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

period, the women of Bethel Church formed the Colored Female Free Produce Society
with Judith James as president and Laetitia Rowley as secretary. Like the Quaker-
dominated associations, members linked consumers who purchased slave-labor goods to
the support of slavery. The black free-produce societies also recognized the African
American community’s personal stake in slavery and the community’s particular
responsibility to break the chains of oppression. 43 These early associations — Quaker
and non-Quaker, black and white — were important precursors to American Anti-Slavery
Society and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, both organized in December
1833.
Quaker women — primarily though not exclusively Hicksites — joined with
women from Bethel Church to organize the PFASS in the days following the founding of
the American Anti-Slavery Society. Lucretia Mott and Lydia White had been active in
the women’s free-produce association and were founding members of the PFASS. In
addition to Mott and White, African Americans Margaretta Forten and Sarah
McCrummell were among the women charged with drafting the organization’s
constitution. All four were subsequently elected to the board of managers of the
PFASS. 44 The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society was in many ways a clear
product of the Hicksite schism, marking an important development for Quaker women.
43 Genius of Universal Emancipation, February 1831, May 1831, August 1831. See also
Nuermberger, The Free Produce Movement, 18-19; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 74; Faulkner, “The Root
of the Evil,” 390. In 1834, William Whipper established a free-labor store adjacent to Bethel AME. See
Liberator April 5, 1834.
44
December 9, 1833 and December 14, 1833, Minutes of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery
Society, Reel 30, PFASS, HSP.
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