American National Biography Online


Douglass, Sarah Mapps (9 Sept. 1806-8 Sept. 1882),  abolitionist
and educator, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter
of Robert Douglass, Sr., a prosperous hairdresser from the island
of St. Kitts, and Grace Bustill, a milliner. Her mother was the
daughter of Cyrus Bustill, a prominent member of Philadelphia's
African-American community. Raised as a Quaker by her mother,
Douglass was alienated by the blatant racial prejudice of many
white Quakers. Although she adopted Quaker dress and enjoyed
the friendship of Quaker antislavery advocates like Lucretia
Mott, she was highly critical of the sect.

 In 1819 Grace Douglass and philanthropist James Forten established
a school for black children, where "their children might be better
taught than . . . in any of the schools . . . open to [their]
people." Sarah Douglass was educated there, taught for a while
in New York City, and then returned to take over the school.

 In 1833 Douglass joined an interracial group of women abolitionists
in establishing the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.
For almost four decades, she served the organization in many
capacities. Also active in the antislavery movement at the national
level, she attended the 1837 Anti-Slavery Convention of American
Women in New York City. The following year, when the convention
met at Philadelphia's ill-fated Pennsylvania Hall, which in 1838
was burned by an antiabolitionist mob, she was elected treasurer.
She was also a delegate at the third and final women's antislavery
convention in 1839.

 Douglass repeatedly stressed the need for African-American women
to educate themselves. In 1831 she helped organize the Female
Literary Association of Philadelphia, a society whose members
met regularly for "mental feasts," and on the eve of the Civil
War she founded the Sarah M. Douglass Literary Circle.

 Throughout the 1830s Douglass wrote poetry and prose under the
pseudonyms "Sophanisba" and "Ella." Her writings--on the blessings
of religion, the prospect of divine retribution for the sin of
slavery, the evils of prejudice, and the plight of the slave--were
published in various antislavery journals, including the Liberator,
the Colored American, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, and
the National Enquirer and Constitutional Advocate of Universal Liberty.

 During the 1830s and 1840s Douglass was beset by financial problems.
Her school never operated at a profit, and in 1838, deciding
she could no longer accept the financial backing of her parents,
she asked the Female Anti-Slavery Society to take over the school.
The experiment proved unsatisfactory, however, and in 1840 she
resumed direct control of the school, giving up a guaranteed
salary for assistance in paying the rent. In 1852, now reconciled
with the Quakers, she closed her school and accepted an appointment
to supervise the Girls' Preparatory Department of the Quaker-sponsored
Institute for Colored Youth. From 1853 to 1877 she served as
principal of the department.

 For more than forty years Douglass enjoyed a close friendship
with abolitionists Sarah Grimke and Angelina Grimke. After an
uneasy start, the relationship between the daughters of a slaveholding
family and the African-American teacher deepened into one of
great mutual respect. Sarah Grimke, fourteen years Douglass's
senior, eventually became her confidante. After her mother's
death in 1842 left Douglass as unpaid housekeeper to her father
and brothers, Grimke sympathized with her: "Worn in body & spirit
with the duties of thy school, labor awaits thee at home & when
it is done there is none to throw around thee the arms of love."

 In 1854 Douglass received an offer of marriage from the Reverend
William Douglass, a widower with nine children and the minister
of Philadelphia's prestigious St. Thomas's African Episcopal
Church. Grimke considered him eminently worthy of her friend.
He was a man of education, and his remarks about her age and
spinster status were only proof of his lively sense of humor.
As for Douglass's apprehensions about the physical aspects of
married life, the unmarried Grimke assured her, "Time will familiarize
you with the idea." The couple were married in 1855. The marriage
proved an unhappy one. On her husband's death in 1861, Douglass
wrote of her years "in that School of bitter discipline, the
old Parsonage of St. Thomas," but she acknowledged that William
Douglass had not been without his merits.

 In one respect, marriage gave Douglass a new freedom. A cause
she had long championed was the education of women on health
issues. Before her marriage, she had taken courses at the Female
Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1855 she enrolled in the
Pennsylvania Medical University and in 1858 embarked on a career
as a lecturer, confronting topics that would have been considered
unseemly for an unmarried woman to address. Her illustrated lectures
to female audiences in New York City and Philadelphia drew praise
for being both informative and "chaste."

 Through the 1860s and 1870s Douglass continued her work of reform,
lecturing, raising money for the southern freedmen and -women,
helping to establish a home for elderly and indigent black Philadelphians,
and teaching at the Institute for Colored Youth. She died in Philadelphia.

 As a teacher, a lecturer, an abolitionist, a reformer, and a
tireless advocate of women's education, Sarah Mapps Douglass
made her influence felt in many ways. Her emphasis on education
and self-improvement helped shape the lives of the many hundreds
of black children she taught in a career in the classroom that
lasted more than a half-century, while her pointed and persistent
criticism of northern racism reminded her white colleagues in
the abolitionist movement that their agenda must include more
than the emancipation of the slaves.


 Bibliography

 In her will, Douglass instructed her family to destroy all her
private correspondence, as well as her "lectures on Anatomy and
Natural History to Mothers." However, a number of letters to
and from Douglass are in the Weld-Grimke Papers at the University
of Michigan and the Antislavery Manuscripts at the Boston Public
Library. Much of her correspondence with the Grimkes has been
reprinted in Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Letters
of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke,
1822-1844 (2 vols., 1934). Douglass's role in the antislavery
movement is documented in the records of the Philadelphia Female
Anti-Slavery Society at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
and in the published proceedings of the three national women's
antislavery conventions held between 1837 and 1839. For other
accounts of Douglass's career, see Anna Bustill Smith, "The Bustill
Family," Journal of Negro History 10 (Oct. 1925): 638-44; Henry
J. Cadbury, "Negro Membership in the Society of Friends," Journal
of Negro History 21 (Apr. 1936): 153-99; Dorothy Sterling, ed.,
We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (1984);
Kenneth Ives, Black Quakers: Brief Biographies (1986); and Julie
Winch, Philadelphia's Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and
the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787-1848 (1988).

 Julie Winch



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 Julie Winch. "Douglass, Sarah Mapps";
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American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
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