Born: 1809, United States
Died: 1841
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished with permission from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.
In the 1830s, Susan Paul (1809-41) taught at the Smith School on Joy Street, a segregated school for African American children funded jointly by the city and private donations. Paul was also an officer in the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. She was the daughter of Thomas Paul, the first minister of the African Meeting House, and supported her mother after his death. Some of her letters were printed in William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator. In 1834 she wrote to condemn the “spirit which persecutes us on account of our color—that cruel prejudice which deprives us of every privilege whereby we might elevate ourselves—and then condemns us because we are not more refined and intelligent.” In 1835 Paul wrote the first African American biography, Memoir of James Jackson, about her student who died at age 6.