SUSAN PAUL
Boston, October 21, 1835âThere was no peace officer on site when Susan Paul arrived, only two grinning boys standing by the door who scampered off at her approach. It was shortly after two oâclock on a Wednesday afternoon, and Paul was joined by a handful of women in front of the antislavery office. The clippity-clop sound of hooves and the creak of carriage wheels rumbled past them on Washington Street.
  The women expected trouble and cautiously entered the wood-framed building, climbing two flights of stairs to the lecture hall where the annual meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society was to be held. Their meeting had already been postponed once. The original location was rejected by the buildingâs owner after bowing to pressure from men of âproperty and standingâ who opposed the societyâs abolitionist aims.
  As Paul made her way upstairs, the passageway to the hall soon began to fill with unwelcome guests who cleaved to the walls and clogged up the way. The men hissed and heckled the women, and a few lobbed orange peel scraps their way. Some stood on the shoulders of others and glared over the partitionâthough none had yet dared breach the actual lecture hall where the meeting was to be held.
  While the women greeted one another and settled in their seats, they sent a young boy downstairs to the street entrance to advise any late-arriving members that there was still room inside. Outside, it was an unseasonably warm October day, and inside tempers were also heated. Five more women pushed through and mounted the stairs, but many others turned away, unableâor unwillingâto confront the swarming crowd. Â
  The lecture hall was arranged with plain wooden benches and a raised speaking platform. For Susan Paul, a seamstress and schoolteacher, the scene was reminiscent of a classroom. She took her seat along with her fellow members of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society as they awaited the arrival of their special guest. There were about twenty-five women in the room, most of them whiteâsave Paul and a handful of others, including Lavinia Hilton and Julia Williams.
  As its name announced, the society was avowedly antislavery, but until recently it had only included white women among its members. Despite being well-educated and âwarmly loved and respectedâ by her fellow abolitionists, it was not until outside pressure was applied that Paul was invited to become a member.[i]
  The issue had come to the fore when William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator, was invited to speak shortly after the groupâs formation in the fall of 1833. Garrison saw the invitation as an opportunity to teach a lesson and declined. Instead, he urged the all-white womenâs society to engage in some self-reflection, declaring it âshocking to my feelingsâ that the members of an antislavery society would themselves be âslaves of a vulgar and insane prejudice.â[ii]
  Garrisonâs message was heard âwith respect,â and the board agreed to his request. âI am happy to inform you that our decision was on the side of justice, that we resolved to receive our colored friends into our Society, and immediately gave one of them a seat on our Board,â they replied, referring to Susan Paul.[iii] Thus, the society was now integrated, though equality remained elusive.
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A Pioneering Family
Even before her formal admission, Susan Paul was a well-known figure in abolitionist circles. The granddaughter of an enslaved person, she hailed from a prominent and pioneering free Black family with strong ties to Garrison. Indeed, his letter was likely a not-so-subtle attempt to ensure Paulâs selection for the board.
  Susan Paulâs grandfather Caesar Nero Paul had been enslaved as a teen and worked as a servant for a prominent New Hampshire merchant. Caesar Paul managed to get himself a rudimentary education and later served during the French and Indian Wars, which may have led to his manumission. By 1790, he lived as a free resident in the town of Stratham, New Hampshire, heading up a household of five. He must have been a strong believer in education because he sent all his sons to public schools near Exeter. Three of them later became Baptist ministers, including Susanâs father, Thomas.
  Thomas Paul grew up in New Hampshire and later moved to Boston. As a young man, he hosted religious meetings and led worshippers at Faneuil Hall. He was an accomplished oratorâdescribed as âdignified, urbane and attractiveâ in mannerâand his congregation grew over time until the African Baptist Church, the cityâs first Black church, was officially organized in 1805 with Thomas Paul as the minister.[iv]
  Paul knew that his parishioners needed a permanent home, so he led efforts to build a church on Beacon Hill, which came to be known as the African Meeting House. During his career, Reverend Paul helped spearhead the growing movement of independent Black Baptist churches and traveled abroad to promote abolitionist aims and conduct missionary work. The African Meeting House, sometimes known as âBlack Faneuil Hall,â remained a spiritual, cultural and political center in Boston even after his death in 1831.
  Susan Paul now carried her familyâs social reform mantel. In addition to her antislavery work, she was active with the local temperance society and womenâs rights movement. Two years prior, she was elected secretary of the Ladies Temperance Society, which had more than one hundred Black members and had recently helped lead a successful âcold waterâ campaign to encourage teetotalism.[v]
  Lately, she poured much of her energy into an innovative juvenile choir program for Black children in the city. The concerts featured a mix of patriotic songs and antislavery hymns sung by Paulâs students, who ranged in age from four up to their early teens. The popular concerts served a dual purpose of highlighting the talents of the young children before mostly white audiences, while spreading the abolitionist message in verse. Paul also taught the students to read music and introduced them to classical composers. Occasionally, she also sang herself, sometimes performing with other antislavery society members, including Lavinia Hilton.
  Despite her education, talents and status in the community (âI believe her to be very worthy, industrious and well informed,â said one abolitionist), Paul was not immune to common racial prejudices. A recent trip out of the city for a choir performance before a local antislavery society had driven that point home. When it was time to leave for the event, three stately stagecoaches pulled up in front of Paul and her students, but when the hired drivers saw the complexions of the schoolchildren, they refused to offer them a ride. The men became enraged, shouting out racial epithets and proclaiming, âThey would rather have their throats cut from ear to earâ than drive the students.[vi]
  For Paul, the episode was distressing but not unexpected. She was able to arrange alternative transportation, and the concert was held as scheduled. The choir was warmly received by a friendly abolitionist crowd, initially unaware of the âuncivil treatmentâ Paul and her students had overcome to get there. In a letter to Garrison shortly after the event, she shared details about the âcruel prejudiceâ sheâd encountered but also sounded an optimistic note. âThe rapid progress of the causeâŠwill, ere long, annihilate the present corrupt state of things and substitute liberty and its concomitant blessings,â she wrote.[vii]
  As Susan Paul settled into the wooden bench waiting for the meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society to begin, she may not have realized how much her optimism would be tested on this day.
Chapter 1
[i]. Southwick, Reminiscences, 29.
[ii]. Garrison letter to BFASS, April 9, 1834; Mary Grew letter to Garrison, April 11, 1834, Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS).
[iii]. Ibid.
[iv]. Liberator, April 16, 1831, 63.
[v]. Ibid., April 20,1835, 3; Brown, ed. Memoirs of James Jackson, 15; Horton and Horton, Black Bostonians, 32.
[vi]. Liberator, March 29, 1834, 3.
[vii]. Susan Paul letter to Garrison, April 1, 1834, Boston Public Library (BPL).
