Women and African American History: 1860-1863
1860
• founded in 1832 and accepting male and female, white and black students, by 1860 Oberlin College had a student population that was one-third African American
1861
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, was published, including descriptions of the sexual exploitation of female slaves
• Laura Towne, from Pennsylvania, went to the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina to teach the former slaves -- she ran a school in the Sea Islands until 1901, adopting several African American children with her friend and teaching partner, Ellen Murray
1862
• Charlotte Forten arrived in the Sea Islands to work with Laura Towne, teaching former slaves
• Mary Jane Patterson, graduating from Oberlin College, was the first African American woman to graduate from an American college
• Congress abolished slavery in Washington, DC
• (July 16) Ida B. Wells (Wells-Barnett) born (muckraking journalist, lecturer, activist, anti-lynching writer and activist)
• (July 13-17) many New York African Americans killed in draft riots
• (September 22) Emancipation Proclamation issued, freeing slaves within territory controlled by the Union
1863
• Fanny Kemble published Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation which opposed slavery and served as anti-slavery propaganda
• Memoir of Old Elizabeth a Coloured Woman published: autobiography of an African Methodist Episcopal evangelist
• Susie King Taylor, African American army nurse with the Union army, began writing her journal, later published as In Reminiscences of My Life in Camp: Civil War Nurse
• Mary Church Terrell born (activist, clubwoman)
[1492-1699] [1700-1799] [1800-1829] [1830-1839] [1840-1849] [1850-1859] [1860-1863] [1864-1869] [1870-1879] [1880-1889] [1890-1899] [1900-1909] [1910-1919] [1920-1929] [1930-1939] [1940-1949] [1950-1959] [1960-1969] [1970-1979] [1980-1989] [1990-1999] [2000-]
