IN PERSON | Salons at Stowe: Agents of Their Own Emancipation: Enslaved Women’s Letters to Colonial Governments

Salons at Stowe

IN PERSON | Agents of Their Own Emancipation: Enslaved Women’s Letters to Colonial Governments

Salons at Stowe

February 28, 2024

Ximena Abello Hurtado, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Mount Holyoke College.

Wednesday, February 28th

6:00 – 7:00 pm

Stowe Visitor Center

Refreshments provided

We are pleased to present Ximena Abello Hurtado as a guest speaker at our February Salons at Stowe program. Abello Hurtado is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Mount Holyoke College. Her work focuses on histories of Black decolonial feminism, the Afro-South-American experience in New Grenada, Black girl studies, and the diversity of global Afro-Diasporic connections. Her research has taken her to archives in New Granada, which is now the Columbia-Ecuador-Panama-Venezuela region of South America. There, she found letters written by enslaved Black women to the Spanish viceroyalty advocating for their freedom from enslavement. Through these letters, Abello Hurtado explores how women were active agents of their own emancipation, despite numerous barriers of race, class, and limited literacy. Abello Hurtado shares their stories with us using their own words, and through extensive historical research, unflinchingly develops for us the world in which these courageous women lived.

Ximena Abello Hurtado will present on her research around the women and girls of New Granada. The presentation will be followed by an audience Q & A and opportunity for discussion. We invite everyone to this important, informative, and free public program. Light refreshments will be served.

REGISTER HERE TO ATTEND IN PERSON

If you’d like to attend via Zoom instead, click here.

Location Stowe Center, Day House

Doors Open 5:45 pm

Program 6:00 - 7:00 pm

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2023

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

School name:

Please suggest three dates and times when your group would like to visit. (Note: the Stowe Center is closed on Sunday and Tuesday.)

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If yes, have you already contacted The Mark Twain House?

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Adult Group Interest Form

Group Tour Interest Form 2022

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

Group Name:

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Are there special accommodations that can help us serve you best?

Are you interested in a joint visit with our neighbor, The Mark Twain House and Museum?

Yes, please.

No, thank you.

If yes, have you already contacted The Mark Twain House?

Yes

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.