In April 1865, Frederick Douglass spoke to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and said:
“Everybody asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, ‘What should we do with the Negro?’…I have but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall…And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs.”
In 1893, more than one hundred African American women were featured in Accomplished: African American Women in Victorian America, by Monroe A. Majors, M.D. (Originally published as Noted Negro Women, Their Triumphs and Activities). All these women sought the opportunity to get educated, to read, and to write. They were determined to be something or be somebody. Some were self-taught or unschooled like Sojourner Truth but possessed a remarkable speaking voice; some were college graduates, some were former slaves, but all were well-prepared for leadership and greatly influenced black life.
Some of these women used their pen as a sword with scathing editorials that fought for racial justice, women’s suffrage with a determination to end discrimination. Some used their talents to make their mark in the performing arts and were internationally known. The gifts that these musicians, composers, and visual artists left were an invaluable legacy to America.
We owe these women a debt of gratitude for the pioneering path they forged for us. They sought the freedom to stand on their own.
(See the lesson plan Avenues of Accomplishment – African American Victorian Women in America)