Town Hall Meeting

My name is Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis. I am an anti-slavery poet from Pennsylvania and am a part of the Female Literary Association. Many people know me because of the wealthy family I come from. However, I am defined by much more than my family’s wealth. One of my most well known accomplishments is co-founding The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society alongside my mother, sisters, Lucretia Mott and Mary Ann M’Clintock. We formed this society to give women a way to help their fellow sisters. We work mostly to fundraise for drives against slavery and provide supplies to help runaway slaves survive their new lives. 

My poems have often been used in support of many abolitionist campaigns. I began writing at the age of seventeen and was published by the Liberator. Some of my most famous poems include The Grave of the Slave, An Appeal to Women and The Slave Girl’s Farewell. It was important to me to use the talents I was gifted with to help my fellow brothers and sisters escape the horrors we are oppressed with today. God blessed me with the kind of providence that placed me in a life which prevented me from facing the evils of slavery myself, but I am sympathetic toward the same oppression because of my heritage and the discrimination I did face. 

Today I stand before you to urge you to stand up alongside your brothers and sisters and fight for their freedom which we, as a nation, claim to stand upon. My white sisters have found virtue from their fairness, so we should work together to help our enslaved sisters make it to the other side. It does not matter if we ourselves have faced this cruelty because we all recognize it is not right, so we should do something about it. 

I believe you cannot consider yourself a good person if you stand on the side of slavery, on the side of an institution that is built upon taking advantage of those we stand beside. In the end we all bleed the same, so why are we acting so divided? We can know that slavery should be stopped because slaves right now are wishing to die because that would be a better alternative to the life they are living. When our brothers and sisters begin to look toward death as their only escape from the cruelty they face in their lives, we need to make a change. 

At the end of our lives when we are buried, both slaves and masters are put in the ground together, so where do our souls go when we are all put into the same ground? We all end up side by side, buried in the dirt so why do we believe it is okay to oppress one another and rule over each other while we are alive? Our souls are all equally valued by the God up above, so why do we not value each other the same way. God is on the side of the slave as He looks down on them fighting for their liberation. We must make a choice today to stand by our brothers and sisters who are fighting for the right to their lives.

Imagine a young girl sitting with her mother on a West Indian Island with the sun barreling down on them, crying because her life’s story has become too much to bear. The mother tries to comfort the girl while breaking down herself because in just one day they are going to take her baby girl away. 

I leave you today with my poem, A Slave Girl's Farewell, about this girl and the horrors we are making her and so many others face;

Mother, I leave thee-thou hast been

Through long, long years of pain

The only hope my fond heart knew;

Or e’er shall know again.

The sails are set-my master waits

To bear me far from thee;

I linger-can I give thee up,

And cross the fearful sea?

Oh, let me gaze! How bright it seems

As busy memory flies

To view those scenes of other days,

Beneath those bright blue skies.

The little hut where I have played

In childhood’s fearless hours-

The murmuring stream-the mossy bank,

Where I have gathered flowers.

I knew not then I was a slave,

Or that another’s will,

Save thine, could bend the spirit’s pride;

Or bid my lips be still.

Who now will soothe me at my toil,

Or bathe my weary brow?

Or shield me when the heavy lash

Is raised to give the glow?

Thy fond arms press me-and I feel

Thy tears upon my cheek;

Tears are the only language now

A mother’s love can speak.

Think of me, mother as I bend

My way across the sea;

And midst thy tears, a blessing waft,

To her who prays for thee.