Mary Ann Mc Cracken - Abolitionist

Abolitionist

Mary Ann led the Women's Abolitionary Ccmmittee in Belfast during the height of the anti slavery movement, wearing the famous Wedgewood brooches adorned with slave and slogan "Am I not a man and brother", and continued to promote the cause long after the spirit of radicalism had died in Belfast. By the 1850s the liberality of the 1790s had largely evaporated in the aftermath of the failure of the 1798 United Irish rebellion and the subsequent executions or exile of the leading protagonists. In 1859 Mary Ann McCracken wrote to Dr Madden saying "I am both ashamed and sorry to think that Belfast has so far degenerated in regard to the Anti-Slavery Cause".

In many ways Mary Ann McCracken had outlived her generation, and she commented to a friend how "Belfast, once so celebrated for its love of liberty, is now so sunk in the love of filthy lucre that there are but 16 or 17 female anti-slavery advocates and not one man though several Quakers…and none to distribute papers to American emigrants but an old woman within 17 days of 89". At the age of 88 she was to be seen in Belfast docks, handing out anti-slavery leaflets to those boarding ships bound for the United States, where slavery was still practised. The continued campaign of Mary Ann McCracken long after the deaths of her counterparts serves to demonstrate the strength of radicalism that existed in certain circles of Belfast society at the close of the eighteenth century.