Abolitionist, lecturer and physician, Sarah Parker Remond was born free on June 6, 1826, in Salem, Massachusetts. She was the sister of fellow abolitionist and orator, Charles Lenox Remond. The family were friends with William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and her father was a life-long member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Despite being born free, her parents had experienced racism and were aware of the conditions for other Black people in the USA. As a free Black person, Sarah was able to learn to read and write. Yet, despite her family being prosperous, because of her color, she received limited schooling. As a child, Sarah in 1835, was refused admittance to the Salem Public School, despite passing the entrance exam., because of their race.
The Remonds tried to place their children in a private school, but they were rejected because of their race. When Sarah and her sisters were accepted to a local high school for girls which was not segregated, they were later expelled, as the school committee was planning to found a separate school for African American children. This event compelled her family to briefly relocate to Newport, Rhode Island in order to provide for her education, and motivated her father to campaign for the desegregation of Salem schools. There they hoped to find a les racist environment. However, the schools refused to accept Black students. Some influential African Americans established a private school, where Remond was educated. In 1841, the Remond family returned to Salem.
Sarah continued her education on her own, attending concerts and lectures, and reading widely in books, pamphlets and newspapers borrowed from friends, or purchased from the anti-slavery society of her community, which sold many inexpensive titles. The Remond family also took in as boarders students who were attending the local girls' academy, including Charlotte Forten (later Grimké) who would go on to be an anti-slavery activist, poet, and educator. Education was hence, highly valued by her family. Growing up in the United States, she faced substantial racial prejudice. While many of her siblings went into business trades like catering or hairdressing, Sarah chose to work as a lecturer. Throughout her early adolescence, she attended numerous anti-slavery speeches.
Salem in the 1840s was a center of anti-slavery activity, and the whole family was committed to the rising abolitionist movement in the United States. The Remonds' home was a haven for Black and White abolitionists. They hosted many of the movement's leaders. On many occasions they would house more than one fugitive slave fleeing north to freedom. Her father was a life member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and her mother was one of the founders of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society. Sarah's older brother Charles was the first African American lecturer of the American Anti-Slavery Society's and considered a leading Black abolitionist. With her mother and sisters, Sarah was an active member of the state and county female anti-slavery societies, including the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
Her mother not only taught her daughters the household skills of cooking and sewing but also to seek liberty lawfully as she wanted them to take part in society. Sarah developed connections with well-known figures like Frederick Douglass and Ellen Craft, as well as, women’s rights speaker Susan B. Anthony. She also regularly attended antislavery lectures in Salem and Boston. With financial security rooted primarily in food catering and hair salons, the men and women of the Remond clan actively supported antislavery and equal rights for all. Sarah Remond became an anti-slavery lecturer, delivering her first lecture against slavery at the age of sixteen, along with her brother Charles in Groton, Massachusetts, in July 1842.
Sarah’s tenacity and willingness to challenge authority became evident in 1853, when she refused to sit in a segregated theatre 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, Sarah was shown to segregated seating. After refusing to accept it, she was forced to leave the theatre and pushed down some stairs. Sarah took the matter to the press and to the police. She sued for damages, and the theatre was fined and made to pay the legal costs. In addition, Sarah was awarded $500, and an admission by theatre management that she was wronged. Subsequently, the court ordered the theatre to integrate all seating.
Sarah became an active anti-slavery speaker after she was hired by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1856 to tour New York State to address those issues. Like her brother, Sarah’s initial American speaking circuit served as a stepping-stone to transnational networking. Other lecturers included her brother Charles, already well known in the U.S. and Britain, and Susan B. Anthony. They were 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. She and other African Americans were often given poor accommodation due to racial discrimination. She and her brother were also supporters of women’s suffrage, both speaking at woman’s rights conventions.
Although relatively inexperienced, Sarah rapidly became an effective speaker. William Lloyd Garrison praised her "calm, dignified manner, her winning personal appearance and her earnest appeals to the conscience and the heart". Over time, she became one of the society's most persuasive and powerful lecturers. After honing her skills lecturing against slavery in the Northeast and Canada Sarah expanded her reach across the ocean. In December of 1858, she travelled to England, accompanied by the Reverend Samuel May, Jr. to garner support for the abolitionist cause in cities like Bristol, Manchester, and Liverpool. On January 21, 1859, Sarah gave her first antislavery lecture in England. Her second lecture, 'Slave Life in America', took place just a few days later. During these speeches, she spoke eloquently of the inhumane treatment of slaves in the United States, her stories shocking many of her listeners.
Shortly afterwards, Sarah sailed to Ireland. In Dublin, just as her brother Charles, Frederick Douglass and many other abolitionists had done, she gave lectures on anti-slavery. She also described the discrimination endured by free African Americans throughout the United States. As an orator, Sarah Remond also sought to make the concerns of Black women heard. She also promoted civil rights, particularly the desegregation of public spaces. Remond was praised for her speeches, in which she spoke out against slavery and racial discrimination, stressing the sexual exploitation of Black women under slavery. She called on common themes found in sentimental fiction, such as family, womanhood, and marriage, to evoke an emotional response in her audience.
A free-thinker, she strongly supported women’s rights, particularly education and professional training. Over the next three years, between 1859 and 1861, Sarah lectured to crowds in cities throughout the British Isles, raising large sums of money for the anti-slavery cause. In all she gave more than forty-five lectures in England, Ireland, and Scotland. During her tour of Ireland, she compared the plight of the African slave to the working-class laborers in her audience, which worried her middle and upper class sponsors somewhat. Sarah’s time in Ireland coincided with the arrival of six political refugees from the Italian states, known as the Neapolitan exiles, who were seeking the unification and independence of Italy. Their meeting sparked Sarah’s life-long interest in Italy and Italian politics.
Over the period of time, she was joined by Frederick Douglass, he having left America to avoid arrest following John Brown’s unsuccessful insurrection. The two friends lectured on a number of occasions together although, tellingly, Frederick always received the top billing. In November 1860, as America descended towards the civil war, she was one of a group of powerful women abolitionists who called for a peaceful ending to slavery:
"We earnestly and cordially entreat all who love our native land in sincerity, whether Europeans or Americans, to unite with us more numerously and more generously than ever, to meet the demands of a period of crisis unparalleled in the history of our country new, indeed, in the history of the world. For when before has it ever happened that freedom has been sought from among dominant people for down-trodden one, on so grand a scale this?"
Because British textile factories relied heavily on American cotton from the Southern United States, she 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". During this period, she raised money for the anti-slavery cause and encouraged British support for the Union. After the conclusion of the Civil War, her focus changed once more and she began to lecture on behalf of the millions of freedmen in the United States, soliciting funds and clothing for them. During this period, she also traveled to Rome and Florence in Italy.
Remond continued to be involved in the abolitionist and feminist causes in Britain. She was a member first of the London Emancipation Committee, and then helped found and served on the executive committee of the Ladies' London Emancipation Society, which was organized in 1863. Remond is thought to be the only Black woman who was among the 1500 signatories to a women-only 1866 petition requesting the right of women to vote. Whilst in London, she realized her long-term ambition to receive further education. Sarah enrolled as a student at the Ladies’ College in Bedford Square, later part of the University of London. She studied classical academic subjects: French, Latin, English literature, music, history and elocution, continuing to give her own lectures during college vacations.
During a brief return to the U.S., Sarah joined with the American Equal Rights Association working for equal suffrage for women and African Americans. Sarah continued her studies at the London University College and graduated as a nurse. Sarah visited Switzerland sometime in 1867. At the age of 42, she moved permanently to Florence. There she earned a medical degree, and became a doctor. She practiced medicine for more than 20 years, never returning to the United States. Her sister Caroline and Maritcha ended up joining her from the United States. Even from a distance though, she was a critic of Post-War Reconstruction and the prejudice that accompanied it. In 1877, Sarah, now aged 50, married an Italian man, Lazzaro Pintor, an Italian office worker originally from Sardinia.
Ten years later, Frederick Douglass and his second wife, Helen, who were undertaking a year-long tour of Europe, visited Sarah and Lazzaro and two of Sarah’s sisters, who were now all residing in Rome. Following this, Frederick wrote that the Remond sisters, “detest prejudice of color and say they would not live in the United States if you would or could give them America.” Sarah never returned to the United States, but died in Rome in 1894, where she was buried. By creating a feminist abolitionist agenda, she united the “woman’s question” and abolition together in a way that her male compatriots could not. In this way, Sarah carved out a pathway that was uniquely her own amongst abolitionists, and she made a contribution to transatlantic anti-slavery that was both extraordinary and invaluable.