Tag: Quakers

Free Download Brian Temple, "Philadelphia Quakers and the Antislavery Movement"
English | ISBN: 0786494077 | 2014 | 240 pages | EPUB | 3 MB
The Quakers came to America in the 17th century to seek religious freedom. After years of struggle, they achieved success in various endeavors and, like many wealthy colonists of the time, bought and sold slaves. But a movement to remove slavery from their midst, sparked by their religious beliefs, grew until they renounced the slave trade and freed their slaves. Once they rejected slavery, the Quakers then began to petition the state and Federal governments to do the same. When those in power turned a blind eye to the suffering of those enslaved, the Quakers used both legal and, in the eyes of the government, illegal means to fight slavery. This determination to stand against slavery led some Quakers to join with others to be a part of the Underground Railroad. The transition from friend to foe of slavery was not a quick one but one that nevertheless was ahead of the rest of America.

Free Download Allison Hepler, "McCarthyism in the Suburbs: Quakers, Communists, and the Children’s Librarian"
English | ISBN: 1498569390 | 2018 | 208 pages | EPUB | 18 MB
In 1953, Mary Knowles was fired as a branch librarian for the Morrill Memorial Library, a public library in Norwood, Massachusetts. She had been called before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and, when asked if she’d ever been a member of the Communist Party, she declined to answer, relying on her Fifth Amendment rights. She was fired less than three weeks later. Knowles thought she was unlikely to find a position as a librarian again and left the area. She found a job at a small library outside Philadelphia, where anticommunists who learned of her past tried to create public support for a Loyalty Oath, resulting in the loss of public funding for the library. The resulting controversy eventually brought national attention to the local Quakers who had hired Knowles, the FBI was asked to investigate, Knowles was convicted of contempt of Congress, and the Quakers were subpoenaed and testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Knowles, however, was never fired from this position, retiring from the library in 1979.

Free Download Dawn G. Marsh, "A Lenape among the Quakers: The Life of Hannah Freeman"
English | 2017 | pages: 230 | ISBN: 080327520X, 0803248407 | EPUB | 3,1 mb
"Marsh makes commendable use of the scant documentary evidence to piece together Hannah Freeman’s life. Her painstaking efforts to give Hannah a voice are impressive." ―Thomas Britten,The Historian