A broadside, held at the Library Company of Philadelphia, prompted an exploration into the activism of African American women on behalf of Black soldiers during the Civil War. On December 19, 1864, the ladies of the Sanitary Committee of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas held a Sanitary Fair at Concert Hall in Philadelphia to raise money for sick and wounded colored soldiers. This presentation explores the process of answering the many questions prompted by the broadside advertising the fair, illuminates the biographies of the participants, provides context for women’s fundraising activism during the Civil War, and argues that the ladies deliberately defied three levels of authority: the Union government, the US Sanitary Commission, and the Philadelphia transportation system, when they sent their donations to Louisa Jacobs, then running the Jacobs School in Alexandria, VA.

Susan Goodier, PhD, is currently a long-term fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, Massachusetts where she is engaged in researching and writing a biography, entitled, “Dignity in Freedom: The Life and Advocacy of Louisa Matilda Jacobs.”

Susan attended the University at Albany, earning a master’s degree in Gender History, a doctorate in Public Policy History with subfields in International Gender and Culture and Black Women’s Studies, and a Women’s Studies master’s degree focusing on Transnational Women’s History. She was elected as a fellow to the New York Academy of Scholars, and she currently serves as a Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer Series.

The University of Illinois published her first book, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement, in 2013. Her second book, coauthored with Karen Pastorello, is Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State (Cornell University Press, 2017). Women Will Vote won an Award of Excellence from the American Association for State and Local History in 2018. She is also working on a monograph, “Networks of Activism: Black Women in the New York State Suffrage Movement.”

This event is free and open to the public. Opendore will open at 1pm before the program for viewing the museum exhibits and gallery.