Sarah Parker Remond

Sarah Parker Remond was a free-born African American lecturer, abolitionist and physician.

Remond was born on June 6, 1826, in Salem, Massachusetts. Her parents, also free born, were successful businesspeople and activists. Remond became an anti-slavery lecturer, delivering her first lecture in 1842 at the age of 16.

In 1853, Remond was forced to leave a theater and pushed down a flight stairs after she refused to sit in a segregated section. She sued for damages and won, and the court ordered the theater to integrate its seating.

From 1856 to 1858, Remond was among several lecturers hired by the American Anti-Slavery Society to tour New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania giving anti-slavery lectures. From 1859 to 1861, she gave anti-slavery and women's rights lectures in England, Ireland and Scotland while also studying at the Bedford College for Women. During the American Civil War, she lectured in Britain in support of the Union. After the war, she lectured to raise funds for the newly freed slaves.

In 1866, Remond was among the 1500 women – and possibly the only Black woman – who signed the first women’s suffrage petition in Great Britain. She returned to the United States for a short time, joining the American Equal Rights Association. In 1867, she moved to Florence, Italy, and studied medicine at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital school, and practiced medicine in Italy for more than 20 years.

Remond died on December 13, 1894, in Rome, Italy.