"I Earn By My Own Labor From Day To Day:" African American Women’s Activism in the Wartime Midwest

Abstract

In 1863, CLARISSA hILL And MInERVA wILLIAMS, two African American women from Illinois, formed a committee to “procure some gifts for our noble and gallant volunteers.” They sent their “gifts” with a keen awareness that the men were “far from home, battling for the rights of their brethren and the cause of freedom.”2 Women like Hill and Williams were no strangers to social activism, but the enormous scope of the Civil War brought public engagement to new heights. During the Civil War, black women negotiated relationships with local, state, and federal entities by the practice of philanthropy, mutual aid, religiosity, and refugee and soldier relief. Denied legal and socioeconomic access to democracy (which was assumed to be white, male and at least middle class), midwestern African Americans used activist tactics to gain entry to arenas where they were disallowed access.3 As part of the larger black emancipation movement, they argued for a type of emancipation that moved beyond abolitionism to include their own midwestern freedoms as well as that of African Americans elsewhere who were experiencing liberty for the first time. Women developed their own particular brand of activism which served to both grow their black settlements at home as well as to provide relief to soldiers and poor families.4 In doing so, African American women played a crucial role in the continuance of black midwestern settlement and in the development of the region and the nation.5 We must first briefly look at to midwestern black foremothers to understand how wartime activists translated what they had learned at their grandmothers’ knee into a concrete plan for relief work. Throughout the antebellum period, migrating African Americans conducted a