Black Women Abolitionists: Study In Activism, 1828-1860 / Edition 1

by Shirley J. Yee

Overview

By virtue of being both black and female in antebellum America, black women abolitionists confronted a particular set of tensions. Whether they supported the movement directly or indirectly, cooperated with whites or primarily with other blacks, worked in groups or independently, were well off financially or struggled to make ends meet, their lives reflected the complex dynamics of race, sex, and class. Against the background of slavery, constructing a life in "freedom" meant adopting many of the values of free white society, symbolized in part by male dominance and female subordination. In championing both their race and their sex, female black abolitionists found themselves caught between the sexism of the antislavery movement and the racism of the (white) women's movement. Throughout their writing, speeches, petitions, and participation in antislavery, and self-help organizations, these women established a pattern of black female activism—centered on community-building, political organizing, and forging a network of friendships with other activists—that served as a model for later generations of black women. Drawing on a wide array of previously untapped primary sources, Shirley Yee examines the activism of black women in the Northeast, the Midwest, and to some extent, California and Canada. The activists' experiences render heartbreakingly clear the pervasiveness of middle-class white values in antebellum America and the contradictions and ironies inherent in prevailing conceptions of "freedom"—Back cover.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870497360
Publisher:	University of Tennessee Press
Publication date:	04/10/1992
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Shirley Yee is Professor and Chair of the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department (formerly Women Studies) at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she has taught since 1988.

Editorial Reviews

In a detailed morphology of free black women's experiences in antebellum reform, historian Yee shifts the genesis of radical antislavery from the Garrisonians to blacks and finds free black women present at the creation. Women abolitionists joined together in community building, political organizing, and building private and professional female networks. In doing so, they discovered that to gain a public audience they needed simultaneously to act like ``true women'' in working for moral reforms such as temperance and education while also stepping out of conventional ``middle-class'' female roles to speak and write against slavery. Such activism led toward women's rights, yet blacks abjured association with white reformers unsupportive of racial uplift. Racism among reformers propelled black women reformers toward separate action and identity. Yee's complex argument demands serious attention from those trying to unravel the contradicions in the reform tradition. Recommended for university libraries.-- Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Library Journal