Remond, Sarah Parker

Remond, Sarah Parker

(1826–?87) abolitionist, physician; born in Salem, Mass. A child of free African-Americans, she grew up in a comfortable home, surrounded by both blacks and whites opposed to slavery. Her brother Charles Remond became an early antislavery lecturer, and in 1853 Sarah came to public notice when she went to court in Boston after being forced out of a hall to which she held a ticket. In 1856 she became an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and after lecturing in the Northeast, in 1859 she went to Great Britain, where for several years she played a prominent role in exposing the evils of slavery. While there she also studied at the Bedford College for Ladies (now part of the University of London). In 1866 she went on to Florence, Italy, where after apparently studying medicine at a hospital, she practiced as a physician. She seems to have married a man named Pintor, but nothing much is known of her later years and the last dated record of her presence anywhere was in an 1887 letter from her old friend, Frederick Douglass, who saw her on a visit to Italy.