Anthologies of African American Writing

Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life: Their Words, Their Thoughts, Their Feelings

"Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life: Their Words, Their Thoughts, Their Feelings." Ed. Ruth Bogin and Bert J. Loewenberg. University Park: Penn State UP, 1976. xi+355 pp.

● Preface
Introduction: Selves and Society
● Women, Blacks, History
● Sources of Inner Wholeness
● The Family
● Responsibilities of Black Women
● Rights for Blacks, Rights for Women
● The Solidarity of Humankind

I: "To Knit Together the Broken Ties of Family Kinship"
● Silvia Dubois / from "Silvia Dubois (Now 116 Years Old): A Biography of the Slave Who Whipped Her Mistress and Gained Her Freedom, as Told to C. W. Larison, M.D." (1883)
● Cornelia / My Mother Was the Smartest Black Woman in Eden (1929 or 1930)
● Louisa Picquet / from "Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon: A Tale of Southern Life" (1861)
● Elizabeth Keckley / from "Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House" (1868)
● Elleanor Eldridge / from [Frances Whipple Green(e)] "Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge" (1838)
● Susie King Taylor / from "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, late 1st S.C. Volunteers" (1902)
● Annie Louise Burton / from "Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days" (1909)
● Ellen Craft / from [William Craft] "Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery" (1860)

II: "An Arrow from the Bent Bow of the Gospel"
● Elizabeth / from "Elizabeth. A Colored Minister of the Gospel, born in Slavery" (1889)
● Jarena Lee / from "Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel" (1849)
● Amanda Berry Smith / from "An Autobiography: the Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist" (1893)
● Ann Plato / Lines, Written upon Being Examined in School Studies for the Preparation of a Teacher (1841)
● Ann Plato / The Infant Class. Written in School (1841)
● Ann Plato / To the First of August (1841)
● Ann Plato / Education (1841)

III: "Let Us Make a Mighty Effort and Arise"
● Maria Stewart / from "Religion and the Pure Principle of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build" (1831)
● Maria Stewart / Lecture, Delivered at the Franklin Hall, Boston, 21 September 1832
● Maria Stewart / An Address, Delivered at the African Masonic Hall, Boston, 27 February 1833
● Maria Stewart / Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston, 21 Sept. 1833
● Nancy Prince / from "Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince" (2nd ed. 1853)
● Harriet Tubman / from Sarah Bradford, "Harriet Tubman, The Moses of Her People" (1886)
● Sarah Parker Remond / Miss Remond's First Lecture in Dublin (1859)
● Sojourner Truth / Speech at Woman's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, 1851
● Sojourner Truth / Letter describing her interview with President Lincoln (1864)
● Sojourner Truth / Speech at the American Equal Rights Association convention (1867)
● Sojourner Truth / Remarks recorded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1867)
● Sojourner Truth / Petition for granting Western lands to freedmen (1870)
● Sojourner Truth / Speech on the 8th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, New Year's Day, Boston, 1871
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / Woman's Political Future (1893)
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / Duty to Dependent Races (1891)
● Ida Wells-Barnett / from "U.S. Atrocities" (1892)
● Fannie Barrier Williams / Religious Duty to the Negro (1894)
● Fannie Barrier Williams / Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation (1893)

IV: "To Get an Education and To Teach My People"
● Charlotte Forten Grimké / from "The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten" (pub. 1953)
● Charlotte Forten Grimké / Interesting Letter from Miss Charlotte L. Forten (1862)
● Lucy Craft Laney / The Burden of the Educated Colored Woman (1899)
● Frances Jackson Coppin / from "Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching" (1913)
● Frances Jackson Coppin / Comment on address by Fannie Barrier Williams (1893)
● Anna Julia Cooper / The Higher Education of Women (1892)
● Anna Julia Cooper / Comment on address by Fannie Barrier Williams (1893)

Bibliography
Index

● Includes a 36-page introduction by the editors; there is also a brief headnote to each of the four sections of the anthology and headnotes (from 1/2 page to 2 pages in length) to each author selection, as well as annotations supplied by the editors where needed.
● In the first item, from an oral history with the former slave Silvia Dubois, the editors have taken a text that was published with her speech rendered in dialect and have presented it in standardized form.

● "'Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life' presents selections from the writings of two dozen representative black women leaders of the past century, with a general introduction relating them to their forebears in colonial times and to their descendants in the twentieth century. Each selection is introduced with a biographical headnote, and the book contains a bibliography of works by or about these women and other black women. The selections are grouped in four parts, emphasizing respectively family relationships, religious activities, political and reformist movements, and education. The women represented in this book comprise a cross section of historically significant black women in the nineteenth century. Ten were born free, eight were freed before the Civil War, and six were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation; eight were born in the North and sixteen in the South" (publisher's description; WorldCat)

● Dedication: "To the memory of Bert James Lowenberg teacher, friend, colleague who did not live to see this work in print" (Ruth Bogin)

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