Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century

NOTES

NOTES Introduction 1. A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life ofJames Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince (1770; rpt. Newport, R.I.: S. Southwick , 1774); Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, A Black, ed. William Aldridge (London: Gilbert and Plummer, 1785); George White, A Brief Account of the Life, Experiences, Travels, and Gospel Labours of George White (New York: John C. Totten, 1810). Robert B. Stepto discusses the Afro-American "pregeneric myth" in his From Behind the Veil (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), pp. ix, 167-68. 2. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), p. 90. 3. For instance, see the white slaveholding deist whose attempted conversion Jarena Lee records at the end of her autobiography. 4. In All Loves Excelling: American Protestant Women in World Missions (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdman, 1968), p. 67, Robert Pierce Beaver notes that "the first single woman, not a widow," to be sent overseas for missionary work was Betsey Stockton, a black woman who served as both a "domestic assistant" to a white missionary family and as a schoolteacher on the mission staff at Lahinah, Hawaii, in 1823. Beaver discusses other antebellum women missionaries on pp. 59-84. For further information, see Barbara Welter, "She Hath Done What She Could: Protestant Women's Missionary Careers in Nineteenth-Century America," American Quarterly 30 (Winter 1978): 624-38. 5. Nancy G. Prince, A Narrative ofthe Life and Travels ofMrs. Nancy Prince (Boston: The Author, 1850). This book was reprinted in 1853 a,nd again in 1856. 6. Olive Gilbert's biography, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, A orthern Slave (Boston: The Author, 1850), introduced antislavery readers to the story of Isabella, an indomitable New York-born slave who, upon seizing her freedom in 1826, felt increasingly drawn to the life of itinerant evangelis . In 1843 she adopted the name Sojourner Truth and committed herself t a life of pilgrimage proclaiming the truth as she saw it. By the mid-nine enth century, her mission would lead her into prominent advocacy of abOlitionism and women's rights. See Arthur H. Fauset, Sojourner Truth (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938), and Jacqueline Bernard, Journey Toward Freedom : The Story ofSojourner Truth (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967). 7. For excerpts from and COIIlnlents on the work of Keckley, Dubois, and Taylor, see Bert James Loewenberg and Ruth Bogin, eds., Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), pp. 39--47, 70--77, 89-94~ and Dorothy Sterling, We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), pp. 248-52, 459-60. 8. An internationally known f[oliness evangelist, Amanda Berry Smith recounted her youth, conversion, and ministry in An Autobiography (Chicago: Meyer & Bros., 1893). The spiritual evolution of Rebecca Cox Jackson from 235 Notes to pages 5-7 African Methodism to leadership as a preaching "eldress" in a Shaker community in Watervliet, New York, is recorded in her antebellum manuscript autobiography, edited by Jean McMahon Humez in Gifts ofPower: The Writings ofRebecca]ackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981). For discussions of less prominent pioneering black female preachers, see Jualynne Dodson, "Nineteenth-Century A. M. E. Preaching Women," in Hilah F. Thomas and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds., Women in New Worlds (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), pp. 276-89; and Nancy Hardesty, Lucille Sider Dayton, and Donald W. Dayton, "Women in the Holiness Movement: Feminism in the Evangelical Tradition," in Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin, eds., Women of Spirit (New York: Simon and Schust.er, 1979), pp. 225-54. 9. Further explanation of the doctrine of "sanctificat.ion," with respect particularly to John Wesley's influential views of the subject, follows later in this discussion. For a depiction of the religious environment in which Foote grew up, see Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District: The Social and IntellectualHistory ofEnthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1950), pp. 56, 75, 104, 240-41. The rise of the Holiness movement in antebellum America is recounted in Melvin Easterday Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Metuchen, N.}.: Scarecrow , 1980). See also Timothy Smith's chapters on "The Holiness Revival at Oberlin" and "Sanctification in American Methodism" in his Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth-Century A1nerica (New York: Abingdon, 1957), pp. 103-34:. In their essay...