Sarah Parker Remond
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Sarah Parker Remond (June 6, 1826 - December 13, 1894) was an African-American abolitionist, an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She worked giving speeches throughout the United States about the horrors of slavery. Because of her eloquence, she was chosen to travel to England to gather support for the abolitionist cause in the United States and, after the American Civil War started, for support of the Union Army and the Union blockade of the Confederancy.
From Salem, Massachusetts, Remond was one of eight children of John and Nancy Lenox Remond, born June 6th, 1826. Her mother Nancy was the Newton-born daughter of a man who fought in the Continental Army; her father John was a free black man who arrived from the Dutch island of Curacao at age ten in 1798. The Remonds settled in Salem, where they built a successful catering, provisioning, and hairdressing business. They prospered in Salem and tried to protect their children, but there was no way to protect them from the pervasive racism. The family valued education, and in l835, Sarah and her sister passed an exam to attend the Salem High School. In less than a week the girls were forced out by the racist school board. Outraged, the Remonds moved to Newport, RI, where Sarah attended a private school for blacks. Her father worked to desegregate the schools in Salem, and when he finally succeeded in 1841, the family returned. Sarah continued her education by reading widely and attending concerts and lectures, reading books, pamphlets and newspapers borrowed from friends or purchased from the anti-slavery society of her community, which sold many titles at a cheap price.
Her family and associates included many activists of the times. The Remonds' home provided a safe haven for both Black and white abolitionists. Sarah regularly attended antislavery lectures in Salem and Boston. Along with her household duties of cooking and sewing, Nancy Remond taught Sarah and her other daughters to seek liberty in a lawful manner and that being Black was not a crime, but merely a fluke of birth.
Salem in the 1840s was a center of anti-slavery activity. The whole family was committed to the abolition movement. They played host to many of the movement's leaders, including William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and to more than one fugitive slave fleeing north. Her father was a life member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society; and her older brother Charles Lenox Remond was the American Anti-Slavery Society's first black lecturer and the nation's leading black abolitionist until Frederick Douglass appeared on the scene in 1842. Along with her mother and sisters, Sarah was an active member of the state and county female anti-slavery societies.
In 1853, Sarah was forcibly removed and pushed down a flight of stairs at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston where she had gone to attend an opera, Don Pasquale, for which she had purchased a ticket. This incident stemmed from her refusal to sit in a segregated section for the show. Remond sued for damages and won her case. She was awarded $500, which did not compensate for her injury and embarrassment, but her goal was not to make money on the case but to force an admission of she was wronged.
Sarah’s sisters went into their parents' trade, becoming caterers, bakers, and hairdressers, but Sarah chose a different path. With the moral support as well as the financial backing of her family, she became an anti-slavery lecturer. Abby Kelly Foster, another Massachusetts woman, provided Remond an example and the encouragement she needed to become an anti-slavery lecturer. "I feel almost sure," Sarah wrote to Abby, "I never should have made the attempt but for the words of encouragement I received from you. Although my heart was in the work, I felt that I was in need of a good English education. ... When I consider that the only reason why I did not obtain what I so much desired was because I was the possessor of an unpopular complexion, it adds to my discomfort."
In 1856, the American Anti-Slavery Society hired a team of lecturers, including Remond, her brother Charles Lenox Remond, a well-known antislavery lecturer in the United States and Great Britain, and Susan B. Anthony to tour New York State addressing anti-slavery issues. Over the next two years, she, her brother, and others spoke in Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania; often being confronted with poor accommodations due to their race.
Although she was inexperienced, even early on, Sarah Remond was an effective speaker. William Lloyd Garrison praised her "calm, dignified manner, her winning personal appearance and her earnest appeals to the conscience and the heart." Over time, she became one of the Society's most persuasive and powerful lecturers.
In 1856, she published a letter in the Daily News protesting attacks on Black people in the London press after an insurrection in Jamaica. One lecture that she delivered in London, "The Freeman or the Emancipated Negro of the Southern States of the United States," was published in The Freedman (London) in 1867.
Sarah proved to be such a good speaker, and such a good fundraiser, that she was invited to take the anti-slavery message to Great Britain, something her brother had done ten years before. Accompanied by Samuel May, Jr., she sailed for Liverpool on December 28, 1858 from Boston on the steamer Arahia to enlist the aid of the English people in the American antislavery movement. She arrived in Liverpool on January 12, 1859, after a frightening trip. The ship had been covered with ice and snow. It rolled and tossed so much that many of the passengers were sick, including Remond, who regained her strength after a few days of recuperation in the home of William Robson in Warrington.
Before she sailed, she told Abby Kelly Foster, she feared not "the wind nor the waves, but I know that no matter how I go, the spirit of prejudice will meet me." In fact, she met with acceptance in Britain. "I have been received here as a sister by white women for the first time in my life,” she wrote; "I have received a sympathy I never was offered before." She was the first educated, cultivated black woman — described by one as "a lady every inch" — that the British had ever seen. She spoke out against both slavery and racial discrimination, stressing the sexual exploitation of black women under slavery. At Tuckerman Institute on January 21, 1859, Remond gave her first antislavery lecture on the free soil of Britain. Without notes she eloquently spoke of the inhuman treatment of slaves in the United States. Her stories of these atrocities shocked many of her listeners, bringing tears to the eyes of the British. She played an important role in drawing the attention of British abolitionists to the problems endured by free Blacks as well throughout the United States. In her short autobiography, written in 1861, she stressed that "prejudice against colour has always been the one thing, above all others, which has cast its gigantic shadow over my whole life."
A clear and forceful speaker, Sarah Remond lectured to enthusiastic crowds in cities throughout England, Scotland and Ireland, and raised large sums of money for the anti-slavery cause. Once the Civil War began, she worked to build support in Britain for the Union blockade of the Confederacy and influenced public opinion in Britain to support the Union cause. At the end of the war, she lectured on behalf of the Freedmen, soliciting funds and clothing for the ex-slaves. She was an active member of the London Emancipation Society and the Freedman's Aid Association in London.
While giving the speeches she found time to attend Bedford College for Ladies in London. She studied French, Latin, English literature, music, history and elocution. During her years in Britain, she combined lecturing with studying at the Bedford College for Ladies (now part of the University of London).
Remond visited Rome and Florence on several occasions while living in England. In 1866, she left London and entered the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy as a medical student at the age of 42. She became a doctor and married an Italian, Lazzaro Pinto from Sardinia, on April 25th, 1877, and as far as is known, never returned to the United States. (In fact, two of her sisters joined her in self-imposed exile.) She practiced medicine in Florence, Italy, for more than twenty years.
Sarah Remond died on December 13, 1894 in Italy. She was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.
SEE ALSO: http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/slavery/anti-slavery_movement/women.htm http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2002/remond.html http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/924/Sarah_Remonds_spoke_out_against_slavery
