THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

Hicksite men of Green Street mocked the Orthodox women who blocked the path of
reform; yet, the men’s remarks recognized women’s power to do exactly that. Among
Hicksites, women’s new status was codified when, at the first Quarterly Meeting of
Hicksites, Friends agreed to replace the traditional Meeting for Sufferings with a more
representative committee, which for the first time granted women membership in this
powerful group. Hicksites also limited the authority of ministers and elders, a bastion of
male power in the pre-schism Society of Friends. 41 Schism among American Friends
ultimately nurtured Quaker women’s reform work.
As we have seen, in the 1820s Quaker men and women including Elizabeth
Margaret Chandler and James and Lucretia Mott were instrumental in establishing free-
produce associations in Philadelphia. The Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania and the
Female Association for Promoting the Manufacture and Use of Free Cotton, with their
predominantly Quaker membership, formed the nucleus of the American free-produce
community in the early nineteenth-century. 42
Quaker free-produce associations supported the development of similar groups in
the African American community in Philadelphia. In October 1830, members of the Free
Produce Society of Pennsylvania met with members of Richard Allen’s Bethel Church to
discuss the establishment of an African American free-produce association. Two months
later, at a gathering that drew several hundred men, the Colored Free Produce Society of
Pennsylvania was organized, electing James Cornish as the secretary. In this same
41 Hewitt, “The Fragmentation of Friends,” 100.
42 Nuermberger, The Free Produce Movement, 17-20.
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