The Freedmen's Book

Lydia Child and her husband began to identify themselves with the anti-slavery cause in 1831 through the personal influence and writings of William Lloyd Garrison.Child was a women's rights activist, but did not believe significant progress for women could be made until after the abolition of slavery. She believed that white women and slaves were similar in that white men held both groups in subjugation and treated them as property instead of individual human beings. Despite the fact that she worked towards equality for women, Child made her opinion known that she did not care for all-female societies. She believed that women would be able to achieve more by working alongside men. Child, along with many other female abolitionists, began campaigning for equal female membership in the American Anti-Slavery Society, a controversy which later split the movement.