Notable Enslaved African American Women
- Lucy Terry (c. 1730–1821) is the author of the oldest known work of literature by an African American.
- Phillis Wheatley (May 8, 1753 – December 5, 1784) was the first African-American poet and first African-American woman to publish a book.
- Margaret Garner (called Peggy) was an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America who was notorious - or celebrated - for killing her own daughter rather than allowing the child to be returned to slavery.
- Sojourner Truth (c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves.
- Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made more than thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.
- Ellen Craft (1826–1897) was a slave from Macon, Georgia who posed as a white male planter to escape from slavery. She escaped to the North on December 1848 by traveling openly by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day.
Read more about this topic: Female Slavery
Famous quotes containing the words notable, enslaved, african, american and/or women:
“a notable prince that was called King John;
And he ruled England with main and with might,
For he did great wrong, and maintained little right.”
—Unknown. King John and the Abbot of Canterbury (l. 2–4)
“There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“I think it’s unfair for people to try to make successful blacks feel guilty for not feeling guilty.... We’re unique in that we’re not supposed to enjoy the things we’ve worked so hard for.”
—Patricia Grayson, African American administrator. As quoted in Time magazine, p. 59 (March 13, 1989)
“The death of William Tecumseh Sherman, which took place to-day at his residence in the city of New York at 1 o’clock and 50 minutes p.m., is an event that will bring sorrow to the heart of every patriotic citizen. No living American was so loved and venerated as he.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Many people will say to working mothers, in effect, “I don’t think you can have it all.” The phrase for “have it all” is code for “have your cake and eat it too.” What these people really mean is that achievement in the workplace has always come at a price—usually a significant personal price; conversely, women who stayed home with their children were seen as having sacrificed a great deal of their own ambition for their families.”
—Anne C. Weisberg (20th century)