Sarah Parker Remond (1826-1894)

Abolitionist, Women’s Rights Advocate, Lecturer, Physician

by Katie Woods, Digital Public Historian

As a member of the Remond family of Salem, Sarah Parker Remond joined her parents and siblings in the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements. Her skill as a lecturer led her to travel abroad, where she gained international renown while spreading the American anti-slavery message in Europe.

Born in 1826, Sarah Parker Remond grew up in Salem’s small Black community. Her parents, John and Nancy Lenox Remond, had a successful catering business and were active in the community. Their dedication to social causes inspired many of their children to join in this work as well. 

Growing up, Sarah found both fulfillment and heartbreak in her education. An avid reader, she picked up books and newspapers in her family home. When it came to formal education, however, she and her siblings faced discrimination and exclusion. Private schools did not accept the Remond children, and they were expelled from Salem public schools by the school committee, despite having passed the entrance exams. As a result, the family temporarily relocated to Newport, Rhode Island. There, Sarah and her siblings met the same exclusion as in Salem. Eventually they attended a newly established school for Black students in Newport. This discriminatory treatment excluding and segregating Black students like herself shadowed Sarah Remond’s entire life, as she recalled: 

Years have elapsed since this occurred, but the memory of it is as fresh as ever in my mind.”

Sarah Remond faced other instances of racial discrimination as well. At an 1853 Boston performance of the opera Don Pasquale, she and other members of her party, including her sister Caroline Remond Putnam and abolitionist William Cooper Nell, were removed from the theater after refusing to sit in segregated seating rather than the seats for which they had paid. Remond filed charges, and the case garnered national attention. Siding with Remond, the judge argued that the opera company had breached their contract and had no existing policy for segregated seating.

Sarah Remond’s experiences likely drove her interest in learning more about the injustices enslaved persons faced. Due to her family status and connections, Remond was exposed to anti-slavery work at a young age—meeting abolitionist leaders and attending anti-slavery meetings. In the 1850s, she became active in numerous anti-slavery organizations, including the Massachusetts and New England Anti-Slavery Societies, Female Anti-Slavery Society, and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Sources provide differing accounts as to when she began lecturing. According to an autobiographical piece, Remond recalled her first lecture tour in 1857, during which she traveled and spoke alongside her brother, Charles Lenox Remond.

Women’s rights was another cause close to Sarah Remond’s heart. She worked alongside many who aligned with both the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Susan B. Anthony. Remond also served as a principal speaker at the 1858 National Woman’s Rights Convention in New York.

Later in 1858, Sarah Remond traveled overseas. She gave lectures across England, Scotland, and Ireland. During these lectures, Remond often spoke on the evils of slavery and argued that the English textile industry supported slavery because of its dependence on Southern cotton. Remond called on the British public to maintain their moral position against slavery, speaking in 1862:

Let no diplomacy of statesmen, no intimidation of slaveholders, no scarcity of cotton, no fear of slave insurrections, prevent the people of Great Britain from maintaining their position as the friend of the oppressed negro, which they deservedly occupied previous to the disastrous civil war.”

In London, Sarah Remond continued her education by studying at Bedford College for Ladies. Thought to be among the first Black students at the college, she took classes in History, French, Latin, Music, English Literature, and Elocution.

Remond continued her support for women’s rights in England. In 1866, she was among almost 1500 petitioners to sign the first mass petition on women’s suffrage presented to the UK Parliament.   

While her time in Europe was not absent of prejudice, Sarah Remond remarked on the difference in her treatment abroad: 

I have been received here as a sister by white women for the first time in my life. I have been removed from the degradation which overhangs all persons of my complexion... I have received a sympathy I never was offered before." 

Despite a brief trip back to the United States, Remond spent the rest of her life in Europe. She moved to Florence, Italy, and studied at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital to become a physician. Around 1877 she married Sardinian painter Lazzaro Pinto. She practiced medicine for the rest of her life and lived among American expatriates in Florence and Rome. Remond passed away in Rome in 1894.