![]() ![]() ![]() Much of what we know about Clark comes from letters, preserved at the American Missionary Assn. She was the only Black member of the group she hosted its second meeting in her home.īy the time Clark was 15, she signed petitions demanding equal rights for Native Americans and advocating desegregation of Massachusetts trains and Boston schools. ![]() ![]() Her mother, Susan Robbins Garrison, socialized with the abolitionists and transcendentalists who made Concord famous for its liberal leanings, joining Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife, Lidian, and Henry David Thoreau’s mother, Cynthia, as charter members of the Concord Female Antislavery Society in 1837. Her father, Jack Garrison, escaped his enslavers in New Jersey and ran to Concord, where he lived as a farmer and laborer - and fugitive - the rest of his life. Historians recognize her maternal grandfather, Caesar Robbins, a patriot who won his freedom by fighting against the British in the American Revolution. Through speeches and songs, prayers and tears, those gathered remembered the fearless life of a woman who once wrote, “I think it our duty as a people to spend our lives in trying to elevate our own race.”Įllen Garrison was born free in Concord, Mass., in 1823, but her family was well acquainted with bondage. ![]()
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