The Remond Family of Salem

Sarah Parker Remond was born in 1826, the seventh of eight children of John and Nancy Lenox Remond. 约翰·雷蒙德于1798年作为一个无人陪伴的十岁移民从西印度群岛的库拉索岛来到塞勒姆. In Salem he had a long and successful career as a caterer, “restaurateur,” and business entrepreneur. Sarah’s mother, Nancy Lenox, an accomplished pastry cook, was the daughter of a Black Revolutionary War veteran.

The Remonds raised their children for both business and public careers, but also to fight for their civil rights and personal dignity. 当塞勒姆的学校种族隔离限制了包括萨拉在内的雷蒙德孩子的受教育机会, the family moved for several years to Newport, Rhode Island. While the Remond’s eldest son, Charles Lenox Remond, became an internationally-known abolitionist speaker, Sarah Parker Remond also proved to be, although with less fiery rhetoric, an effective antislavery advocate.

A Confrontation at the Howard Athenaeum: the “Opera Ejection Case”

In 1853, Sarah Parker Remond and a married sister, Caroline E. Putnam, bought tickets in Salem for an opera performance at the Howard Athenaeum, one of Boston’s premier theaters. There was no law or established custom regarding integrated theater seating; the Boston Museum, another first rank theater, had a long tradition of integrated seating. There was a difference in management; while the Boston Museum had a resident acting troupe, 霍华德·雅典娜神庙经常接待巡回演出的演员雅典娜神庙会声称它在接下来的冲突中满足了桑塔格夫人的歌剧公司的愿望.

On 4 May 1853, the Remond sisters, accompanied by William Cooper Nell, a Black abolitionist, antislavery journalist and historian, arrived at the Howard Athenaeum and attempted to take their expensive, reserved seats in the “family circle.” Henry Palmer, the agent for the opera company, refused to let them sit among white patrons, except in the gallery—less expensive and desirable seats. When the Remond party refused to submit to Palmer’s demand, he summoned a Boston police officer, Charles P. Philbrick, who forcibly removed Sarah Remond—in her account by tearing her dress and pushing her down a flight of stairs.

The “Opera Ejection Case” quickly attracted local and national newspaper coverage, as well as reports in British newspapers sympathetic to the antislavery cause in America. William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator 在1853年5月莎拉·雷蒙德的“驱逐”之后的几周内，他在一系列文章中描述了这个案例. The Liberator was a weekly newspaper with a national audience, 很多新闻报道都是og体育平台废奴主义者的活动和在主要的反奴隶制大会和会议上发表的讲话. “Overwhelmed by matters of pressing interest,加里森道歉说，他只介绍了萨拉·雷蒙德“有趣而重要的案件”的“十分之一”.”

萨拉帕克雷蒙德的经历并不是雷蒙德家族成员第一次强烈抗议座位隔离. In 1842, 她的哥哥查尔斯·莱诺克斯·雷蒙德在马萨诸塞州议会作证说，在一次废奴主义者巡回演讲期间，他在欧洲旅行，没有受到“侮辱”，也没有任何负面的“区别对待”, 在从波士顿到塞勒姆的火车旅行中，这是他回家漫长旅程的最后一站，他被迫坐在种族隔离的“吉姆·克罗”(Jim Crow)车厢里.

Sarah Parker Remond’s Day(s) in Court

Sarah Remond brought assault charges against Palmer and Philbrick. The case was tried in Boston Police Court before Judge Thomas Russell, who had only recently been appointed to the bench. 尽管这次遭遇(“被赶出歌剧院”威廉·劳埃德·加里森在案件摘要的标题中描述了这一点 The Liberator) could not have lasted more than a few minutes, it resulted in a legal case that stretched out over days of hearings in Judge Russell’s courtroom.

Remond was ably represented by Charles Gideon Davis, a lawyer with strong antislavery beliefs. Two years before, he had been accused of aiding a client, Shadrach Minkins, in escaping from federal custody during a hearing to determine if Minkins was a fugitive slave. 在雷蒙德成为戴维斯客户的时候，戴维斯已经退出了他的一般法律业务，全身心地投入到废奴主义事业中.

In finding for Sarah Remond, Judge Russell summarized the evidence and arguments presented in his courtroom. He accepted Remond’s argument that she was not attempting to test the legality of segregated seating, but only to take the seat for which she had a valid ticket. 这使他断定这是一个直截了当的毁约问题:歌剧公司无权取消雷蒙的票，而且已经毁约了. Thus, Henry Palmer, the agent for the opera company, had no right to eject her—or to have a Boston policeman act on his behalf.

尽管罗素法官引用了宾夕法尼亚州的一个行李丢失案件来说明合同是如何被破坏的——这很难说是对黑人民权的激动人心的支持——但他指出，在波士顿，没有长期存在的、容易理解的种族排斥的做法，而且他还指出，在白人观众中出现黑人赞助人会引起骚乱, the representatives of the opera company were “wrong in their estimate of Boston character.” Judge Russell found agent Palmer and officer Philbrick guilty, but fined them only $1.00 each. Palmer, but not Philbrick, was also to pay costs arising from the trial.

William C. Nell, who was both a participant in and observer of the trial, exulted in the verdict and reported to a friend that after Remond sisters “gained the case. . . we attended operas afterwards in a[s] good shape as any body.” Unhappily, the outcome was not as clear cut as Nell implied. By September 1853, the Howard Athenaeum was making efforts not to end segregated seating, but to give public notice of its exclusionary practices in order to fend off further lawsuits.

Another Ejection: the Franklin Institute Exhibition in Philadelphia

尽管萨拉·雷蒙德声称，她被驱逐出霍华德·雅典娜神庙并非蓄意检验种族隔离的合法性, less than six months later she found herself in the midst of a strikingly similar confrontation. In November 1853, during a trip to Philadelphia with a friend, Annie E. Wood, they attempted to tour the public exhibition at the Franklin Institute. Even though the contributions of African Americans to the “mechanical arts” were on display, the Institute maintained a strict color line and, although Remond and her companions had purchased tickets, they were forced to leave. Again, a police officer was charged with an assault—this time upon their local host, Robert Purvis, Jr. In spite of a “manly protest against wrong,” the charge was dismissed.

Madame Remond Pintor

Throughout the 1850s, Sarah Parker Remond’s role as a noted abolitionist speaker continued to grow, first in the northern United States and then from 1859 in Europe. When Remond left America to lecture in Great Britain, not knowing that she would spend most of the rest of her life abroad, William Lloyd Garrison wrote a public letter of introduction for her to the editor of the Anti-Slavery Advocate of London. He praised her moral worth and intellectual force, but on a more personal level, continued, “She is capable of gracing any circle, and will be her own best recommendation wherever she travels.”

Sarah Remond remained in England during the American Civil War, 争取观众对反奴隶制事业的同情，以及后来对黑人民权的支持和对解放后美国南方自由黑人的援助. She also had the opportunity to attend college courses, although official racism followed her to Europe. In 1859, the American legation in London denied her request for a visa when she wished to travel to France, arguing that as a Black person she could not be a U. S. citizen and making her the protagonist in the “Visa Affair.”

在南北战争结束后短暂返回美国，为自由民援助和妇女权利工作, Remond returned to Europe. Meanwhile in Boston, the policy of segregated seating in theaters, with the notable exception of the Boston Museum, had continued to expand, 尽管许多黑人废奴主义者在过去的几十年里反对奴隶制和种族隔离，但他们还是举行了抗议活动.

雷蒙在佛罗伦萨定居，在那里她学习医学，并能够从与种族偏见的持续斗争中解脱出来, except as she noted, among white visitors from the United States who brought their racism with them. In 1877, at the age of 50, she married Lazzaro Pintor, a Sardinian businessman living in Florence. 雷蒙·平托夫人住在一个国际化的侨民社区的中心，她的美国家庭成员也住在那里, and artists and writers, first in Florence and later in Rome where she died in 1894.