{"id":7003,"date":"2025-05-14T03:02:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T03:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/?page_id=7003"},"modified":"2026-07-23T16:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T16:21:09","slug":"womens-organizing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/foundations\/womens-organizing\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Organizing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Black women were critical to all aspects of community life. They helped found church congregations, hosted services in their homes, held fundraisers, created organizations to support schools and benevolent associations, and more. Yet they are often difficult to locate in written records, and for this reason information about their activities in this period is fragmentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women\u2019s roles in Black churches were expansive but also limited. Male A.M.E. leaders, including Bishop William Quinn, refused to license women to preach, but some women preached anyway, receiving varied responses from local congregations.[1] Priscilla Baltimore<\/a> purchased her freedom and that of her family members and then became a crucial figure in the A.M.E. church of Brooklyn, Illinois. Ministers later credited her with planting the A.M.E. church in the Midwest.[2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Supper, July 12-13, 1855
<\/strong>A handbill advertisement for a fundraiser benefiting \u201cthe Colored Baptist Church\u201d in Alton, Illinois, in the 1850s. Women were essential to the success of fundraising efforts like this one. (Source: Missouri History Museum<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fundraising was an area where women enjoyed tremendous authority and respect. To build and expand the reach of their churches, they organized celebrations, dinners, and festivals. In Bloomington, Illinois, A.M.E. women produced \u201ca festival\u201d to benefit their minister, Rev. Abram T. Hall.[3] In Springfield, the \u201csisters\u201d of the A.M.E. Church raised money to buy a new stove.[4] Churches relied on women\u2019s capacity for fundraising, as historian Martha Jones wrote, but this dependence \u201cdid not lead to a critical reconsideration of their authority.\u201d[5]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Women\u2019s Church Fundraising
<\/strong>Rev. Spencer Donegan<\/a> and others thank the \u201cladies of Springfield\u201d in 1859 for helping the women of the African American Methodist church raise money to purchase a stove. (Source: Sangamo Journal<\/em>, Oct. 24, 1859. Courtesy of Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Black women also used churches as platforms for activism that reached beyond the church itself. Many helped make churches into havens for people attempting to escape from slavery, transforming them into stops on the Underground Railroad.[6] As the historian Stacey Robertson wrote, the Underground Railroad relied on women\u2019s labor, including \u201ccooking, cleaning, organizing, and sewing,\u201d both for the fugitives who stayed with them and for their own families.[7] Many freedom seekers passed through the village of Brooklyn, Illinois, where Priscilla Baltimore and her neighbors offered them support and shelter inside the town\u2019s small A.M.E. church.[8]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education and schools also benefited from African American women\u2019s organizing and fundraising. In Springfield in 1850, the Trustees of the Colored School\u2014\u201cdesirous of educating their children\u201d\u2014appointed a committee of women to \u201csolicit donations among our white friends\u201d for a public supper to benefit a school for African American children.[9] In 1858, African American women in Alton prepared a \u201cmost excellent dinner\u201d to celebrate May Day and the recent opening of the \u201cColored School\u201d in that city.[10]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

1. Martha S. Jones, All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900 <\/em>(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 40-44, 108.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. \u201c\u2018Mother\u2019 Baltimore\u2019s Burial,\u201d St. Louis Globe-Democrat<\/em>, Dec. 4, 1882.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. \u201cAfrican M. E. Church Festival,\u201d The Pantagraph <\/em>(Bloomington, IL), Nov. 23, 1859.[\/note] In Springfield, the \u201csisters\u201d of the A.M.E. Church raised money to buy a new stove.[note]No title, Daily Illinois State Journal <\/em>(Springfield), Oct. 24, 1859.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Jones, All Bound Up Together<\/em>, 66.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance <\/em>(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Stacey M. Robertson, Hearts Beating for Liberty: Women Abolitionists in the Old Northwest<\/em> (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 181.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. LaRoche, Free Black Communities<\/em>, 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. LaRoche, Free Black Communities<\/em>, 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. \u201cColored School,\u201d Illinois Daily Journal<\/em>, June 14, 1850.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10. \u201cColored School Celebration,\u201d Alton Weekly Courier<\/em>, May 13, 1858.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credits<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Written by Hope McCaffrey. Edited by Kate Masur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Black women were critical to all aspects of community life. They helped found church congregations, hosted services in their homes, held fundraisers, created organizations to support schools and benevolent associations, and more. Yet they are often difficult to locate in written records, and for this reason information about their activities in this period is fragmentary. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6829,"parent":6998,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7003","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7003"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7564,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7003\/revisions\/7564"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}