Black
women striving for suffrage because it, by no means was
this an unnessy process, and there was still a lot
to work out because you know, even though slavery had
ended with Juneteenth, uh there, you know, women still had
(31:17):
very few rights exactly they had, They still had a
long long way to go. Yeah. So, but we wanted
to take this opportunity to celebrate Juneteenth, talk about some
women who probably don't get talked about very often, and
hopefully fill in some historical or historical gaps that might
(31:38):
be there. Yeah, So send us your letters. We want
to hear from you, especially if you have any other
historical information you want to share, or if there are
any other fantastic women abolition advocates out there that you
think we should know about, yeah, or if you're related
to any We want to know everything. Mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is our new email address
where you can contact us, but you can all tweet
(32:00):
us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and
we've got a couple of messages to share with you
right now. In fact, so we've got a couple of
letters here about our episode on teaching and how it
became women's work. I have one here from Gemma, who
writes I like to listen to the podcast on my
(32:22):
way to work and was thrilled to see a topic
I feel passionate about. I'm a primary school teacher here
in the UK and over here there's been a push
for trying to persuade men to join the profession, although
the majority of teachers or women. I don't feel that
there's a shortage of men. However, I do work in
central London and can't talk for the rest of the country.
I agree that focusing on the gender of the teacher
(32:44):
in relation to learning seems irrelevant and ill informed. If
we were to consider the gender of the teacher, where
would it stop. Would we have to consider what effect
the religion, ethnicity or sexuality of the teacher has. Like
you said, it's far more relevant to consider the skill
of the teacher. Furthermore, a child's learning is affected by
a whole range of other factors and she says, PS
(33:07):
love the show. Thanks for keeping me company while stuck
in London traffic. I couldn't resist a bit of a
London lived there. Well. I have a letter here from
a gentleman who did not provide his name, talking about
our Teachers episode, and he said some print and backstory
about me. I am a full time competitive ballroom dancer
(33:28):
in New York and I coach young competitive children for
the bulk of my income. I teach in the deeply
conservative Russian community, and it's fascinating to see how female
teachers and coaches are treated versus male coaches. If I
had to generalize, and it's not hard to do so
given my great wealth of admittedly anecdotal data, I would
say that male teachers are treated as more general authorities
(33:49):
and better sources for the quote unquote finer elements of
dance education, musicality, high level technical training, and choreography, whereas
women are perfect for making cosmetic changes like correcting tiny
details of focus or arm styling, is working on relationship
or designing costume. While there's no inherent reason obvious to me,
while these generations should hold true in my experience, they
(34:12):
tend to. Possibly it's because ballroom dancing as a profession
attracts the most heteronormativity inclined among us, yours truly excluded.
On another note, I also work very occasionally with an
arts residency company that uses social ballroom dancing to teach
social development in New York City public schools. I'll go
in occasionally as a dancing celebrity to assist female teaching
(34:33):
artists who generally are not dancers themselves, but rather artists
from another medium. I have noticed that many problems students
behave much better in my presence. My theory is that
they have been socialized to respect mail authority. And while
I enjoy capitalizing on this advantage and annoys me to
no end that very capable female teachers have to work
double hard to assert their authority because of the gender
norms with which so many children are raised. And then
(34:56):
he says, thanks love the show, by the way, I
would love an episode on women in country and full music. Well,
my dear, you should listen to our Dolly Partner episode
in the meantime, and thank you for writing in, and
thanks everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff at How
Stuff Works is where you can email us and re
links to all of our social media and all of
our blogs, videos, podcasts, including Got Dollary Partner episode There's
(35:18):
One Place to Go And It's Stuff Mom Never told
You dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics, does It, How Stuff Works dot com
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