Gloria Casarez (1971-2014)

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2022

Anna Elizabeth Dickinson rose from Philadelphia to become one of the most electrifying public speakers of the Civil War era, championing the rights of women, African Americans, and working people. At just 21 she became the first woman to address the U.S. Congress, delivering a speech attended by President Lincoln himself. In an age when women were rarely permitted a public platform, her voice carried into the halls of national power.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

In the decades before and after the Civil War, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was among the most widely read and widely heard Black voices in America—a poet, novelist, and traveling lecturer who took the abolitionist and, later, equal-rights cause to audiences across the country. From this Philadelphia home she wrote and organized, insisting that education was the surest road to advancement for Black Americans. Her work bridged the antislavery struggle and the reform movements of the later 19th century.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2009

In the decades before the Civil War, Philadelphia was home to a thriving community of free Black Americans who built their own institutions of self-help and reform. Joseph Cassey, a prosperous barber and real-estate dealer, extended rentals and loans to Black and white customers alike, while he and his wife Amy founded benevolent and intellectual societies. Amy Cassey was also active in the Female Anti-Slavery Society, part of a network of women driving the abolitionist cause.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

In 1833, Quaker reformer Lucretia Mott helped organize this society of some sixty women dedicated to ending slavery, headquartered on this spot. Barred from full participation in male-led abolition groups, these women built their own influential organization, raising funds and rallying support for emancipation. After the Civil War, they turned their energies to aiding the newly freed, extending their reform work into a new era.