An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 11/12/2020
No, not done. You saw the election results. It's shameful just how much work we still have to do.
Prelude | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | Email |
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"I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest: I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, AND I WILL BE HEARD."
Born to unusually well-placed free parents of color in 1824 Massachusetts, Sarah Parker Remond enjoyed a freedom unfathomable to many Black Americans of the time --among other things, a world-class education and being able to travel to places like Canada, and then to England and Italy. She got her start early --delivering her first abolitionist speech at the age of sixteen, buoyed in part by a deep sense of injustice after having been expelled from a public school for having the wrong color skin. While overseas in the late 1850s/early 1860s, she advocated for European support of the Union cause, and urged her European audiences not to back the emerging Confederacy.
Even after the Civil War, Remond lived most of her life in exile from her native U.S., settling in Italy and eventually securing a medical degree. Although details of her life post-Civil War are admittedly scarce, there is a famous anecdote of her having met with Frederick Douglass in 1886 (see Lesson #2 in this series), in Florence, where he expressed sincere admiration and thanks.
Next page - Lesson 55: T. Thomas Fortune