On August 2nd, we celebrated the life and times of Sarah Mapps Douglass (September 9, 1806 – September 8, 1882); an African- American educator, abolitionist, writer, and public lecturer. Sarah Mapps Douglass is well-known as an African-American abolitionist and a long-time educator of black Philadelphians. Her career spanned nearly sixty years. However, her artistic work is less well-known. She was actively involved with her brother, Robert Douglass, Jr., in producing such commercial art works as signs, banners, advertisements and fire company regalia. Her artistry is displayed in the album in three floral watercolors with elegantly caligraphed poems in Amy Caseys album. Sarah Mapps Douglass was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a prominent abolitionist family, the only daughter of Robert Douglass, a hairdresser, and Grace Bustill Douglass, a milliner and teacher. Sarahs grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, a Quaker who owned a bakery, operated a school run from his home, was one of the early members of the Free African Society, an early African -American charity organization. Sarah grew up among Philadelphias elite, and according to C. Peter Ripley [s]he received extensive [private] tutoring as a child. In 1825, Sarah began teaching in Philadelphia at a school organized by her mother with James Forten, the wealthy African-American sail-maker. Starting in 1833, she taught briefly at the Free African School for Girls, before establishing her own school for African-American girls. She was soon recognized as a talented teacher, of the sciences and arts, at which she herself excelled, and for holding her students to high standards. In 1838, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society took over the school, retaining Sarah as the headmaster. In 1854, the school merged with the Institute for Colored Youth – now Cheyney State University – on Lombard Street, and Sarah become the head of the primary department, a position she held until her retirement in 1877. Sarah’s role as an activist began as early as 1831, when at twenty-five, she organized the collection of money to send to William Lloyd Garrison to support the The Liberator. Sarah also helped with the creation of the Female Literary Society, a group of African American women dedicated to improving their skills and deepening their identification with slave sisters. Black literacy societies began forming in urban Northern cities in the late 1820s and early 1830s. These societies turned to reading as an invaluable method of acquiring knowledge and to writing as a means of asserting identity, recording information, and communicating with a black public that ranged from the literate to the semi-literate to the illiterate. Societies were based on the idea that for the welfare and survival of the community, individuals had to come together in larger groups that would both create a sense of national identity and collective spirit and would extend essential knowledge to the black community, both free and enslaved. With her mother, she was a founding member (1833) of the bi-racial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. The Society, from the beginning, was interracial, including members of African-American descent like Sarah along with white women members, like Lucretia Mott. The purpose of the society was to secure the total abolition of slavery as soon as possible, without any compensation to the slaveholders as well as to procure equal civil and religious rights with the white people of the United States. On December 14, 1833, the society finalized their Constitution, which stated that they deemed it their duty as professing Christians to manifest [their] abhorrence of the flagrant injustice and deep sin of slavery by united and vigorous exertions. Membership in the society was open to any woman who subscribed to these views and contributed to the Society. From 1853 to 1877, Sarah studied anatomy, female health and hygiene, and acquired medical basic training at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania – becoming the first African-American female student – and at the Ladies Institute of Pennsylvania Medical University. Sarah’s work at the medical institutes influenced her decision to lecture and teach evening classes to African-American women at meetings of the Banneker Institute on issues of physiology and hygiene. In 1855 she married William Douglass, the African-American rector of St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church, a widower with nine children. After her husband’s death in 1861, Sarah resumed her antislavery activities and teaching full-time. She died in 1882 in Philadelphia.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 02:06:36 +0000
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