Jarena Lee and the transformation of eighteenth and nineteenth century religious experience

¶ … religion entered the 18th Century and with it a revival. The growth of the revival was overwhelming.More people attended church than in previous centuries. Churches from all denominations popped up throughout established colonies and cities within the United States. Religious growth also spread throughout England, Wales and Scotland. This was a time referred to as "The Great Awakening" where people like Jarena Lee got her start preaching.

Evangelism, the epicenter of the movement, preached the Old and New Testament summoned forth parishioners. Churches were erected, both grand and small by the rich and poor, however at this time, it did not matter which class system was inside; everyone was finding comfort in church attendance and the hearing of the word. The largest Protestant groups consisted of Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists. Those denominations (Anglicans, Quakers, and Congregationalists) established earlier were unable to keep up with this growing Protestant revolution.

In 1787 the Constitution of the U.S. was written. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both on the committee. They were in agreement that religion was a freedom and religious beliefs should not be dictated to anyone. Many people hailing from England and other countries enjoyed that migrated to the U.S., enjoyed this new found freedom. They were no longer forced to participate and follow the dictate of any particular religion, e.g., Catholicism.

It is here women like Jarena Lee, Anne Howard Shaw Maria W. Stewart began their mission to preach and spread the word of God. Although preachers like Lee popped up throughout the country, most were forgotten because no one wanted to preserve their memory. Brekus states in her work the struggle female preachers faced during this time. "As biblical feminists, they were caught between two worlds. Revolutionary in their defense of female preaching, yet traditional in their theology, they had been too radical to be accepted by evangelicals, but too conservative to be accepted by women's rights activists."

Female preachers couldn't fit into any particular group and so were left in the past. People however, decided to revive the female preacher movement and bring life back to the women who served God. Jarena Lee was the first among them.

Although many great women before her and after her impacted the lives of women, it was Lee who was one of the first of her time to rebel against the religious system. She preached when it was restricted not just on women, but on blacks. She lived in a time where she could be kidnapped, sold to slavery, and possibly killed. But that did not stop Jarena Lee from fulfilling her mission, her calling in life to preach.

Jarena Lee is known for walking at least ten miles a day through the North and in Ohio to preach. She converted and preached to a crowd of both whites and blacks without hostility or violence threatened upon her. She was always a compassionate and caring individual who would at times visit the sick or dying and stay with them for hours reciting Biblical verses and hymns. But how did Jarena's desire to preach came to be?

Jarena Lee felt a deep connection to religion early in life. Because of this, she was able to rebel against the conservative sex biases of the church to become one of the first female preachers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. As an evangelist, Mrs. Lee traveled on foot to preach would walk as far as 16 miles in a day. At 40, the un-ordained minister logged 2,325 miles on the Gospel circuit.

The origins of her start as a preacher happened around 1850, at the annual meeting of the Philadelphia Conference of the A.M.E. Church. It was here a group of women decided to form an impromptu organization dedicated to God's mission. Their purpose in the eyes of historians, was to make appointments from their ranks to preaching stations in the Philadelphia Conference. Jarena Lee, most likely, was among the group of ecclesiastical insurgents.

The organization did not last and in the next General Conference of the church in 1852, a resolution licensing women to preach was turned down by a large majority of the delegates. Albanese states on page 7 of her book the possible role Jarena played as well as the lack of records on her. "Jarena Lee's role in these debates, and in the rising agitation among black women in the A.M.E. Church for equality of access to the pulpit, has not been recorded in the standard histories of black Methodism."

She was as some might say, a ghost at the beginning of this movement. But it was in her later actions and the stories of her origins that people can find the true source of her existence and her impact.

Jarena Lee, like most people, was lost early on in her life. She went through a poor childhood and worked as a servant in her youth. Her pain was so great that at one point she wanted to kill herself to end her suffering. In her own words, she states her attempts at committing suicide. Page 6 of her book mentions this: " I seemed to hear the howling of the damned, to see the smoke of the bottomless pit, and to hear the rattling of those chains, which hold the impenitent under clouds of darkness to the judgement of the great day."

The reason behind her wanting to kill herself were due in part to the words spoken by a local Protestant missionary. As described in Haywood: "Shortly after this second incident, Lee "was beset to hang [herself] with a cord suspended from the wall enclosing the secluded spot...living during the Aftermath of the Second Great Awakening, she was surrounded daily by the religious fervor it aroused."

His words reminded her of her sins and the weight of her mistakes, igniting guilt and regret deep within her. Ultimately Lee was prevented from committing suicide thanks to the "unseen arm of God" (at least in her words).And after moving to Philadelphia, she was inspired by the preaching of the Reverend Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and became a faithful believer of God.

Five years later, she experienced a vision which sparked her decision to begin preaching.She went to see the Reverend Allen who informed her that she could hold prayer meetings. Although she had permission to held prayer meetings, because their discipline did not call for female preachers, she was restricted in what she could do. She would detail in her journal the limitations placed upon her as a preacher and the role God had in her facing these obstacles and fulfilling her desire to spread the word of God.

Excerpts from her journal show how she used the bible to argue against the exclusion of women in religion:

"And why should it be thought impossible, heterodox, or improper for a woman to preach? seeing the Savior died for the woman as well as for the man. If the man may preach, because the Savior died for him, why not the woman? seeing he died for her also. Did not Mary first preach the risen Savior, and is not the doctrine of the resurrection the very climax of Christianity -- hangs not all our hope on this? Then did not Mary, a woman, preach the gospel? For she preached the resurrection of the crucified Son of God."3

She eventually married Joseph Lee, a pastor, in 1811 and quickly became disheartened during her first year of marriage. She wanted badly to preach. Her stifled desire attributed later on to health problems and depression. In six years, she experienced a lot of death within her family. Her husband died along with a few others. However, two children managed to survive, a two-year-old and a six-month-old baby and that kept her strong enough to go after her passion, preaching.

Reverend Allen Williams sparked that passion by "losing the spirit" when giving his routine sermons. It was this instance that sprang Lee to give a stirring exhortation that she proclaimed made God manifest his power in her in a way to show the world her ability. Moved by her speech, Reverend Williams rose to sanction her right to preach. A quote from Sennet shows: "Upon hearing Bishop Richard Allen preach one afternoon in 1804, Jarena Lee (b. 1783) embraced the opportunity to unite with the African Methodists of Philadelphia. Some five years later she felt the call to preach and entered upon a charismatic ministry that would carry her to many parts of the African-American Methodist connection."

From that time on, Jarena Lee's life became dedicated to evangelizing, challenging the prejudices against women as ministers of God.

Women faced great hardship in attempting to preach the word of God. They were met with resistance even in the white churches and were denied positions based solely on their gender. As mentioned by Raboteau, Jarena Lee was one of the first to pursue her calling. "One of the first black women to challenge rule against women preaching was Jarena Lee"

She devised ways to further her job as preacher in several ways.

She had printed in Philadelphia a pamphlet of twenty-four pages entitled "The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, a Colored Lady, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel" to let others know of her work and her mission. She also kept a journal while traveling which would later be transformed into her autobiography.The expanded version appeared in 1894 as: Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel. To meet travel expenses and room and board, she sold her book at church meetings and while she was on the road.

The book was met with some controversy since the book questioned sexism in the church. It was also controversial due to the lack of clear meaning throughout the book, leading some of her female friends to attempt to explain it to the male members A.M.E. Church committee. Although she did raised eyebrows with the subject matter in her book, she paved the way for other women who followed her. Thanks to her work more and more female preachers were inspired to pursue their true calling.

As a whole, the memoirs of American women in religion use their various and marvelous life stories to emphasize similar religious themes. Jarena Lee for instance had to endure life without her children and preaching with no money. Women who preached lived their lives through intense Christian piety, whether from a very young age or following a specific conversion moment. Female preachers found it difficult to deal with the accompanied hostility and aggression that they encountered from their opposition, but they were more unnerved by the changing opinion within their own sects during the 1830s and 1840s.

The more the Freewill Baptists, Christian Connection, Methodists, and African Methodists grew in number, the stronger they became. Within their regime stood a resistance from the radicalism that marked their early histories. As mentioned by Albanese and Stein, people placed obstacles on female preachers to keep them away, such as putting them on trial. "In a dramatic church trial in Cherry Valley, New York in 1830, the Methodist hierarchy excommunicated Sally Thompson when she refused to stop holding meetings."

In the early nineteenth century, the majority of the members that made up these sects were poor farmers, laborers, and artisans with little to no political clout. The Protestant work ethic, however, inspired them to work hard, save their earnings, works towards a better future for their offspring. The transformation was gradual and happened over the span of forty years. By the 1830s and 1840s, these small, persecuted sects had grown into flourishing denominations.

As they grew, they built seminaries for the sole purpose of educating men for the ministry. They also discouraged visionary "enthusiasm." They insisted on their converts to behave with restraint during meetings, and abandon their previous support for female preaching. Ironically, in their early years they had protested against the established churches, but then become the establishment.

By 1844, the Methodists became the largest single denomination in the United States with a membership of more than one million. By this time, female preachers were met with restrictions on their speech. Churches and meetings who once accepted them, shunned them or attempted to convince them to serve God in other ways. As mentioned before, women were put on trial for their "rebellious" actions.

They would not let women testify their her own defense and removed them or excluded them from the pages of church record books and clerical memoirs. Female preaching became so taboo that earlier supporters were embarrassed by their earlier support. Evangelicals tried to intentionally erase women, like Jarena Lee from historical memory. If not for manuscript church records, early nineteenth-

century religious periodicals, and the memoirs of these brave women, no information would remain of their remarkable lives.

One possible reason why female preachers were so easy to remove from history was their lack of allies. If they had allied themselves with women's rights activists, their memory may have remained by the liberal reformers who demanded women's full political, economic, and legal equality to men.This was not the case as the two groups of women saw little in common to unite.To further elaborate, female preachers did not want to be associated with controversial women. Case in point the platform speaker, Fanny Wright. She advocated for women's rights, divorce, and birth control.

While the female activists like Susan B. Anthony were reluctant to claim "sisterhood" with evangelical women. They could not understand why female preachers would devote their lives to a system that restricted them. They wanted women to defend female equality through devotion to the cause of women's rights.

In 19th century culture, feminine standards emphasized and glorified women as caregivers. Their main role was that of mother. The ideal woman made the home a sanctuary for her husband and children, a haven from the heartless world of commerce and competition. The Christian home thus became a locus of piety, and motherhood became the central work of the Christian mother.

Female preachers did however, in their own way, advocate for equality. They did so by attempting to change a system that was so ingrained in the daily lives of people. They knew that if they changed people's beliefs, they could change their standing.

For many American women, religion provided mean for sanctification in their private lives and helped them fulfill a role greater than wife and mother. It also provide them well with opportunities for semi-public roles outside the home, in some instances achieving fame. Especially during the 19th century, pious women taught Sunday school, and served as unpaid assistants to their clergyman husbands. This happened all throughout America or in missionaries abroad. Plus, a minority of women became preachers or religious leaders in their own right.

Ditmire shows in a brief article a glimpse in the life of someone like Jarena Lee who fought hard to have her voice heard. An excerpt shows her actions a she traveled to preach:

"On Monday morning I left for Bridgeton; we having no Society there, I preached in the Court House to a large assembly of different denominations. I felt a degree of liberty in speaking, and I then stopped a few days with them, and was kindly received and entertained. I then proceeded on to Fair-field, and endeavored to labor for them at 11 o'clock, Sabbath morning, and at 3 o'clock, P.M. To crowded houses of respectable and quiet congregations, and the Lord poured out his spirit upon us and we had a solemn waiting in his presence, for which my soul rejoices even now."

Lee was and always will be a noteworthy leader of the church. She worked with noteworthy leaders Sandy F. Ray. As discussed in Mickle's book.

She tried to find a way to unite everyone, especially Black Americans after the injustices they faced under prior enslavement. Sennet discusses this in his book o page 30. "But indeed few Masters appear Zealous or even pleased with what the Missionaries try to do for the Good of their Slaves, they are more Cruel Some of them of late Dayes than before, They hamstring main & Unlimb those poor Creatures for Small faults, A man within this Month had a very fine Negroe batized."

He explains how the whites viewed missionary work as a means of harsher treatment towards blacks and shows how blacks reversed religion's negative effects and turned it into a saving grace by using it to form their own traditions and unity.

Lee spent thirty years as an itinerant preacher. Even though the AME issued a definitive ruling that women were not permitted to preach in 1852, Lee spent the majority of her adult life preaching, even if she was not paid, ordained, or protected. Further research on her life shows Lee moved from New Jersey to Philadelphia when she was 21. When she began preaching she delivered three sermons per week and walked six miles per day.

Some might say she was wrong to leave her children to pursue a selfish passion, but according to homiletics scholar Anna Carter Florence:

"Preaching is a way of living and speaking in right relationship with God. It is a way of standing in one's own life, before God and others. A preacher who denies this denies her very self; she goes down into the pit. She gets swallowed by the whale. She gets tossed this way and that until she relinquishes false notions of what her life should be and submits to God. And God does not adhere to human articulations of polity: God calls whom God will. If the preacher is a poor black woman in antebellum Philadelphia in the year 1811, a woman whom no one will believe and for whom living out the call will be unimaginably difficult, so be it: God does not call preachers to be believed. God calls preachers to preach. Lee had tried standing in someone else's life; it hadn't worked. She was ready to stand on her own."

When Lee left her home, the call for her was abrupt by nature. But, she was responsible in how she left. She entrusted the care of her children close friends and under the supervision of Richard Allen. She also felt as though home was not just her family. She saw home as in the context of spiritual family. Her spiritual family was being in the right relationship with God and God's people. Home for her was knowing who one was.

The Spirit called and led her to what she perceived as a duty. And even though she had no pay to live off of, she received the kindness and charity from the people she preached to. Living the life she led proved to some the passion she had to fulfill her calling. As Florence mentions on page 45, she endured a lot to spread the word of God. "Certain poverty, strenuous travel, broken health, exhausting pace: these were the rigors that defined itinerant life, and for thirty years, Lee lived with them."11 Her display of determination illuminated the path for others. At the same time, made her great.

Jarena Lee gendered the pulpit in the direction of justice. She evoked a sense of movement. She in her actions ordained her spirit with gratitude for the many miles she walked and the countless sermons she preached. She is deemed worthy of being called the first female preacher of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church.

To better elaborate on the environment Jarena Lee witnessed is to read her book in which she discusses her many travels and interactions with people. For the most part, as written in her own words, she was treated well and relied heavily on the kindness of others as she was not licensed and received no pay for her efforts. There were minor instance of hecklers.

In fact in the middle of the book she states there was a black man who was rather impolite to her and would heckle her for some time when she preached. She spoke to him of the Bible and was able to convince to not only be quiet, but to respect her and her words. A lot of her book talks about the miles walked each day and the towns visited. She discussed how she had to sign into places and some towns had no churches so she had to preach outside. It lends to the idea that female preaching was grass-roots.

Women, especially during that time had no money coming in from preaching. They preached wherever they could, whenever they could. It was up to them to instill in the audience the values that they themselves believed in. A lot of the topics discussed by preachers like Jarena Lee was conversion, temperance, etc. These women had to relay their knowledge quickly and with enough spirit to keep a crowd entertained or in the very least, interested.

Since men were normally seen as preachers and respected as such, women like Jarena Lee had to demand respect in certain instances, as mentioned before, and earn respect through her tireless efforts. Women had to fight twice as hard as men to be heard. Jarena logged many miles each day with her accounts claiming ill health at times because of it. In her last page of her journal she mentions this.

"My health being very much impaired, I knew not but that I should be the next one called away, but the Lord spared me for some other purpose, and upon my recovery I commenced travelling again, feeling it better to wear out than to rust out -- and so expect to do until death ends the struggle -- knowing, if I lose my life for Christ's sake, I shall find it again. I now conclude -- by requesting the prayers of God's people every where, who worship in His holy fear, to pray for me, that I ever may endeavor to keep a conscience void of offence, either towards God or man -- for I feel as anxious to blow the Trumpet in Zion. And sound the alarm in God's Holy Mount, as ever; -- Though Nature's strength decay, And earth and hell withstand -- To Canaan's land I'l urge my way, . At HIS Divine command.

But here I feel constrained to give over, as from the smallness of this pamphlet I cannot go through with the whole of my journal, as it would probably make a volume of two hundred pages; which, if the Lord be willing, may at some future day be published. But for the satisfaction of such as may follow after me, when I am no more, I have recorded how the Lord called me to his work, and how he has kept me from falling from grace, as I feared I should. In all things he has proved himself a God of truth to me; and in his service I am now as much determined to spend and be spent, as at the very first. My ardour for the progress of his cause abates not a whit, so far as I am able to judge, though I am now something more than fifty years of age.

As to the nature of uncommon impressions, which the reader can not but have noticed, and possibly sneered at in the course of these pages, they may be accounted for in this way: It is known that the blind have the sense of hearing in a manner much more acute than those who can see: also their sense of feeling is exceedingly fine, and is found to detect any roughness on the smoothest surface, where those who can see find none. So it may be with such as I am, who has never had more than three months schooling; and wishing to know much of the way and law of God, have therefore watched the more closely, the operations of the Spirit, and have in consequence been led thereby.

But let it be remarked that I have never found that Spirit lead me contrary to the Scriptures of truth, as I understand them. " For as many as are led by tha Spirit of God are the sons of God,"-- Rom. viii. 14. I have now only to say, May the blessing of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, accompany the readiugof this poor effort to speak well of his name, wherever it may be read. AMEN."

The political climate surrounding the time of Jarena besides the restrictons placed on women not just politically, but religiously also included the restrictions on blacks. Black people were still enslaved during the time Jarena Lee was alive. Although she was born free and never had to deal with slavery or possible enslavement through kidnapping, she was witness to the things occuring then.

Lee was born in New Jersey. As record states, the North was less cruel to slaves and free blacks than the South, however that didn't mean that certain states near New Jersey for instance did not still have people who owned slaves. Some abolitionists such as Sojourner Truth, escaped slavery in New York, a state adjacent to New Jersey. There was however some progress occuring in the early nineteenth century.

By 1810, 75% of the African-Americans in Delaware were free. This was the largest percentage of free blacks in a slave state. Also in that year, the African Insurance Company of Philadephia became the first black-owned insurance company in the United States. By 1811, certain rebellions formed like Andry's Rebellio. Andry's rebellion happened on January 8-11. This was a slave insurrection led by Charles Deslondes which began on the Louisiana plantation of Manual Andry.

By 1815, Richard Allen, the man who allowed, (eventually) Jarena Lee to preach, formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first wholly African-American church denomination in the United States. That same year another abolitionist by the name of Levi Coffin, establishes the Underground Railroad, which led runaway slaves to places in the north, including Canada.

Another thing to note is many states like New Jersey and Conneticut, disenfranchised black voters. People were attempting to free black slaves, but did not want to grant education or rights to free blacks. Some even waned to take all the free or freed blacks and ship them to Africa, where it is presently known as Liberia. The organization that came up with this was the American Colonization Society is founded by Bushrod Washington alongside other wealthy white Americans in 1816

During the year of 1820, the Compromise of 1820 allowed Missouri into the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. This meant resetting the boundary between slave and free territory in the West at the 36th parallel. In 1821 Thomas Jennings hailing from New York City became the first African-American to receive a patent from the United States government. He was able to achieve this by creating a method that helped dry clean clothes.

In 1827 Freedom's Journal published its first issue on March 16 in New York City. It was the first African-American owned newspaper in the United States. The editors were Russwurm and Cornish. .In 1829, in Ohio, one of the states where Jarena preached, more than half of Cincinnati's African-American residents were driven out of the city by a hostile and violent white mob. The Cincinnati riots were the first to herald in more than a hundred years of white violence against Northern black urban communities.

In 1830 African-American delegates from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia meetin Philadelphia, where Jarena also preached and held meetings, in the first of a series of National Negro Conventions to generate ideas for abolitionism in the South and racial discrimination in the North. 1831 North Carolina enacts passes a law that permanently restricts teaching slaves to read and write. That same year, Alabama makes it illegal for enslaved or free blacks to preach. This year also brought the first instance of an African-American woman publshing a book: Jarena Lee's The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, A Coloured Lady.

In 1832, The Female Anti-Slavery Society, the first African-American women's abolitionist society, was founded in Salem, Massachusetts. So even though Jarena doesn't really much in terms of what's happening around her in regards to racial tension, bans, restrictions, etc., if one look at the time period, one can see the various changes and limits happening at that time. It was quite amazing to read her biography and not see an instance where her safety was compromised, especially since she preached in Ohio, which at the time was breeding racial hatred and tension from the whites to the blacks.

Women's rights later on provided a platform for African-American rights. People like Soujourner Truth would preach about abolitionism as well as appear at Women's rights conventions pleading with the audience to understand her rights a woman and a human being. Fredrick Douglass as well was one of the people in those conventions who understood the implications of giving equal rights to women as they would eventually lead to equal rights to blacks.

It was overall, a century full of change and was ulimtately propelled by the Civil War. Blacks and women were not just fighting for their freedom, but their right to earn money and lead a peaceful, safe life. Jarena Lee was one of the first to rebel against the system that was religion and race in early 1800's. Thanks to people like Jarena Lee, the next generation were able to progress.

Maria W. Stewart, an African-American preacher and the first to speak to a mixed audience of white and black, was born in 1803. She was a jack of all trades and became a journalist, lecturer, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. Her career, brief in length, greatly impacted the world around her. She was the first African-American woman to lecture about women's rights as well as make a public anti-slavery speech. She was the first African-American woman to make public lectures.

Stewart even published two pamphlets in the Liberator. They included, "Religion and Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build." In this pamphlet she advocated for blacks to become independent and autonomous as well as abolition. Her second pamphlet focused on religion. One of the reasons why her career was so brief was because of the heckling she experienced during one of her speeches. This apparently scarred her from ever going back to public speaking. She blamed it on her being a woman.

Although women like Jarena Lee, preached and spoke of many things, there was no real record of it. Stewart was again, one of the first to record her speeches. Below is her second speech from 1832. Here she condemns the attitude that not just denied black education, but black women's education in particular.

"Why sit ye here and die? If we say we will go to a foreign land, the famine and the pestilence are there, and there we shall die. If we sit here, we shall die. Come let us plead our cause before the whites: if they save us alive, we shall live -- and if they kill us, we shall but die.

Methinks I heard a spiritual interrogation -- 'Who shall go forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people of color? Shall it be a woman? And my heart made this reply -- 'If it is thy will, be it even so, Lord Jesus!'

I have heard much respecting the horrors of slavery; but may Heaven forbid that the generality of my color throughout these United States should experience any more of its horrors than to be a servant of servants, or hewers of wood and drawers of water! Tell us no more of southern slavery; for with few exceptions, although I may be very erroneous in my opinion, yet I consider our condition but little better than that. Yet, after all, methinks there are no chains so galling as the chains of ignorance -- no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge. O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now, have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability -- no teachings but the teachings of the Holy spirit.

I have asked several individuals of my sex, who transact business for themselves, if providing our girls were to give them the most satisfactory references, they would not be willing to grant them an equal opportunity with others? Their reply has been -- for their own part, they had no objection; but as it was not the custom, were they to take them into their employ, they would be in danger of losing the public patronage.

And such is the powerful force of prejudice. Let our girls possess what amiable qualities of soul they may; let their characters be fair and spotless as innocence itself; let their natural taste and ingenuity be what they may; it is impossible for scarce an individual of them to rise above the condition of servants. Ah! why is this cruel and unfeeling distinction? Is it merely because God has made our complexion to vary? If it be, O shame to soft, relenting humanity! "Tell it not in Gath! publish it not in the streets of Askelon!" Yet, after all, methinks were the American free people of color to turn their attention more assiduously to moral worth and intellectual improvement, this would be the result: prejudice would gradually diminish, and the whites would be compelled to say, unloose those fetters!

Though black their skins as shades of night, Their hearts are pure, their souls are white.

Few white persons of either sex, who are calculated for any thing else, are willing to spend their lives and bury their talents in performing mean, servile labor. And such is the horrible idea that I entertain respecting a life of servitude, that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising above the condition of a servant, I would gladly hail death as a welcome messenger. O, horrible idea, indeed! To possess noble souls aspiring after high and honorable acquirements, yet confined by the chains of ignorance and poverty to lives of continual drudgery and toil. Neither do I know of any who have enriched themselves by spending their lives as house-domestics, washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots, or tending upon gentlemen's tables. I can but die for expressing my sentiments; and I am as willing to die by the sword as the pestilence; for I and a true born American; your blood flows in my veins, and your spirit fires my breast.

I observed a piece in the Liberator a few months since, stating that the colonizationists had published a work respecting us, asserting that we were lazy and idle. I confute them on that point. Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious and ambitious ones to be found; although I acknowledge, with extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class among yourselves?

Again. It was asserted that we were "a ragged set, crying for liberty." I reply to it, the whites have so long and so loudly proclaimed the theme of equal rights and privileges, that our souls have caught the flame also, ragged as we are. As far as our merit deserves, we feel a common desire to rise above the condition of servants and drudges. I have learnt, by bitter experience, that continual hard labor deadens the energies of the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil, brings forth thorns and thistles."

Among the group of women who were religious leaders, was Anne Howard Shaw. Shaw was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England in 1847. Shaw's preaching career began when she met Reverend Marianna Thompson who was the first person in support of her pursuit of an education. Thanks to Thompson's aid, Shaw entered Big Rapids High School and learned how to recite poetry to audiences. She also took debate classes and learned how to speak properly in front of an audience.At the age of twenty-three, Shaw was invited by Dr. Peck, a man looking to ordain a female Methodist, to give her first sermon. At first she hesitated, thinking she had far too little experience, but continued regardless.

Her initial sermon, after six months of practice, proved to be a success. But her desire to preach, much like with Jarena Lee, was met with disapproval by her friends, and family who agreed to pay for her college education only if she abandoned preaching. In the face of such obstacles and the isolation from her loved ones, Shaw's desire to preach remained strong. Thanks to another noteworthy woman, Mary A. Livermore, a prominent lecturer, she found the gumption to continue her goal to preach.

In 1873, Shaw entered Albion College, a Methodist school in Albion, Michigan. She paid her way through college through her earnings as a licensed preacher. As a preacher she gave lectures on temperance. After graduating from Albion College, Shaw attended Boston University School of Theology in 1876.

In 1880, she became the first woman in America to be ordained under the Methodist Protestant Church. After her initial struggle in college, she gained success and easier times after her ordination and her earningan M.D. from Boston University in 1886. Her obstacles and her hardship propelled her to become an outspoken advocate of political rights for women. Her talents were put to use soon after.

Of her many accomplishments, Shaw served as the chair of the Franchise Department of Women's Christian Temperance Union. There, she was tasked to work for women's suffrage and gain 'home protection' and temperance legislation. She also lectured for the Massachusetts Suffrage Association and later the American Woman Suffrage Association to further along her desire towards women's suffrage.