The abolitionist movement in nineteenth-century America

¶ … black women contribute to the early abolitionist movement? What types of restrictions did women (both white and black) face in American society at this point? Why did more people at this point accept the idea of freeing blacks than giving women equal rights and opportunity?

American women, black and white, were prohibited from voting in both the antebellum Northern and Southern states. Yet African-American women still played a prominent role in the early abolitionist movement. The most famous such participant is of course Sojourner Truth, a freed slave who protested, 'ain't I a woman,' after listing the many ways she had been denied the traditional middle-class comforts extended to white females, and still survived, despite being a member of the supposedly weaker sex. However, even before emancipation, many black women were participants in the abolitionist movement.

Often these women were liberated escaped slaves such as Harriet Jacobs, who told her story of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," much like her male compatriot Frederick Douglass did to rapt white audiences in the North. Jacob's life was used to show the importance of white interest in the liberation of blacks, as her editor's introduction to Jacob's work stated that she published the narrative "with the hope of arousing conscientious and reflecting women at the North to a sense of their duty in the exertion of moral influence on the question of Slavery, on all possible occasions." (Jacobs, 2004) The image of the black woman's suffering thus was seen as particularly appealing to white women who were also mothers and had a unique understanding of female concerns.

The abolitionist movement began formally in 1833, when William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and others formed the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. The group issued a manifesto announcing the reasons for formation of the society and enumerating its goals, including abolition and the right to vote for all male citizens. After some controversy over fears of diluting its mission, the society decided to admit women and advocate for universal suffrage for blacks and whites, men and women. ("The Influence of Prominent Abolitionists: The African-American Mosaic," The Black Mosaic Library of Congress Website 2005) But many of the AAS members and members of the abolitionist movement as a whole remained uneasy about Garrison's attacks on most churches for failing to speak out against slavery and his insistence on the full participation of women in the society and political life of the nation. (MSNBC Encarta, 2005)

Such pro-abolitionist individuals who undertook the abolitionist cause out of Christian conviction often did not see a parallel between the social disenfranchisement of African-American men and white women. In fact, they feared that to 'reduce' black men to the status of females would be a hindrance rather than a help to the cause, and a popular pro-abolitionist woodblock of a chained African-American man pled, in support of his liberty, "Am I not a man?" Religious sympathizers with the abolitionist cause, regarded abolition as moral rather than a political quandary, and some even called the constitution a pro-slavery document. Pity, through images such as the woodblock, or through slave narratives, was seen as the best propaganda vehicle, and propaganda often made use of the 'separate spheres' argument rather than undercut it. In other words, women and men were seen as separate and different, while all men, black and white were seen as the same. Of course, all women were seen as the same as well -- similarly in need of male protection. ("The Influence of Prominent Abolitionists: The African-American Mosaic," The Black Mosaic Library of Congress Website 2005)

Analogies between black struggles and female oppression were unpopular in churches, as God had decreed a difference between males and female. Even in non-affiliated venues, the image of females as the weaker of the sexes was accepted, and supported by escaped female slaves who used their hard labor and separation from their children as evidence of the lack of gentleness and dignity inherent in slavery for women.

In fact, the domestic ideology, as expressed by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her landmark novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, made use of the differences between men and women as one of its primary arguments against slavery. Slavery tore apart mothers and children, thus it must be wrong; no matter how benignly practiced argued Stowe. The most prominent character in her novel escapes a fairly kindly plantation to avoid being separated from her baby, and the most morally corrupted woman by slavery in the novel becomes the mistress of the evil Simon Legree only because she was separated from her daughter. ("The Influence of Prominent Abolitionists: The African-American Mosaic," The Black Mosaic Library of Congress Website 2005)

Of course, it is difficult for modern audiences to ignore the many parallels between the fates of all blacks and white women. The fact that a married woman could not own her own property, and was not considered the legal custodian of her children was conveniently ignored in such 'separate spheres' abolitionist arguments. Jacob's own abolitionist real-life account of her life in bondage that played upon such sympathies, by depicting the young black female narrator at the mercy of a rapacious white employer may have been effective emotionally, although not legally persuasive.