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“I Never Shrink From Any Duty”: Mary Easton Sibley And The Gendered Politics Of Abolitionism, Stephanie Marks

Student Scholarship

Mary Easton Sibley, the founder of Lindenwood University, was an ambitious woman. A supporter of the abolition movement and women's education, she founded and taught in schools for white women and enslaved African Americans in St. Charles, Missouri. As an American woman in the nineteenth century, however, her attitudes toward race and gender proved complex, reflecting the struggle of white women at the time. Drawing on scholarship that examines a shift in the focus of white female abolitionists of the period from freeing enslaved peoples to freeing white Americans from the sin of slavery, This case study poses two unique …