Vanguard

Black women in the early American republic first joined politics in their churches and in the press.

African Americans fought in America’s Revolutionary War to defend equality for all. Free African Americans built communities in Northern cities. Many leaders, Caucasian and Black, saw the United States as a white country and advocated “colonization” to relocate former slaves to Africa or the Caribbean. After the Revolutionary War, Black men could vote, though Northern states limited that right. Settlers founded Ohio and Missouri as states in which only white men could vote.

Black Americans allied in the “colored convention movement” to advocate for political rights and power. Men expected women to help build communities while also taking care of their families. Most Black women worked as domestic servants, seamstresses, laundresses and nurses. Some became church and community leaders. Women pursued education, which alarmed men.

White and Black women sometimes joined together to fight slavery.

Abolitionists proposed that they could change hearts and minds by using “moral suasion,” convincing people that slavery and racism were un-American and un-Christian...