Equal School Rights: Black Girlhood and School Desegregation in Antebellum Massachusetts

Eunice Ross. Phebe Ann Boston. Sarah Roberts. Sarah Parker Remond. Charlotte Forten Grimké. Joanna Turpin Howard. These six African American women, among others, played an integral role in the fight to desegregate public schools in antebellum Massachusetts. They authored anti-discrimination petitions, they helped to organize boycotts, and they wrote missives against racial prejudice. As this school desegregation campaign grew, so too did an activist network that bound together African American women, men, and children as well as their allies from Salem to Nantucket to Boston.