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

earn a sufficient income. By 1840, the PFASS had assumed responsibility for all
educational facilities for black children in Philadelphia. 52
In mid-1836, anti-slavery women in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York debated
the efficacy of organizing regional groups into a national association of women’s anti-
slavery societies, similar to the American Anti-Slavery Society. The Boston Female
Anti-Slavery Society proposed establishing an executive committee of female
abolitionists to better coordinate the work of female anti-slavery activists throughout the
United States. In her initial proposal, BFASS member Maria Weston Chapman believed
“great good” would come from a meeting of prominent female abolitionists including the
Grimké sisters, Mott, Mary Parker, and Lydia Maria Child. 53 New York women
supported the idea of an executive committee, preferring an organization that united
women, rather than an integrated association to unite women and men. Such a female
association, they believed, would better coordinate the arduous work of gathering
signatures on petitions without violating gender norms. The PFASS, however, had a
decidedly more mixed reaction to the committee idea. Some members, like the women of
New York, believed a separate female association was a more practical choice given the
present state of society. Members of the PFASS, instead, preferred to seek recognition of
female delegates to the national and state meetings of male associations. By January
1837, the women of Boston had apparently changed their minds. Rather than an
52
Shirley Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860 (Knoxville: The
University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 96-97.
53
Maria Weston Chapman to Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, August 4, 1836, PFASS
Incoming Correspondence, PFASS HSP.
155