Black History and Women Timeline 1860-1869

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Women and Black American History: 1860-1869

1860

• founded in 1832 and accepting male and female, White and Black students, by 1860 Oberlin College had a student population that was one-third Black American

1861

• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, was published, including descriptions of the raping and sexual assault of enslaved women

• Laura Towne, from Pennsylvania, went to the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina to teach formerly enslaved people—she ran a school in the Sea Islands until 1901—, adopting several Black children with her friend and teaching partner, Ellen Murray

1862

• Charlotte Forten arrived in the Sea Islands to work with Laura Towne, teaching formerly enslaved people

• Mary Jane Patterson, graduating from Oberlin College, was the first Black American woman to graduate from an American college

• Congress abolished slavery in Washington, DC

• (July 16) Ida B. Wells (Wells-Barnett) born (muckraking journalist, lecturer, activist, anti-lynching writer, and activist)

• (July 13-17) many New York Black Americans killed in draft riots

• (September 22) Emancipation Proclamation issued, freeing enslaved people within territory controlled by the Union

1863

• Fanny Kemble published Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation which opposed the practice of enslavement and served as anti-slavery propaganda

• Memoir of Old Elizabeth a Coloured Woman published: the autobiography of an African Methodist Episcopal evangelist

• Susie King Taylor, Black American army nurse with the Union army, began writing her journal, later published as In Reminiscences of My Life in Camp: Civil War Nurse

• Mary Church Terrell born (activist, clubwoman)

1864

• Rebecca Ann Crumple graduated from the New England Medical College, becoming the first Black American woman M.D.

1865

• The institution of slavery was abolished in the United States with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution

• American Equal Rights Association founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Lucy Stone, and others, to work for equal rights for Black Americans and women -- the group split in 1868 over which group (women or Black American men) should take priority

• Charlotte Forten published "Life on the Sea Islands" about her experiences as a Black American northerner who went south to teach formerly enslaved people

• sculptor Edmonia Lewis produced a bust of Robert Gould Shaw, who led Black troops in the Civil War

• (March 9) Mary Murray Washington born (educator, founder of the Tuskegee Woman's Club, wife of Booker T. Washington)

• (April 11) Mary White Ovington born (social worker, reformer, NAACP founder)

• (-1873) many women teachers, nurses, and physicians went to the South to help formerly enslaved Black Americans by founding schools and providing other services, as part of the Freedmen's Bureau effort or as missionaries with religious or more secular organizations

1866

• President Andrew Johnson vetoed funding for and extension of the Freedmen's Bureau, but Congress overrode the veto

• Old Elizabeth died

1867

• Rebecca Cole graduated from medical school, the second Black American woman to do so. She went on to work with Elizabeth Blackwell in New York.

• Edmonia Lewis created sculpture "Forever Free" communicating the response of Black Americans when they heard of the end of slavery

• (July 15) Maggie Lena Walker born (banker, executive)

• (December 23) Sarah Breedlove Walker (Madam C.J. Walker) born

1868

• 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted U.S. citizenship to Black American men -- for the first time explicitly defining U.S. citizens as male. Attitudes towards the importance of this change split the American Equal Rights Association within the year. Much later, the 14th Amendment became the basis for various equal protection cases advocating for women's rights.

• Elizabeth Keckley, dressmaker and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, published her autobiography, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House

• sculptor Edmonia Lewis produced Hagar in the Wilderness

1869

• biography Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People by Sarah Bradford published; proceeds funded a home for the elderly founded by Harriet Tubman

• National Woman Suffrage Association founded (NWSA), with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as first president

• (November) American Woman Suffrage Association founded (AWSA), with Henry Ward Beecher as first president

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