Sarah Mapps Douglass: Teacher, Activist, Artist

Sarah Mapps Douglass, “A token of love from me to thee,” Amy Matilda Cassey Album, 1833-1856. Watercolor, undated. Library Company of Philadelphia.
Sarah Mapps Douglass, “A token of love from me to thee,” Amy Matilda Cassey Album, 1833-1856. Watercolor, undated. Library Company of Philadelphia.

Sarah Mapps Douglass (1806-1882), a teacher, antislavery activist, writer, and artist, was a prominent member of the Philadelphia African American elite community. Douglass was a leader in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, an interracial abolitionist group. She contributed over half a dozen written and visual works to the Amy Matilda Cassey, Mary Anna Dickerson, Martina Dickerson Friendship Albums. Thirteen letters from Douglass to her friend Rebecca White, written between 1854 and Douglass's death in 1882, make up part of the Josiah White papers at Haverford College Libraries, Quaker & Special Collections

For more information on Sarah Mapps Douglass, see our African American Friendship Albums exhibit and our Work & Friendship Across Racial Lines exhibit.