Sarah Parker Remond

Sarah Parker Remond was born free on 6 June 1826 in Salem, Massachusetts, to a prosperous Black family active in abolitionist circles, and became a public speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society after being forcibly ejected from a Boston theatre because of her race in 1853.

In 1859 Remond travelled to England, where she became the first woman to lecture publicly against slavery in Britain, touring cities across the north of England and drawing particular attention to the sexual exploitation of enslaved Black women.

While in London, Remond enrolled at Bedford College for Ladies, thought to be the college's first Black student, studying French, Latin, English literature and history between 1859 and 1861 while continuing to lecture during college vacations.

During the American Civil War, Remond campaigned across Britain to build public support for the Union blockade of the Confederacy, and afterward raised funds and clothing for millions of newly freed formerly enslaved people through the London Emancipation Society and the Freedmen's Aid Association.

In 1866 Remond settled permanently in Florence, Italy, where she studied medicine at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, qualified as a physician, and practised medicine for over twenty years until her death in Rome in 1894, having built one of the most remarkable transatlantic careers of the 19th century.