Elizabeth Keckley

Dressmaker and Confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln

Elizabeth Keckley was a former slave who became a successful seamstress and author in Washington, DC, after buying her freedom in St. Louis. She created an independent business with clients who were the wives of the government elite: Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee, and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born in 1818 in Dinwiddie Court House, Virginia. Her biological father was a white plantation owner, Colonel A. Burwell. Her mother Agnes was married to George Hobbs, who lived 100 miles away on another plantation.

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Fannie Jackson Coppin

Teacher of African American Children

For 37 years Fannie Jackson Coppin was teacher, then principal at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, making her the first African American woman to receive the title of school principal. During her tenure, she made many improvements at the school, believing that a broader range of education would be necessary to enable African Americans to become self-supporting.

Fannie Jackson was born a slave in Washington, DC, on October 15, 1837. Fannie's grandfather bought his own freedom and that of four of his children, being one. But Fannie’s mother, Lucy, remained a slave. In 1849 her aunt Sarah Orr Clark bought Fannie's freedom for $125. Fannie was sent to live with another aunt at New Bedford, Massachusetts.

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Sarah Parker Remond

Sarah Parker Remond was an African American abolitionist, doctor and lecturer for the American Anti-Slaver Society. She delivered speeches throughout the United States on 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.

Sarah Parker Remond was born in 1826 in Salem, Massachusetts, one of eight children. Her mother Nancy was the daughter of a man who fought in the Continental Army. Her father John was a free black who arrived from the Dutch island of Curacao as a boy of ten. The Remonds built a successful catering and hairdressing business in Salem.

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Amanda Smith

African American Evangelist and Missionary

Amanda Berry Smith, a preacher and missionary, was a former slave who became an inspiration to thousands of women both black and white. During a forty-five-year missionary career of arduous travel on four continents, this self-educated former slave and washerwoman became a highly visible and well-respected leader despite intense opposition to women in public ministry, a crescendo of white racist violence and the tightening grip of segregation.

Childhood
Amanda Berry was born in born a slave at Long Green, Maryland on January 23, 1837. Her father, a slave, worked for years at night and after long days of field labor, he made brooms and husk mats to earn enough money to buy the freedom of his family of seven.

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Lucy Delaney

Writer and Slave Who Won Her Freedom in Court

Lucy Ann Delaney (1830–1891) was an African American author, former slave and activist, notable for her 1891 slave narrative, From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. The memoir tells of her mother's legal battles in St. Louis, Missouri for her own and her daughter's freedom from slavery. Their cases were two of 301 freedom suits filed in St. Louis from 1814-1860. Edward Bates, the future US Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln, argued Lucy's case in court and won.

Childhood and Early Years
Lucy Ann Berry was born a slave in St. Louis, Missouri in 1830. Lucy's mother Polly Berry had been born free in Illinois, but was kidnapped as a child, carried across the Mississippi River and sold as a slave to Major Taylor Berry of St. Louis, from whom she took her surname. Polly married another of Berry's slaves and had two daughters, Nancy and Lucy.

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Maria Stewart

First African American Woman to Lecture in Public

Maria Stewart was an essayist, lecturer, abolitionist and women's rights activist. She was the earliest known American woman to lecture in public on political issues. Stewart is known for four powerful speeches she delivered in Boston in the early 1830s - a time when no woman, black or white, dared to address an audience from a public platform.

Childhood and Early Years
She was born free as Maria Miller in 1803 in Hartford, Connecticut. All that is known about her parents is their surname, Miller. At the age of five, she lost both her parents and was forced to become a servant in the household of a white clergyman. She lived with this family for ten years.

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Sojourner Truth

African American Abolitionist and Women's Rights Activist

Sojourner Truth was a nationally known feminist and social reformer. During the Civil War, she helped recruit black soldiers for the Union Army. After the war, she tried to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves, a project she pursued for seven years, meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant to discuss the subject.

Sojourner Truth Monument
Florence, Massachusetts
Truth lived in Florence (a village of Northampton) from 1843-1857. She came to Florence to join the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian community dedicated to equality and justice. After the Association disbanded, she remained in Florence, bought her first home, dictated her autobiography to Olive Gilbert and became a nationally known advocate for women's rights and the abolition of slavery.

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Mary Ann Shadd

Abolitionist, Educator and Suffragist in the Civil War Era

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823–1893) was an anti-slavery activist, journalist, teacher and lawyer. She was the first black woman newspaper publisher in North America and the first woman publisher in Canada. Cary was one of the most outspoken and articulate female proponents of the abolition of slavery of her day. She promoted equality for all people and taught former slaves how to be self reliant.

Image: Mary Ann Shadd Cary Bust
BME Freedom Park
Chatham, Ontario

Early Years
Mary Ann Shadd was born October 9, 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware, the eldest of 13 children of Abraham and Harriett Shadd, both free-born blacks. Her father was active in the Underground Railroad and a subscription agent for William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. As a child, Mary Ann witnessed the effects of slavery on the runaway slaves who took shelter in her father's home.

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Mary Elizabeth Bowser

African American Spy During the Civil War

Mary Elizabeth Bowser was a freed slave who worked with Elizabeth Van Lew as a Union spy in Richmond, Virginia during the Civil War. Van Lew sent Bowser to the Quaker School for Negroes in Philadelphia in the late 1850s. After graduating, she returned to Richmond, where she worked as a domestic servant for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and read documents in the president's private study, memorizing them word for word.

Early Years
Mary Elizabeth Bowser was born a slave on the plantation of John Van Lew, a wealthy hardware merchant in Richmond, Virginia. The exact time of her birth is uncertain, but believed to be about 1840. After Mr. Van Lew died in 1851, his daughter, Elizabeth, a staunch abolitionist, freed all of their slaves.

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