Documentation of the African American experience focuses primarily on lives in the United States. The work and impact of African Americans extends internationally and is often overlooked. Many African Americans worked and lived abroad and one such influential member of society is Sarah Parker Remond. Sarah Parker Remond was born in Salem Massachusetts on June 6th 1815. She was the daughter of John Remond and Nancy Lenox and one of eight children. The Remond family held strong abolitionists beliefs and played host to many slaves heading north as well as leaders of the abolitionist movement such as Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. It was an incident in 1853 that encouraged Ms. Remond further into activism. It was in this year that she purchased a ticket to see a performance of the opera Don Pasquale at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston. Upon her arrival she was offered segregated seating and upon her refusal was forced out of the theater and pushed down a flight of stairs. Ms. Remond later sued the theatre for damages and won. She was granted $500 in restitution and an admission that the theater was in the wrong. After this she began speaking out against slavery. Although she lacked experience, the American Anti-Slavery Society hired her, her brother Charles, and Susan B. Anthony to tour the state of New York to speak about abolition and the anti-slavery movement. She became one of the society’s most powerful, effective, and polished speakers. She was invited to speak in London where her brother Charles was already quite well known.
During her stay in Great Britian, Ms. Remond took up studies at The Bedford College of Women, which would later become a part of the University of London. While in London, Ms. Remond signed the first women’s suffrage petition, becoming the first woman of African descent to do so. While at The Bedford College of Women, she studied a variety of different subjects including Latin, English Literature, History, and Elocution. It was during these studies when she traveled to Florence and Rome. When she turned 42, in the year 1866, Ms. Remond permanently moved to Florence, Italy and became a medical student at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. After completing her education, Ms. Remond began to practice medicine and a physician in Italy. She married a man from Sardinia named Larazzo Pinto. She passed away in December of 1894 and is interred at Cimitero Protestante in Rome.

I propose to do a photographic study on Ms. Remond’s life and death in Italy. I would visit, document, and photograph the area where Ms. Remond lived, learned, and practiced medicine. I would document the circumstances surrounding her death and the site of her burial. Ms. Remond was an important part of African American history as well feminism. It is important to preserve this aspect of history to show that African Americas legacy extends beyond the borders of America and to show that during a time when both African Americans and women were denied equal rights, a black woman had the strength, fortitude and the courage to leave her home country to achieve freedom and success. Photography is the ideal medium to accomplish this because the power of images often exceeds what can be said with words yet, photographs have a way of crossing the barriers of time to transport viewers to another time and place. Sarah Parker Remond’s story deserves to be told and preserved for current and future generations. The steps that she took demand to be documented, discussed and learned from. My knowledge and passion for photography, historic preservation and my yearning to learn more about Ms. Remond make me the perfect person to document and preserve her life and death in Italy.