(July 10th, 1836 – February 21st, 1932) A free African-American woman who lived through the #AmericanCivilWar, #RebeccaPrimus fought both racism and sexism in the years of #Reconstruction. Following the Civil War, Primus dedicated her life to the #FreedmansBureau, helping to educate newly freed people who had been enslaved during and before the war. Working in Maryland as a teacher, she stayed for a few years before funding started to dry up and the popularity of Reconstruction programs waned as racists retook positions of power they had been denied in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. Primus returned to her native Connecticut and worked as a seamstress and Sunday school teacher at her local church, eventually becoming the first woman to hold a management position at her church. This she did until her death at the beginning of the Great Depression, having been a witness to a great time of change in her nation’s history.
Before the war, she had befriended #AddieBrown and the two became so close that members of their families even said that had one of them been a man, they would have been married. Primus eventually married and had a son with her husband, but the two old friends corresponded throughout their lives. Letters from Brown to Primus survived this friendship offering a unique perspective into their relationship. Though historians debate about the verbiage used between romantic friendships of the day, they do agree that these letters differ from their contemporaries in that they do include “explicit references to erotic interactions.” No letters from Primus survive, but it is an interesting debate about the lives and relationships between northern Black women, free people of color, and women writers of the day.
The picture is believed to be the only one of Primus; she is in the middle, wearing a large hat with flowers or ruffles.
#LGBTQIA #PrideMonth #YouCannotEraseUs
Legends of Pride 