In a time of political darkness – when the ugly power of racism rears up – it is good to remember that we all stand on the shoulders of giants in the long struggle for human dignity and justice.

Sarah Parker Remond lived in the 19th century. We need to know her story. She challenged the forces of evil on an international stage and made a difference. She didn’t have a vote. But if you do – use it.

The cotton workers of Lancashire faced starvation in the cotton famine of the American Civil War. Nonetheless they wrote President Lincoln in support of the blockade of Confederate cotton exports. They stood up for freedom and the abolition of slavery. They didn’t have a vote. But you do – use it..

One cemetery, one visit, so many stories.

This is the third and for now last post inspired by an hour or so at the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome. 

Such is my ignorance that – until I saw the plaque on the wall at the cemetery – I had never heard of Sarah Parker Remond: African-American, Abolitionist, Physician,1824-1894. She led a life of courageous activism, adventure and achievement dedicated to human rights and women’s suffrage. 

When Toni Morrison wrote Beloved (1987) she had in mind the story of Margaret Garner who cut the throat of her infant daughter to prevent her return to slavery. 

In January 1856, the Garner family escaped from Kentucky via the frozen Ohio River. While they were waiting at a safe house  slave catchers surrounded them. Margaret Garner slashed the throats of her sleeping children. She was determined to “save them all from slavery by death.”

It was an extreme and gruesome act that only makes sense in the context of the full atrocity and horror of chattel slavery.  Sarah Parker Remond also drew on that story when she spoke to crowds about abolition..

Who Was Sarah Parker Remond?

Remond’s family were successful business owners and entrepreneurs – caterers, bakers, hairdressers – in Salem, Massachusetts. She was one of eight children who learned early on about the miseries and injustice of chattel slavery.

Her older brother Charles Lenox Remond was an accomplished orator and American Anti-Slavery Society’s first black lecturer. He was the nation’s leading black abolitionist before the emergence of Frederick Douglass. They then went on the speaking circuit together.

Charles Remond’s testimony in 1842 helped secure passage of a state law prohibiting separate rail cars. However, it wasn’t until 1865 that the Massachusetts legislature acted to forbid “unjust discrimination on account of color or race” in “any place of public amusement, public conveyance, or public meeting.”

Sarah’s education was limited and she was primarily self-taught. When she and one of her sisters finished primary school they were refused admission to the Salem secondary school because of their race.The Remonds moved to Newport, Rhode Island where the children were able to attend a private school for black children. Her father joined a lawsuit to integrate the Salem schools. When it was settled they returned to Salem. Sarah was by then too old for school.

Salem was a center of anti-slavery activity. The Remond home was a hub for activists both black and white and sometimes a refuge for fugitive slaves. Sarah grew up hearing the conversations of prominent abolitionists and went to lectures in Salem and Boston. She was an avid reader of newspapers, books, and pamphlets borrowed from friends or bought from the anti-Slavery Society.

A Life of Activism

In 1853 Remond bought a ticket to a performance of Mozart’s opera Don Pasquale at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston. She and her friends refused to leave a section reserved for whites only. The police were called. She was pushed down the stairs and forcibly ejected. She sued the theater for the injures she sustained and won $500 in compensation. Her action ended segregated seating at the hall. 

Three years later she embarked on a speaking tour on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society with her brother Charles, Abby Kelley and her husband Stephen Foster, Wendell Phillips, Aaron Powell, and Susan B. Anthony. Remond was a natural on the stump and her lecture tours took her to Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

A year later – in December 1858 –  Remond left Boston in the steamer Arabia for Liverpool to enlist the aid of the British people in the American anti-slavery movement. She landed in Liverpool on January 12, 1859 after a rough voyage. The weather was bitterly cold and the seas wild. The ship was covered with ice and snow and rolled so that almost everyone – including Remond – was sick.

Before setting sail from Boston, Remond had told her friend Abby Kelly Foster, that she feared not “the wind nor the waves, but I know that no matter how I go, the spirit of prejudice will meet me.” 

Remond was surprised by her reception in the UK, telling a friend, “I have been received here as a sister by white women for the first time in my life. I have been removed from the degradation which overhangs all persons of my complexion… I have received a sympathy I never was offered before.”

Remond was in Lancashire to appeal to the mill owners and cotton workers to support the anti-slavery movement and – when the Civil War began – to enlist their support for the Union blockade against the slave-owning, cotton-producers of the Confederacy.

There is no home, no hope, no help

For the slave there is no home, no hope, no help; When I walk through the streets of Manchester and meet load after load of cotton, I think of those 80,000 cotton plantations on which was grown the $125m worth of cotton which supply your market, and I remember that not one cent of that money ever reached the hands of the labourers.

 In January 1859 at the Tuckerman Institute Remond gave her first anti-slavery lecture in Britain. She spoke without notes of the inhuman treatment of slaves in the United States. Her shocking stories brought tears to the eyes of many listeners.

She also  addressed the city gentry of Manchester in September 1959 at the Athanaeum. As reported by the Manchester times she introduced by the mayor and delivered a powerful address giving the background of slavery in the U.S. and also welcoming the young people she saw in the audience. She talked of current conditions:

The free colored people of the northern states are, for no crime but merely the fact of complexion, deprived of all political and social rights. Whatever wealth or eminence in intellect and refinement they may attain to, they are treated as outcasts; and white men and women who identify themselves with them are sure to he insulted in the grossest manner. 

And she reached out to the factory workers and mill hands who were aware of  the suffering of those who picked the cotton that fueled the economic boom of the region.

 “I appeal on behalf of four millions of men, women, and children who are chattels in the Southern States of America, Not because they are identical with my race and color, though I am proud of that identity, but because they are men and women. The sum of sixteen hundred millions of dollars is invested in their bones, sinews, and flesh — is this not sufficient reason why all the friends of humanity should not endeavor with all their might and power, to overturn the vile systems of slavery.” Sarah Parker Remond, Warrington, England, 1859.

When the war began she urged support for the blockade that the United States put up to prevent trade with the rebel states.

Lancashire had a long history of liberalism and opposition to slavery. The very first mass meeting opposing the slave trade was in Manchester in 1787. The speech by abolitionist campaigner Thomas Clarkson  at the old Collegiate Church, now the Cathedral, led to a petition which was signed by a fifth of the city’s population.

But these times were different. The cotton industry was part of the triangle of trade and Lancashire was dependent on the import of cotton from America. American cotton fueled the engine of their prosperity.

Britain had abolished the slave trade 1807. Slavery on English soil was not supported in English law but it remained legal in most of the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. The U.S..had ostensibly ended trade in 1807 but slavery persisted until 1865 and the home-grown trade in slaves inside the U.S. was growing. Slave owners need no longer be dependent on importing Africans –  they could breed their own.

In the two years between 1859 and 1861, Remond gave over forty-five lectures in eighteen cities and towns in England, three cities in Scotland, and four cities in Ireland. Her lectures were very well attended and often focussed on the sexual abuse of female slaves and separation of families under slavery. She was a forceful voice and her words had considerable influence. 

She spoke of corrupt American politics and the corrupt church. and also spoke fearlessly and bluntly about the sexual and economic sexual exploitation of enslaved women:  “They are exposed for sale and subjected to the most shameful indignities. The more Anglo-­Saxon blood that mingles with the blood of the slave, the more gold is poured out when the auctioneer has a woman for sale because they are sold to be concubines for white Americans.” And she told the shocking story of Margaret Garner. 

She spoke to thousands  and her words – and the reactions of her audience – were widely reported in British and American publications, including the Warrington Guardian, Warrington Times, Warrington Standard, Anti-Slavery Advocate, Bolton Chronicle, The Morning Chronicle, Manchester Times, The Liberator, among others. She shocked her listeners with the truth and raised money for the cause. 

King Cotton

When the Civil War began the Confederacy believed that the world’s demand for their cotton ensured that their biggest trade partners – Britain and France – would support them. South Carolina Senator James Hammond warned, “What would happen if no cotton were furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what everyone can imagine, but this is certain: old England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king!”

In April 1961, Union General Winfield Scott devised a plan to blockade the southern ports – called the Anaconda Plan” it was to encircle and strangle sea trade with the South.

Britain’s supply of cotton dried up. The cotton famine closed the mills and factories of Lancashire and thousands were out of work.

Mill hands and factory workers faced poverty, eviction and starvation. At one point the unemployment rate was 60%. There was widespread rioting that was often brutally suppressed. The Cavalry was brought in to put down the riots in Stalybridge where over 7,000 mill operatives were idle and three-quarters of workers were dependent on international aid and inadequate government relief schemes.

The Confederacy was confident that the workers reduced to abject poverty would support them and demand an end to the blockade.

And then came Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. It proclaimed  “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”. The Union Army was ordered to “recognize and maintain the freedom” of freed slaves. This tied the issue of slavery directly with the war and made abolition an explicit war goal. It energized the anti-slavery movement, galvanized support for the Union and strengthened the resolve of those who faced the greatest hardships in consequence of the embargo – the working class.

“Sublime Christian Heroism”

The workers in Britain supported Lincoln’s action and maintained support for the Union, Lincoln and the blockade throughout the war. They were mass meetings held in towns and cities across the country to express that support.

The cotton blockade led to a cotton famine in Lancashire and mills and factories were idle. But the mill and factory hands stood firm on their principles in spite of the personal sacrifice and hardship. A rowdy meeting at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in December 1862 was an historic show of solidarity against slavery. Workers directly affected and personally suffering from the effects resolved to keep supporting Lincoln’s embargo.

It was a principled decision to support the fight against chattel slavery that they called a ‘foul blot on civilisation’. In solidarity with the enslaved – and in support of Abraham Lincoln’s war on the Confederacy – they resolved to refuse to work on the raw cotton picked by unpaid enslaved workers in the American south.

In March 1963 the London Trades Council convened at St. James’ Hall.  3,000 workers expressed their solidarity and  “sympathy with the Northern States of America, and in favour of Negro emancipation.”  Karl Marx attended the meeting but  did not speak. 

The meeting approved a letter to Lincoln and passed two resolutions. The first hailed Lincoln and the Union, declaring that “the cause of labour and liberty is one all over the world.” It further pledged that British workers would fight against the diplomatic recognition of any government “founded on human slavery.” The second resolution condemned the support for the South among British “capitalists and journalists.”

Many mill and shipping companies wanted the Royal Navy to smash the blockade. In the port city of Liverpool – whose wealth was made through the import of cotton – it was said that there were more Confederate flags flying along the banks of the Mersey than in Virginia. But the workers held firm.

In 1863, President Lincoln wrote to the ‘working men of Manchester’ thanking them for their anti-slavery stance. 

His words were later inscribed on the pedestal of his statue that still stands in Lincoln Square, Manchester. Lincoln praised the workers for their selfless act of “sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.”

Their decision put principle over self-interest and freedom and justice above material well-being. It came at a great cost in personal hardship for thousands of families. It is a proud moment in the history of the British working class.

Remond’s powerful voice is a piece of that extraordinary legacy. The history of the abolitionist movement has many such voices and they need to be better known in these times when we are again called to speak out against racism and injustice. 

The English Woman’s Journal, founded in 1858, gave her lectures publicity 1861 when an English women’s magazine published a series on the “Lives of Distinguished Women.” The June issue featured “A Colored Lady Lecturer.” In this brief autobiography, Sarah Remond described her love for learning and her bitterness about being deprived of an education simply because she was black. http://masshumanities.org/programs/shwlp/shwlp-tour/

My strongest desire through life has been to be educated. I found the most exquisite pleasure in reading, and as we had no library, I read every book which came in my way, and I longed for more. Again and again mother would endeavor to have us placed in some private school, but being colored we were refused. —”A Colored Lady Lecturer,” 1861

Remond was a lifelong learner and in spite of the demands of her lecturing schedule she wanted to further her formal education. She was able to attend classes at Bedford College for Ladies in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury, later a part of the University of London.  She studied history, elocution, music, English literature, French, and Latin. In London, Remond lodged with the college founder Elizabeth Jesser Reid (1789-1866) – an active campaigner for abolition. 

When the Civil War ended Remond continued her activism on behalf of the freed. She was active in the London Emancipation Society and the Freedman’s Aid Association in London that solicited funds and clothing for former slaves.

As the Civil War was ending, Great Britain faced a rebellion in Jamaica. Never one to back down from the cause of freedom and justice,  Remond wrote to the London Daily News in opposition to the harsh measures British authorities has used to quell the uprising. She accused the British of acting like the United States and reflected on the change in British public opinion that had been negatively affected by Confederate propaganda.

In London Remond made many connections with political reformers and revolutionaries from Britain and the continent. With her friends Harriet Martineau, Mary Estlin and Clementia Taylor, she helped found the Ladies’ London Emancipation Society that supported a wide range of causes. The society had two male members – one active and one honorary, both Italian. The active member was Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini who led the revolutionary movement to unify Italy.  Mazzini was  a close friend of Peter and Clementia Taylor and Remond stayed at their home – Aubrey House in Holland Park. Remond became an avid supporter of the cause for Italian reunification and won Mazzini’s confidence as an effective speaker and fundraiser for the cause. The honorary member – and also her friend – was Giuseppe Garibaldi  – the general and military leader of unification.

Italy

I had a very interesting interview with General Garibaldi last week. He is a true friend of the colored race and of liberty everywhere.- Remond letter to friends in the US November 1966

Remond visited Rome and Florence and then in 1866 at the age of 42 she became a medical student at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence,  Five years later she received her professional medical practice diploma. She practiced medicine in Florence, for more than twenty years.

Hatred of race … is now the ruling element

It’s sobering to think how those prescient words still ring with great truth now. Over a century later, America and the UK are still fighting the demons of racism and white supremacy.

Remond was buried in an unmarked gave in the  Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, Italy in 1894. A campaign to raise the money for a wall plaque in her honor was successful. And there it now resides – on the wall of the cemetery.