In commemoration of Black History Month, please join members and friends of the Museum of Newport Irish History for the fourth lecture of its 21st Annual Lecture Series. Guest speaker, Maureen D. Brady, will give a talk titled, “Sarah Parker Remond: A Black Abolitionist in Ireland, 1859.”

The lecture will be presented virtually, via Zoom, at 6:00 pm. There is no fee, but reservations are required to receive the login information.

The lecture is made possible by a generous gift from Virginia Pittsley, given in memory of her husband, Bill Pittsley, and their son, Jay Pittsley.

To RESERVE, use the Event Website link, below, where you may find the speaker bio and recordings of past lectures.

Questions? Please write Ann at NewportIrishHistory@gmail.com or phone (401) 841-5493.

TALK OVERVIEW:
Sarah Remond was the free-born daughter of activist parents who owned successful businesses in Salem, MA, where she was born. When the Salem school board implemented segregation, Sarah was duly dismissed, persuading her parents to move to Newport, RI, to enable their daughter to attend a well-regarded private school for Black children. The family resided in Newport for six years (1835-41), and re-established their business while Sarah received an education during her formative pre-teen and teenage years. This educational foundation would prove invaluable to Sarah’s later life when she became a devoted abolitionist and dynamic agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1859, Sarah traveled to Ireland on a lecture tour, presenting to standing-room-only crowds, becoming the first African American woman to speak publicly in the country. Like her friend Frederick Douglass, her time in Ireland was transformative, changing the trajectory of her life’s work. She never returned to America, choosing self-imposed exile over socially-imposed inequality, achieving successes that would have been impossible in the land of her birth, while establishing herself as a civil rights activist, feminist, and international champion of justice.

ABOUT THE PHOTO:
Photo of Sarah Parker Remond taken in 1865. From the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum.