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Women and African American History: 1870-1899

• 15th Amendment to the US Constitution gave the right to vote without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude -- but the Amendment did not apply to African American women (or any other women)

• Susan McKinney Stewart, an early African American woman physician, received an M.D. from the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women

• (October 6) Fisk University Jubilee Singers began their first-ever national tour, singing gospel music to raise money for the University

• (April) Charlotte Ray admitted to the Washington, DC, bar; she graduated that year from Howard University Law School

• Sarah Moore Grimke died (abolitionist, womens rights proponent, sister of Angelina Grimke Weld)

• (July 10) Mary McLeod Bethune born

• Civil Rights Act of 1875 outlaws discrimination in public accomodations (invalidated in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896)

• Rutherford B. Hayes ended Reconstruction by withdrawing US Army troops from the South

• Mary Eliza Mahoney graduated from the nursing school at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston, becoming the first African American professional nurse

• Angelina Emily Grimke Weld died (abolitionist, womens rights proponent, sister of Sarah Moore Grimke)

• (October 20) Lydia Maria Child died (abolitionist, writer)

• (November 11) Lucretia Mott died (Quaker abolitionist and womens rights advocate)

• Tennessee passed first Jim Crow laws

• Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles founded Spelman College, the first college for African American women

• (September 8) Sarah Mapps Douglass died

• (November 26) Sojourner Truth died (abolitionist, womens rights proponent, minister, lecturer)

• Mary Ann Shadd Cary became the second African American woman in the United States to earn a law degree

• Mary Church Terrell (then Mary Church) graduated from Oberlin College (activist, clubwoman)

• (January 24) Helen Pitts married Frederick Douglass, setting off controversy and opposition to their interracial

BlackFacts Details

Abolitionist, Robert Purvis was born, 1810

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