Amy Matilda Williams Cassey

Amy Matilda Williams Cassey (born 14 August 1809) was an African American abolitionist and was active with Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Amy died on the 15th of August 1956 in Salem, Massachusetts.^[1] Amy's friendship album is kept at the library company of Philadelphia.

Early Life

Amy was born into a prominent African American family, in New York, to Sarah and Peter Williams Jr. Her father, Peter Williams Jr., founded and was the pastor of St. Phillips black Episcopal church in lower Manhattan.

Black newspapers and organizations in her early teens

African Free School - educated

Philadelphia

When Amy was seventeen, she married a businessman from Philadelphia named Joseph Cassey, after they married, she moved with him to Philadelphia.

Activism

Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society

Several reform and educational societies

Female Literary Association

In 1941 Amy and Joseph Cassey along with other abolitionists of the time founded the Gilbert Lyceum. The Gilbert Lyceum was the only co-ed literary society in Philadelphia and included literary and scientific interests equally.^[2]

Friendship Albums

External Links

https://blackpast.org/aah/cassey-amy-matilda-williams-1808-1856

https://blackpast.org/aah/cassey-house

https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3ACASS1?display=list

References

Armstrong, Erica R. "A Mental and Moral Feast: Reading, Writing, and Sentimentality in Black Philadelphia." Journal of Women's History 16, no. 1 (Spring, 2004): 78-102.

Cobb, Nichole Jasmine. ""Forget me Not": Free Black Women and Sentimentality." MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 40, no. 3 (Fall, 2015): 28-46.

Rusert, Britt. "Disappointment in the Archives of Black Freedom." Social Text 33, no. 4 125 (2015): 19-33

^ Winch, Julie (2000). The Elite of our People: Josephs Willson's Sketches of Black Upper-Class Life in Antebellum Philadephia. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 167.
^ Martin, Tony (Summer, 2002). "The Banneker Literary Institute of Philadelphia: African American Intellectual Activism before the War of the Slaveholders' Rebellion". The Journal of African American History. 87: 303–322 – via JSTOR. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

[1] Winch, Julie (2000). The Elite of our People: Josephs Willson's Sketches of Black Upper-Class Life in Antebellum Philadephia. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 167.

[2] Martin, Tony (Summer, 2002). "The Banneker Literary Institute of Philadelphia: African American Intellectual Activism before the War of the Slaveholders' Rebellion". The Journal of African American History. 87: 303–322 – via JSTOR. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

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Amy Matilda Cassey