THE “CONVENTIONS” OF CONVENTIONS: POLITICAL RITUALS AND TRADITIONS

SARA G. STANLEY

Born in New Bern, North Carolina, Sara G. Stanley was a third-generation free Black. [1] Stanley’s grandfather was John C. Stanley, the son of a wealthy white slaveowner John Wright Stanley and an unknown Black woman he probably owned. John C. Stanley, was a barber by trade who inherited wealth from his white father. He put this money to use by purchasing and freeing other Blacks, as well as, by participating in the manumission movement. His son (Sara Stanley’s father) was John Stuart Stanley; John Stuart Stanley was well-educated and ran a store and school for Blacks in New Bern. Sara Stanley’s mother, Frances Griffith Stanley was a teacher. [1] The Stanley family upheld a tradition of education and political activism. Sara G. Stanley advanced this tradition in her own accomplishments.

scan of speech transcription

This is an excerpt from a speech penned by Sara Stanley on behalf of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Delaware County. It was read by Wm. Harris at the 1856 Ohio State Convention and recorded in the minutes. Stanley invoked classical tropes of gender roles as she encouraged the male delegates in their work. Although her name is misprinted as Staley in the minutes, analysis of the writing and comparison to other writings by Stanley indicated that Sara Stanley would have been the author.

In 1852, at the age of sixteen, Sara Stanley left New Bern and her family in order to attend Oberlin College. Stanley attended Oberlin for three years, studying in the Ladies Courses offered there. [1] It is likely that she traveled with another young lady from New Bern, Ann Hazle, who also attended Oberlin College during this time. [1] Ultimately, the Stanley family left New Bern due to increasing racial persecution and moved to Ohio as well, settling in Cleveland in 1857.

photos of building and grounds

Photographs of Oberlin College Ladies Boarding Hall. Courtesy of The New York Public Library.

Sara Stanley was an active political participant, particularly through writing and teaching. The speech she wrote for the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Delaware County and published in the minutes of the 1856 Ohio Convention was not the only such document. [2] She repeats similar motifs in an article printed in the Weekly Afro-American (April 19, 1862) when she discussed poet John Greenleaf Whittier. It is probable that Sara Stanley was a teacher in the Cleveland public school system for several years. [3] In 1864, she applied to be a teacher with the American Missionary Association and traveled south to teach newly freed Blacks. She was sent to Norfolk, VA, where she taught at Bute Street School, a school with an integrated staff. Here, she actively supported racial tolerance, even if it meant speaking out against other white staff members at the school. With Edmonia Highgate, she wrote a letter to the Superintendent of the Norfolk American Missionary Asosciation Schools in which she cites the behavior of a Mr. Coan as “doing an incalculable injury to the cause” because of his prejudiced attitude towards the Blacks he was instructing. [4] Ultimately, she was recalled by the American Missionary Association from Norfolk, after another staff member reported that she had become romantically entangled with a fellow teacher, Mr. Walker, who was white and married. [5] Whether or not such an attachment actually occurred is uncertain, but Stanley was recalled and in a letter to George Whipple, the Corresponding Secretary, she thanked him for his kindness in dealing with her during this situation.

Stanley was next assigned to teach in St. Louis, Missouri. Her school was a small, windowless room in a church basement. [6] When the school board changed in the fall of 1865 from an all-Black to all-white board, Stanley asked for reassignment, and was moved to a school in Louisville, KY, this time to the basement of the Centre Street Colored Methodist Church. Here, she rose from assistant to become principle, and was under the direction of a Black school board. [6]  Stanley next appears in the historical record two years later in 1868 in Mobile, Alabama as a teacher. Here she met and married Charles A. Woodward, a white man originally from New York State who had come to the south after the Civil War. [7] Her proposed interracial marriage created quite a stir, and the American Missionary Association in particular feared that her union would create a volatile situation. The Association was purchasing a large building which would be used to train teachers, and worried about retaliation by the Ku Klux Klan and angry whites agitating against Black education and inter-racial unions. In deference to the American Missionary Association (who had actually encouraged Stanley and Woodward to travel back to Cleveland to be married), Stanley and Woodward were married quietly in a friend’s house. 

The newly married Woodwards continued to live and work in Mobile for several years. Sara Woodward educated teachers at the newly formed Emerson Institute (the AMA’s teacher training center) and occasionally worked as a teller at the Freedman’s Bank, where Mr. Woodward was employed as head cashier. [8] They had one child, a girl, who died at six months. In 1874, Mr. Woodward was accused of embezzling Bank funds. After the trial (at which he was found innocent) the Woodwards moved to New Jersey, where they remained until Mr. Woodward’s death in 1885. Sara Stanley Woodward then moved to Philadelphia where she worked as an engraver to support herself and also received her husband’s military pension of $8 a month. [8]

Although less is recorded about Sara Stanley Woodward’s life following the death of her husband, she remained active. In 1894, she briefly taught at a school for Black women in Georgia run by Lucy Lainey. Sara Stanley Woodward died in 1918, at the age of 82. [8] She is just one example of the extraordinary work done by Black women connected to the Colored Conventions movement.

References

[1] Ellen NicKenzie Lawson with Marlene D. Merrill, “Sara Stanley: Teacher of Free Men,” in The Three Sarahs, Documents of Antebellem Black College Women (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1984),  47-147.

[2] State Convention of Colored Men (1856 : Columbus, OH), “Proceedings of the State Convention of Colored Men, Held in the City of Columbus, Ohio, Jan. 16th, 17th, and 18th, 1856.,” ColoredConventions.org, accessed April 30, 2016, https://omeka.coloredconventions.org/items/show/252.

[3] Dictionary of North Carolinea Biography. s.v. “Woodward, Sara Griffith Stanley,” accessed May 2, 2016 http://ncpedia.org/biography/woodward-sara-griffith-stanley.

[4] Ellen NicKenzie Lawson with Marlene D. Merrill, “Sara Stanley: Teacher of Free Men,” in The Three Sarahs, Documents of Antebellem Black College Women (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1984),  47-147.

[5] Ellen NicKenzie Lawson with Marlene D. Merrill, “Sara Stanley: Teacher of Free Men,” in The Three Sarahs, Documents of Antebellem Black College Women (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1984),  47-147. Dictionary of North Carolinea Biography. s.v. “Woodward, Sara Griffith Stanley,” accessed May 2, 2016 http://ncpedia.org/biography/woodward-sara-griffith-stanley.

[6] Ellen NicKenzie Lawson with Marlene D. Merrill, “Sara Stanley: Teacher of Free Men,” in The Three Sarahs, Documents of Antebellem Black College Women (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1984),  47-147.

[7] Ellen NicKenzie Lawson with Marlene D. Merrill, “Sara Stanley: Teacher of Free Men,” in The Three Sarahs, Documents of Antebellem Black College Women (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1984),  47-147. Dictionary of North Carolinea Biography. s.v. “Woodward, Sara Griffith Stanley,” accessed May 2, 2016 http://ncpedia.org/biography/woodward-sara-griffith-stanley.

[8] Ellen NicKenzie Lawson with Marlene D. Merrill, “Sara Stanley: Teacher of Free Men,” in The Three Sarahs, Documents of Antebellem Black College Women (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1984),  47-147.