Racial Justice Supporters

Women abolitionists -- profiles of women abolitionists, including African American abolitionists and white women who worked for abolition.

Women and men, black and white, attended this 1840s anti-slavery meeting. The mixed company at such meetings was considered scandalous by the general population, and as a matter of principle by the participants.

An anti-slavery address delivered by Angelina Grimké, 1838.

Daisy Bates, a newspaper publisher with her husband, was a key figure in integrating Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Lydia Maria Child, who wrote one of the first American anti-slavery books, is here represented in correspondence at the time of the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry. She exchanges letters with the Governor of Virginia, with a Mrs. Mason of Virginia, and with John Brown himself.

This Quaker activist was an abolitionist before she became involved with women's rights.

Sarah Moore Grimké and her sister Angelina were abolitionists and women's rights advocates, especially before the Civil War.

Angelina Grimké was a Southern woman from a slaveholding family who became a key abolitionist and women's rights supporter.

Mary White Ovington biography - information on Mary White Ovington, founder of the NAACP.

A profile of Mary White Ovington, a key founder of the NAACP.

Like many abolitionists, Lucy Stone came to support women's rights through her anti-slavery activism. She continued her commitment to racial justice through her life.

A profile of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 19th century author.

This article originally appeared in the September 1912 issue of The Crisis. It addresses the historical ties of the suffrage movement to the anti-slavery movement and regrets the later move away from defending racial justice. Martha Gruening, a white woman, worked for such causes as racial justice and peace.

A detailed survey of the post-Civil War work by the churches in educating freedmen. Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Uncle Tom's Cabin fame.

YWCAs developed to address problems of working class women in large cities. This site shows, through an overview with accompanying source documents, how the YWCA in one city, Baltimore, worked to address such issues across racial lines.

Ovington was the founding "mother" of the NAACP, an organization working for African American rights.

Eulogy for the Washington, DC, educator who worked to educate freedmen and also headed the Washington, DC, home of the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children.

Abolitionism sometimes divided families. This introduction and series of documents shows how women abolitionists -- with the 19th century's expectations of women's focus on the family -- navigated the tough issues of family relationships with those who held slaves or defended the institution of slavery.