Sarah Parker Remond

Sarah Parker Remond (June 6, 1826 – December 13, 1894) was an American-born British lecturer, activist, abolitionist campaigner and Italian physician.

Born a free woman in the state of Massachusetts, she became an international activist for human rights and women's suffrage. Remond made her first public speech against the institution of slavery when she was 16 years old, and delivered abolitionist speeches throughout the northeastern United States. One of her brothers, Charles Lenox Remond, became known as an orator and they occasionally toured together for their abolitionist lectures.

Eventually becoming an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in 1858 Remond chose to travel to Britain to gather support for the growing abolitionist cause in the United States. While in London, Remond also studied at Bedford College, lecturing during term breaks. During the American Civil War, she appealed for support among the British public for the Union and their blockade of the Confederacy. After the conclusion of the war in favor of the Union, she appealed for funds to support the millions of the newly emancipated freedmen in the American South.

From England, Remond went to Italy in 1867 to pursue medical training in Florence, where she became a physician. She practiced medicine for nearly 20 years in Italy and never returned to the United States, dying in Rome at the age of 68.

Early years

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Remond was one of the between eight and 11 children of Nancy (née Lenox) and John Remond. Nancy had been born in Newton, daughter of Cornelius Lenox, a Revolutionary War veteran who had fought in the Continental Army, and Susanna Perry. John Remond was a free person of color who immigrated to Massachusetts from the Dutch colony of Curaçao as a 10-year-old child in 1798. John and Nancy married in October 1807, in the African Baptist Church in Boston. In Salem, they built a successful catering, provisioning, and hairdressing business, becoming well-established businesspeople and activists. The Remond family also took in as boarders students who were attending the local girls' academy, including Charlotte Forten (later Grimké). "owned the fashionable Ladies Hair Work Salon" in Salem, as well as the biggest wig factory in the state. Their oldest sister Nancy married James Shearman, an oyster dealer. The Remond brothers were Charles Remond, who became an abolitionist and orator; and John Remond, who married Ruth Rice, one of two women elected to the finance committee of the 1859 New England Colored Citizens' Convention. Remond rose to prominence among abolitionists in 1853, when she refused to sit in a segregated theater section. She had bought tickets by post for herself and a group of friends, including historian William C. Nell, to the popular opera, Don Pasquale, at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston. When they arrived at the theatre, Remond was shown to segregated seating. After refusing to accept it, she was forced to leave the theatre and pushed down some stairs.

In 1856, the American Anti-Slavery Society hired a team of lecturers, including Remond; Charles, already well known in the U.S. and Britain; and Susan B. Anthony, to tour New York State addressing anti-slavery issues. Over the next two years, she, her brother, and others also spoke in New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Sarah Clay wrote that Remond's every word "waked up dormant aspirations which would vibrate through the ages."

Abby Kelley Foster, a noted abolitionist in Massachusetts, encouraged Remond when they toured together in 1857. On December 28, 1858, Remond wrote in a letter to Foster:

Anti-slavery lecturing in Great Britain

thumb|right|200px|[[Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. Remond and Douglass toured together in Britain.]]

As a good speaker and fundraiser, Remond was invited to take the cause of the American abolitionists to Britain, as her brother Charles had done 10 years earlier. Accompanied by the Reverend Samuel May Jr., she sailed from Boston for Liverpool on December 28, 1858, on the steamer Arahia. They arrived in Liverpool on January 12, 1859, after a discomforting trip in the winter. The ship had become covered with ice and snow, and rolled and tossed so much that many of the passengers became ill, including Remond. raising large sums of money for the anti-slavery cause. Between 1859 and 1861, she gave more than 45 lectures in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Although before she sailed to the UK, Remond expected to confront prejudice similar as what she encountered in the United States – writing to Abby Kelly Foster that she feared not "the wind nor the waves, but I know that no matter how I go, the spirit of prejudice will meet me" – she met with a greater acceptance in Britain. "I have been received here as a sister by white women for the first time in my life," she wrote; "I have received a sympathy I never was offered before." In her short autobiography, written in 1861, she observed that "prejudice against colour has always been the one thing, above all others, which has cast its gigantic shadow over my whole life." During her speaking tours of the British Isles, Remond and her fellow U.S. abolitionists drew comparisons between American slavery and the plight of the British working class during the Industrial Revolution, leading to abolitionists in Britain to note that their lectures were "packed almost entirely by [the] working class".

Once the American Civil War (1861–1865) began, Remond worked to build support in Britain for the Union blockade of the Confederacy and the Union cause. Because British textile factories relied heavily on American cotton from the Southern United States, Remond focused on this in her lectures. In an 1862 speech, she implored her London audience to "Let no diplomacy of statesmen, no intimidation of slaveholders, no scarcity of cotton, no fear of slave insurrections, prevent the people of Great Britain from maintaining their position as the friend of the oppressed negro." After the conclusion of the Civil War, Remond changed her focus to lecture on behalf of the millions of freedmen in the United States, soliciting funds and clothing for them. She was an active member of the London Emancipation Society and the Freedman's Aid Association in London. Her lecture "The Freeman or the Emancipated Negro of the Southern States of the United States," delivered in London, was published in The Freedman (London) in 1867.

Education and later years

From October 1859 to June 1861, Remond undertook studies at Bedford College (later part of the University of London and now merged with Royal Holloway College). She studied classical academic subjects: French, Latin, English literature, music, history and elocution, continuing to give her own lectures during college vacations. During this period, she also traveled to Rome and Florence in Italy. Returning briefly to the U.S., Remond joined with the American Equal Rights Association working for equal suffrage for women and African Americans. Redmond met some discrimination whilst in Britain, if less overt than in the United States but her disillusionment grew after the brutal punishment and executions of Black protestors in the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica by the British. After completing her studies and becoming a doctor, she remained in Florence for many years, then resided in Rome.

In Italy, on April 25, 1877, Remond married Lazzaro Pintor (1833–1913), an Italian office worker originally from Sardinia.

Tribute

In 1999 the Massachusetts State House honored six outstanding women of the state by installing a series of six tall marble panels with a bronze bust in each; the busts are of Remond, Dorothea Dix, Florence Luscomb, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, and Lucy Stone. Two quotations from each of these women are etched on their own marble panel. The wall behind the panels has wallpaper made of six government documents repeated over and over, with each document being related to a cause of one or more of the women.

The 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby, includes two pieces by Sarah Parker Remond: "Why Slavery is Still Rampant" and "The Negro Race in America" (a letter to the editor of The Daily News, London, in 1866). Additionally, her legacy informs Delia Jarrett-Macauley's contribution to the anthology, "The Bedford Women", which recounts Remond's story.

In 2020, the University College London renamed its Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisation the "UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre", with Professor Paul Gilroy as its Founding Director.

The best-selling novel, La linea del colori: Il Grand Tour di Lafanu Brown, by Somalian writer Igiaba Scego (Florence: Giunti, 2020), in Italian, combines the characters of African-American sculptor Edmonia Lewis and Sarah Parker Remond and is dedicated to Rome and to these two figures.

In 2021, the University of Chester detailed plans to relocate the majority of its teaching provision to Warrington town center, housed in a property newly renamed the Sarah Parker Remond Building. In April 2023, the relocation was celebrated with the unveiling of a blue heritage plaque in honor of Remond.

In September 2021, Remond was honored in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, where she spoke on her 1859–1860 tour of England and Ireland campaigning on the evils of enslavement, having been invited by Elizabeth Dawson of the Wakefield Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. After Remond delivered her lecture, the mixed-gender Wakefield Anti-Slavery Association was established on January 12, 1860, at the Corn Exchange.

In 2022, the unveiling in London of a Nubian Jak Community Trust commemorative blue plaque in her honour was announced, taking place on March 25.

In 2023 The Guardian commissioned a portrait of Remond by Claudette Johnson as part of its Cotton Capital project.

In 2025, the exhibition The Warp/ The Weft/ The Wake at Manchester Art Gallery included a work by artist Holly Graham to commemorate when Remond made a speech on the site in 1859. The installation was a blue cotton dress printed with text about the abolition of slavery.

References

External links

Sarah Remond at the African American Registry
"Sarah Parker Remond: A Daughter of Salem, Massachusetts", website dedicated to her.
Denise Oliver Velez, "Women's history: The abolitionists", Daily Kos, 16 March 2014.
"African-American abolitionist and inspiring leader, Sarah Parker Remond (1815–1894)", Royal Holloway University of London.
Lucy Jordan, "A voice for freedom: The life of Sarah Parker Remond", Leading Women, University of London.
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Sarah Parker Remond Centre
Sirpa Salenius, "Transcript: In the words of Sarah Parker Remond"