Our Sisters Crushed and Abused: Gender and Religion in the Antislavery Movement December 13, 2005

Women were organizers, lecturers, fundraisers, and activists in the American antebellum antislavery movement. Antislavery lecturers and writers crafted arguments against slavery based on natural rights and the principles of justice, but their most effective arguments were those designed to evoke empathy with slaves, particularly with the enslaved mother. Black women told their own stories, and black women and white women urged their audiences to put themselves in the place of a vulnerable slave. Powerful images of innocent women whipped, abused and separated from their children brought many converts to the antislavery cause.

Lois Horton, Professor of Sociology, George Mason University