“Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?”

African-American women held as slaves were particularly vulnerable to abuse at the hands of their white owners. This engraving appeared in abolitionist George Bourne’s Slavery Illustrated in Its Effects upon Women, published in 1837. It highlighted the connections between the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements, as some women abolitionists, such as Sarah and Angelina Grimke, used the anti-slavery cause to address their own plight as women. The connections they drew were highly controversial, and many anti-slavery organizations were split over the issue of women’s rights.

Source: George Bourne, Slavery Illustrated in Its Effects upon Women (1837)—Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.