Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery

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W. W. Norton & Company, 1991 - Biography & Autobiography - 436 pages
In the tumultuous years before the Civil War, a young white woman from a Quaker background came to embody commitment to the cause of antislavery and equal rights for black people. Abby Kelley became the abolitionist movement's chief money-raiser and organizer and its most radial member. She traveled hundreds of miles to awaken the country to the evils of slavery, braving hardship and prejudice as well as opening the way for other women, black and white, to take leadership roles. Now the full story of this principled woman has been told in Dorothy Sterling's compelling biography.

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Contents

Introduction
1
Acknowledgments
7
The Education of Abby Kelley
13
A Wider World
26
Women Find Their Voices
39
The Call
60
A PublicSpeaking Woman
82
War to the Knifes Point
94
Antislavery Politics
172
The Path of True
196
Lord What a Tongue Shes
213
Conflicting Claims
234
Bloody Feet Sisters
263
General Agent
276
Nothing Is Done While Anything
331
A Lonely Rocket in a Dark
387

The Notorious Abby Kelley
107
A New Hampshire Fanatic
129
Along the Psychic Highway
150

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About the author (1991)

Author Dorothy Sterling was born on November 23, 1913 in Manhattan. She received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1934. In the 1940's, she worked as a researcher for Life magazine, but left in frustration at a system under which women researchers gave material to men, who wrote the articles. Her first book, Sophie and Her Puppies, was published in 1951. She wrote more than 35 books for both children and adults throughout her lifetime including Freedom Train (1954), Captain of the Planter: The Story of Robert Smalls (1958), Black Foremothers: Three Lives (1979) and Close to My Heart (2005). She won numerous awards for her work including the 1976 Carter G. Woodson Book Award for The Trouble They Seen: Black People Tell the Story of Reconstruction. She died on December 1, 2008 at the age of 95.

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