September 1, 2020 • 36 mins
In this classic episode, 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Steffan
Ever Told You production of I Heart Radio for today's
classic UM. Because we have been talking about a lot
(00:25):
of the women spotlighted in this episode, we wanted to
bring back one about abolitionist heroines. So yeah, we've been
in our episodes on women organizing and in our recent
and or upcoming depending on what you listen to book
(00:47):
club about Unapologetic by Charlene Acre Brothers, we touched on
it there as well, and the importance of telling these
stories and making sure that we tell these stories UM
for everyone, especially for younger people to hear. Right, So,
without a further a duel, please enjoy this classic episode.
(01:14):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House 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
(01:34):
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,
(01:57):
but we want to talk about what led up to
the end of slavery and to 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
(02:20):
United States. 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
(02:40):
Religious and moral. Yeah, and I mean not not the
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.
(03:01):
You would have different states like South Carolina reopening trade
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,
(03:22):
because they're all pretty interrelated. But you have the Second
Great Awakening, which is a wave of religious fervor that
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
(03:42):
if you if you listen to the podcast earlier this year,
we did a semi two partter on Susan B. Anthony
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 epis. So it's on suffrage because it is
the abolition movement that first engages women in these kinds
(04:07):
of activist roles, right, and so it's not until eighteen
sixty three that we finally get the Emancipation Proclamation, and
in January eighteen sixty five, 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
(04:28):
a six month lag in slavery finally ending. And so
because of that very strange, murky staggered ending of this institution,
juneteenth is 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,
(04:52):
women were incredibly influential in the abolition movement as well
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, particularly starting in the eighteen thirties,
(05:14):
right like that period about thirty years before the Civil Wars,
when things really start to get heated. 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
(05:37):
training ground for its leaders and the most important repository
for ideas of sexual as as well as racial emancipation
in the decades before the Civil War. And it's a
similar pattern that you see too 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 year, the abolitionists
(06:02):
materials that were targeted at women really appealed 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
(06:25):
primary role in society as a wife and mother, 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
(06:47):
who will talk about in a little bit. 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 so Jenner Truth and William Lloyd
Garrison obviously like abolitions of the time, and the pro
(07:07):
slavery and anti slavery writers operating in America 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
(07:28):
need to appeal to your feminine instinct, your maternal 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.
(07:50):
I mean, gender was politicized by both whites and blacks,
and so Jender Truth, for instance, used it in her
ain't I a woman's speech, as did William Lloyd garris
in 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 women
(08:14):
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 Southerners also politicizing
(08:35):
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, And this
this basically kept poor whites who didn't even own slaves
(08:58):
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 maintain control of our slaves,
then our women are just going to be running around
crazy too. And speaking of this gender hierarchy, there were
(09:21):
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 being able
to have like male head of household, women with children,
with the quote unquote natural hierarchy of gender, essentially arguing, okay,
(09:45):
well we must free slaves to also help restore that
natural hierarchy. Right. Yeah, when Garrison's arguing about manhood, it's
very interesting because you know, if you're if you're market something,
if you're trying to sell an idea, you have to
prey on the social structure of the time, the morays
(10:07):
of the time, and the patriarchy was definitely alive and
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 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
(10:28):
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 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
(10:50):
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 also see that just because
men were pro abolition did not mean that they were
also pro suffrage or at least pro women's vocal and
(11:12):
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 eight nine, anti Garrisonians Louis and
Arthur Tappan splitting off from William Lloyd Garrison's New England
(11:34):
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 their own female anti
slavery societies because those existed are staying in their sewing
(11:55):
circles and you know, organizing in that way. But the
mixing of the two also rough fuls and feathers. It
sure did um. In May, for example, Pennsylvania Hall was
burned down the day after the Anti Slavery Convention of
American Women held their second national meeting. Yeah, we brought
(12:17):
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 attacked Pennsylvania Hall.
The women were able to escape, but then the next
(12:39):
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,
particularly during the abolition movement that led to the Seneca
(13:03):
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,
doing your own thing feminism. Um, but it's not just
(13:26):
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
talking about freed people up in the Northeast, for instance.
(13:46):
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.
You're hurting our cause. Yeah. I mean, because at the time,
(14:08):
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
the North and because of the fugitive Slave law that
(14:29):
was enacted, they were then being they were 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. Um, So
(14:51):
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 Heyrick, who in wrote a pamphlet called
(15:11):
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 slaves 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,
(15:32):
it was this conflict, this tension between 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
(15:53):
Wendell Phillips said that little progress was made in the
anti slavery cause until Hayrick saw and publicly acknowledged the
principle of immediate and universal emancipation, then that great anti
slavery truth flew through the land, shooting arrows into every heart.
Now that is quite a statement to make, but that
happened in What I think often goes untalked about in
(16:18):
this history of abolition is the work on 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,
(16:39):
Margaret Washington read about this for the Guilder Laman Institute,
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 may or food grown with
(17:01):
free labor as opposed to uh slave labor, holding sewing
circles to make clothes for people fleeing slavery, and raising
money for Freedom's Journal, the nation's first 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
(17:25):
help fundraise for initiatives like this right. And so 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 are going to
get into the eighteen thirties when we come right back
from a quick break. So we've been moving through this
(17:49):
abolition timeline. We're now into the eighteen thirties, which 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.
(18:11):
And on top of that, you also still have these
kinds of anti slavery sewing circles and that free produce
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,
(18:31):
so let's get into some of these names that you
may or may not know. A lot of them were
unfamiliar to me, and so 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
(18:53):
oratorical stage basically for Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, who was
a poet and teacher sojourn or truth and Harriet Tubman
so there are two names that are much more familiar. Yeah,
And speaking of Stewart and sort of from the eighteen
twenties when we were talking about the organizing that black
women were doing, she got her start her initial platform
(19:13):
with Boston's African American Female Intelligent Society, one of those
groups that they 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
(19:38):
in eight she spoke with Angelina Grimkey, who will talk
about in 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 suffrage were directly tied to
divisions among abolitionists. And then in eighteen thirty three, backing
(20:01):
up a little, Lucretia Mott found the first female Anti
Slavery society. Lucretia Mott is a Quaker. She is a
member of this group that is 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
(20:22):
saying that we will 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
(20:43):
with Elizabeth Katy Stanton, helped 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
set a fire in your belly, apparently, because you also
have Prudence Crandall, who was a white Quaker school teacher
(21:07):
in Canterbury, Connecticut, who ended up transforming her school into
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 that ad come to school. That's totally fine.
And the townspeople flipped out, and that was an awakening
(21:30):
for her of like, okay, 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,
(21:53):
the town's residents up and destroyed her house in eighteen
thirty four, the Pennsylvania holder, I mean were 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 class of Americans called Africans,
(22:13):
which included a history of slavery and demanded equality for
blacks both 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
(22:34):
this time we also have to talk about the grim
Key sisters, 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
(22:55):
Philadelphia and become a Quaker, which she did in one
and then Angelina, uh followed in her footsteps, and through
I guess, becoming a Quaker and living that lifestyle, they
really became active abolitionists, Angelina more so than Sarah, who
kind of retired sort of early on into a quieter life.
(23:17):
But Angelina wrote a couple of books and also spoke
out a lot. 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
(23:38):
forty nine, this is when Harriet Tubman makes her escape
from slavery. She was 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 Layman Institute
(24:01):
also touches on how important women were, whether they were
out there guiding people through the woods or not, they
were often the ones who were at home opening those
late night knox 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
(24:23):
as a scout, cook and laundress. And after the war
she ended up 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
(24:44):
for her. But she just kept on doing it, doing
the right thing. Um. And by the time Harriet Tubman
made her escape in eighty nine, So journal truth, another
very familiar name has been speaking for a while um
and in her name are essentially is starting to rise
within the abolition movement, and by the eighteen fifties she's
(25:05):
pretty famous because she's you know, speaking at suffrage movements
as well as abolition 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
(25:25):
forty three, and she was wooed by white suffragists, as
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.
(25:49):
And it was based on a speech that so journal
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 so
Journals Ruth. 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 of the time,
(26:12):
putting 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
(26:32):
wonderful 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 but more so within the suffrage movement UM and
(26:54):
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 beetrus Staux, author of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, who will talk about a second. She
wrote this essay called Libyan Sybil about Sojourner truth, and
it's been criticized for quote unquote romantic racialism, essentially oversimplifying
(27:19):
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 find almost
(27:41):
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 slave and
is less than but they are women. This this is
(28:03):
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 cause. Yeah,
and not to say that so joun or Truth and
others didn't have agency in their speaking engagements and in
their public roles, but simply to point out the fact that,
(28:23):
you know, none of the It's like, 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 Beecherstone, 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
(28:43):
of the nineteenth century aside from the Bible. Yeah, 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
(29:05):
been a part of enslaved women's lives, being separated from
their kids. Yeah, exactly. Well so the following year after
Uncle Tom's Cabin 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,
(29:27):
founded Canada's first anti slavery newspaper, the Provincial Freeman. Yeah.
She 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,
(29:52):
her family nicknamed her the Rebel because she was so
completely fearless and everything that she did. And I think
she also went on to become after all 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 detailed
(30:16):
timeline in seventeen seventy three with Phil 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, how
(30:39):
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 Amanci Patient Proclamation, and
(31:01):
to 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 believed 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,
(31:22):
to be a part of this movement, and to watch
that as it as it grew in snowballed into other movements,
is 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 sewing circles,
(31:44):
whatever it might be contributing in all of 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, the precursor to
(32:06):
the two previous podcasts we did earlier this year, a
controversial woman on Susan B. Anthony and Black women striving
for suffrage because by no means was this an unnssy process.
And there was still a lot to work out because
you know, even though slavery had ended with Juneteenth, uh there,
(32:27):
you know, women still had 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
(32:48):
gaps that might 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
(33:08):
email address where you can contact us, but you can
also tweet 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,
(33:31):
who writes I like to listen to the podcast on
my 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
(33:53):
the country. I agree that focusing on the gender of
the teacher in relation to learning seems irrelevant and ill informed.
If we were to con sider the gender of a 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
(34:14):
by a whole range of other factors. And she says,
PS love the show. Thanks for keeping me company while
stuck in London traffic. I couldn't resist a bit of
a London little 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 printinent backstory
(34:36):
about me. I am a full time competitive ballroom dancer
in New York and I coach young competitive children for
the bulk of my income. I teach him 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
(34:58):
say that male teachers are treated as more general authorities
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,
(35:20):
while these generations should hold true in my experience, they
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
(35:41):
in occasionally as a dancing celebrity to assist female teaching
artists who generally are not dancers themselves, but rather artists
from another medium. I have noticed that many problem 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, it annoys me to
no end that very kill female teachers have to work
(36:01):
double hard to assert their authority because of the gender
norms with which so many children are raised. And then
he says, thanks, love the show. By the way, I
would love an episode on women in country and folk 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
(36:23):
links to all of our social media and all of
our blogs, videos, podcasts, including that Dollar Partner episode. There's
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
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Steffan
Ever Told You production of I Heart Radio for today's
classic UM. Because we have been talking about a lot
(00:25):
of the women spotlighted in this episode, we wanted to
bring back one about abolitionist heroines. So yeah, we've been
in our episodes on women organizing and in our recent
and or upcoming depending on what you listen to book
(00:47):
club about Unapologetic by Charlene Acre Brothers, we touched on
it there as well, and the importance of telling these
stories and making sure that we tell these stories UM
for everyone, especially for younger people to hear. Right, So,
without a further a duel, please enjoy this classic episode.
(01:14):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House 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
(01:34):
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,
(01:57):
but we want to talk about what led up to
the end of slavery and to 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
(02:20):
United States. 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
(02:40):
Religious and moral. Yeah, and I mean not not the
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.
(03:01):
You would have different states like South Carolina reopening trade
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,
(03:22):
because they're all pretty interrelated. But you have the Second
Great Awakening, which is a wave of religious fervor that
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
(03:42):
if you if you listen to the podcast earlier this year,
we did a semi two partter on Susan B. Anthony
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 epis. So it's on suffrage because it is
the abolition movement that first engages women in these kinds
(04:07):
of activist roles, right, and so it's not until eighteen
sixty three that we finally get the Emancipation Proclamation, and
in January eighteen sixty five, 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
(04:28):
a six month lag in slavery finally ending. And so
because of that very strange, murky staggered ending of this institution,
juneteenth is 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,
(04:52):
women were incredibly influential in the abolition movement as well
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, particularly starting in the eighteen thirties,
(05:14):
right like that period about thirty years before the Civil Wars,
when things really start to get heated. 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
(05:37):
training ground for its leaders and the most important repository
for ideas of sexual as as well as racial emancipation
in the decades before the Civil War. And it's a
similar pattern that you see too 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 year, the abolitionists
(06:02):
materials that were targeted at women really appealed 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
(06:25):
primary role in society as a wife and mother, 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
(06:47):
who will talk about in a little bit. 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 so Jenner Truth and William Lloyd
Garrison obviously like abolitions of the time, and the pro
(07:07):
slavery and anti slavery writers operating in America 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
(07:28):
need to appeal to your feminine instinct, your maternal 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.
(07:50):
I mean, gender was politicized by both whites and blacks,
and so Jender Truth, for instance, used it in her
ain't I a woman's speech, as did William Lloyd garris
in 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 women
(08:14):
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 Southerners also politicizing
(08:35):
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, And this
this basically kept poor whites who didn't even own slaves
(08:58):
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 maintain control of our slaves,
then our women are just going to be running around
crazy too. And speaking of this gender hierarchy, there were
(09:21):
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 being able
to have like male head of household, women with children,
with the quote unquote natural hierarchy of gender, essentially arguing, okay,
(09:45):
well we must free slaves to also help restore that
natural hierarchy. Right. Yeah, when Garrison's arguing about manhood, it's
very interesting because you know, if you're if you're market something,
if you're trying to sell an idea, you have to
prey on the social structure of the time, the morays
(10:07):
of the time, and the patriarchy was definitely alive and
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 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
(10:28):
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 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
(10:50):
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 also see that just because
men were pro abolition did not mean that they were
also pro suffrage or at least pro women's vocal and
(11:12):
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 eight nine, anti Garrisonians Louis and
Arthur Tappan splitting off from William Lloyd Garrison's New England
(11:34):
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 their own female anti
slavery societies because those existed are staying in their sewing
(11:55):
circles and you know, organizing in that way. But the
mixing of the two also rough fuls and feathers. It
sure did um. In May, for example, Pennsylvania Hall was
burned down the day after the Anti Slavery Convention of
American Women held their second national meeting. Yeah, we brought
(12:17):
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 attacked Pennsylvania Hall.
The women were able to escape, but then the next
(12:39):
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,
particularly during the abolition movement that led to the Seneca
(13:03):
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,
doing your own thing feminism. Um, but it's not just
(13:26):
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
talking about freed people up in the Northeast, for instance.
(13:46):
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.
You're hurting our cause. Yeah. I mean, because at the time,
(14:08):
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
the North and because of the fugitive Slave law that
(14:29):
was enacted, they were then being they were 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. Um, So
(14:51):
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 Heyrick, who in wrote a pamphlet called
(15:11):
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 slaves 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,
(15:32):
it was this conflict, this tension between 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
(15:53):
Wendell Phillips said that little progress was made in the
anti slavery cause until Hayrick saw and publicly acknowledged the
principle of immediate and universal emancipation, then that great anti
slavery truth flew through the land, shooting arrows into every heart.
Now that is quite a statement to make, but that
happened in What I think often goes untalked about in
(16:18):
this history of abolition is the work on 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,
(16:39):
Margaret Washington read about this for the Guilder Laman Institute,
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 may or food grown with
(17:01):
free labor as opposed to uh slave labor, holding sewing
circles to make clothes for people fleeing slavery, and raising
money for Freedom's Journal, the nation's first 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
(17:25):
help fundraise for initiatives like this right. And so 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 are going to
get into the eighteen thirties when we come right back
from a quick break. So we've been moving through this
(17:49):
abolition timeline. We're now into the eighteen thirties, which 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.
(18:11):
And on top of that, you also still have these
kinds of anti slavery sewing circles and that free produce
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,
(18:31):
so let's get into some of these names that you
may or may not know. A lot of them were
unfamiliar to me, and so 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
(18:53):
oratorical stage basically for Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, who was
a poet and teacher sojourn or truth and Harriet Tubman
so there are two names that are much more familiar. Yeah,
And speaking of Stewart and sort of from the eighteen
twenties when we were talking about the organizing that black
women were doing, she got her start her initial platform
(19:13):
with Boston's African American Female Intelligent Society, one of those
groups that they 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
(19:38):
in eight she spoke with Angelina Grimkey, who will talk
about in 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 suffrage were directly tied to
divisions among abolitionists. And then in eighteen thirty three, backing
(20:01):
up a little, Lucretia Mott found the first female Anti
Slavery society. Lucretia Mott is a Quaker. She is a
member of this group that is 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
(20:22):
saying that we will 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
(20:43):
with Elizabeth Katy Stanton, helped 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
set a fire in your belly, apparently, because you also
have Prudence Crandall, who was a white Quaker school teacher
(21:07):
in Canterbury, Connecticut, who ended up transforming her school into
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 that ad come to school. That's totally fine.
And the townspeople flipped out, and that was an awakening
(21:30):
for her of like, okay, 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,
(21:53):
the town's residents up and destroyed her house in eighteen
thirty four, the Pennsylvania holder, I mean were 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 class of Americans called Africans,
(22:13):
which included a history of slavery and demanded equality for
blacks both 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
(22:34):
this time we also have to talk about the grim
Key sisters, 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
(22:55):
Philadelphia and become a Quaker, which she did in one
and then Angelina, uh followed in her footsteps, and through
I guess, becoming a Quaker and living that lifestyle, they
really became active abolitionists, Angelina more so than Sarah, who
kind of retired sort of early on into a quieter life.
(23:17):
But Angelina wrote a couple of books and also spoke
out a lot. 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
(23:38):
forty nine, this is when Harriet Tubman makes her escape
from slavery. She was 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 Layman Institute
(24:01):
also touches on how important women were, whether they were
out there guiding people through the woods or not, they
were often the ones who were at home opening those
late night knox 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
(24:23):
as a scout, cook and laundress. And after the war
she ended up 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
(24:44):
for her. But she just kept on doing it, doing
the right thing. Um. And by the time Harriet Tubman
made her escape in eighty nine, So journal truth, another
very familiar name has been speaking for a while um
and in her name are essentially is starting to rise
within the abolition movement, and by the eighteen fifties she's
(25:05):
pretty famous because she's you know, speaking at suffrage movements
as well as abolition 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
(25:25):
forty three, and she was wooed by white suffragists, as
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.
(25:49):
And it was based on a speech that so journal
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 so
Journals Ruth. 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 of the time,
(26:12):
putting 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
(26:32):
wonderful 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 but more so within the suffrage movement UM and
(26:54):
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 beetrus Staux, author of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, who will talk about a second. She
wrote this essay called Libyan Sybil about Sojourner truth, and
it's been criticized for quote unquote romantic racialism, essentially oversimplifying
(27:19):
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 find almost
(27:41):
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 slave and
is less than but they are women. This this is
(28:03):
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 cause. Yeah,
and not to say that so joun or Truth and
others didn't have agency in their speaking engagements and in
their public roles, but simply to point out the fact that,
(28:23):
you know, none of the It's like, 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 Beecherstone, 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
(28:43):
of the nineteenth century aside from the Bible. Yeah, 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
(29:05):
been a part of enslaved women's lives, being separated from
their kids. Yeah, exactly. Well so the following year after
Uncle Tom's Cabin 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,
(29:27):
founded Canada's first anti slavery newspaper, the Provincial Freeman. Yeah.
She 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,
(29:52):
her family nicknamed her the Rebel because she was so
completely fearless and everything that she did. And I think
she also went on to become after all 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 detailed
(30:16):
timeline in seventeen seventy three with Phil 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, how
(30:39):
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 Amanci Patient Proclamation, and
(31:01):
to 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 believed 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,
(31:22):
to be a part of this movement, and to watch
that as it as it grew in snowballed into other movements,
is 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 sewing circles,
(31:44):
whatever it might be contributing in all of 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, the precursor to
(32:06):
the two previous podcasts we did earlier this year, a
controversial woman on Susan B. Anthony and Black women striving
for suffrage because by no means was this an unnssy process.
And there was still a lot to work out because
you know, even though slavery had ended with Juneteenth, uh there,
(32:27):
you know, women still had 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
(32:48):
gaps that might 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
(33:08):
email address where you can contact us, but you can
also tweet 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,
(33:31):
who writes I like to listen to the podcast on
my 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
(33:53):
the country. I agree that focusing on the gender of
the teacher in relation to learning seems irrelevant and ill informed.
If we were to con sider the gender of a 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
(34:14):
by a whole range of other factors. And she says,
PS love the show. Thanks for keeping me company while
stuck in London traffic. I couldn't resist a bit of
a London little 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 printinent backstory
(34:36):
about me. I am a full time competitive ballroom dancer
in New York and I coach young competitive children for
the bulk of my income. I teach him 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
(34:58):
say that male teachers are treated as more general authorities
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,
(35:20):
while these generations should hold true in my experience, they
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
(35:41):
in occasionally as a dancing celebrity to assist female teaching
artists who generally are not dancers themselves, but rather artists
from another medium. I have noticed that many problem 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, it annoys me to
no end that very kill female teachers have to work
(36:01):
double hard to assert their authority because of the gender
norms with which so many children are raised. And then
he says, thanks, love the show. By the way, I
would love an episode on women in country and folk 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
(36:23):
links to all of our social media and all of
our blogs, videos, podcasts, including that Dollar Partner episode. There's
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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