She and a man named John Brown decided to ride into Virginia and attack the Federal Arsenal to frighten the Union into ending slavery. The plan failed and Brown was hanged, Mary barely escaped with her life. In 1860 she returned to San Francisco, however, after the Emancipation Proclamation and the California Right-of-Testimony of 1863 allowed her to do so safely, she openly declared her race and personally orchestrated court battles to test the right of testimony laws. Up until this point she, in front of the general public, always had on the guise of being a white person since she could pass it off so well. Her landmark achievement was in 1868 with her battle for the right to ride the San Francisco trolleys – it set precedent in the California Supreme Court.
She was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, who was a persuasive preacher. Mr. Beecher was also a founder of the American Bible Society, who were active in the anti-slavery movement. Harriet was one of thirteen children, her mother died when she was five years old. After her mothers death she grew closer to her sister Catherine. She began teaching in Catherine’s school, and writing books with her soon after she turned thirteen.
It's an inspirational narrative written from the standpoint of a victorious woman speaking directly to those who wish to oppress and defame her character. In the first stanza, it appears as if she is speaking on behalf of a collective experience of black women, who at the time were battling against being blamed not only by sociologists but also black male nationalists for the destruction of the black family as a result of slavery creating a matriarchal family structure. She writes; You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. That verse alone appears
Whites were terrified of the idea of a successful Black that anytime they stepped “out of line” they were brutally beaten, harassed or worse similar to the case of the three men in Memphis, lynched. Living as a Black woman in the segregated South Wells witnessed firsthand how racial hatred was affecting the growth of Blacks. This gross injustice defining Black life inspired her to launch a crusade against lynching until her death in 1931. Throughout her examination of economic and social causes of racial oppression such as share cropping, racial riots, voting and the idea of Black males raping white women, she developed her theoretical analysis of lynching in the South. The nation, in theory, believed that they had solved the issue of racism in the United States: not only was the Civil War over, but also, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were passed.
In 1677, she and her family moved to Wethersfield, Connecticut and the next year Rowlandson was widowed. She remarried in 1691 to Captain Samuel Talcott and lived to the age of 73 (Campbell). Rowlandson’s written account of her ordeal went through four printings in the first year “to become the first and perhaps most powerful example of the captivity narrative, an American genre that would influence future generations of American writers and moviemakers” (Sweeney). The emotional and detailed descriptions of her captivity are always connected to her belief in God, either through direct biblical quotes, or by references to God. In Puritan fashion, the “account of her captivity .
Katherine Anne Porter was born on May 15, 1890 in Indian Creek Texas. Her mother’s name was Mary Alice Jones Porter, and her father was Harrison Boone Porter. Katherine seemed to blame her father for her mother’s death in 1892 she was then raised by her grandmother, Catherine Ann Skaggs Porter. Her grandmother told her many intriguing stories of the civil war and their families past; this was Katherine’s first introduction to storytelling. At the age of 16, she made an awful harsh decision, she ran away to marry her first of four husbands John Koontz.
Barton delivered aid to soldiers of both north and south. On the other hand Harriet was a runaway slave from Maryland who became known as the “Moses of her people.” Around the course of 10 years, and at great personal risk, she led hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses where runaway slaves could stay on their journey north to freedom. During the civil war she was a spy for the federal forces in South Carolina as well as a nurse. For some women, working as nurses or spies was not enough. As many as 400 women disguised themselves as men to enlist and fight for both the Union and Confederacy, risking imprisonment if they were caught.
In chapter 11 of the book Sisters in the Struggle edited by Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin, the contributing author Cynthia Fleming uses the life experience of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson to detail women’s role in the Black Panther movement. Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson is introduced to the reader as a strong black woman whose role within the black power movement became public example to the involvement that most women played in the struggle for equal rights. Fleming essay of this prominent SNCC leader demonstrates the increasing militant role that is bestowed upon women of the era. Fleming uses Robinson’s story to deconstruct claims by male Black Power advocates that women in the movement were just doing a “man’s job”.
When an African American slave decides to start her own struggle in life, not even General Washington and his troops can stop her. “Chains,” by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a historical fiction novel that tells the story of a slave, Isabel Gardener and her fight for freedom. Isabel discovers her inner strength and her true power as she rises from slave to patriot and realizes her true potential. It all starts when Isabel’s kind mistress, Mrs. Finch, dies due to smallpox. Although she wrote in her will that Isabel and her little sister Ruth would be freed after her death, a wicked and greedy relative, Robert FInch decides to sell both orphans for a great deal of money.
Throughout her life one would notice a pattern that shows the young girl developing the same signs of madness (within the marriage) in her adulthood that she had seen from her mother when she was eleven. It is important to mention that these tensions arouse after the 1833 Emancipation Act has been put into place, which may have been a main factor that caused frictions between the whites and the blacks residing in the early nineteenth century in British owned Jamaica. The decree of the Emancipation freed the blacks who were residing with the United States, not including those who were fighting on the Union side in states that were bordered or those in already in Union control in southern regions. This Proclamation was declared by the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The act of enslavement arises in many forms on numerous events throughout the book.