Antigua natives Elizabeth and Anne Hart were among the first African Caribbean women writers and educators of slaves and free blacks. Converts to Methodism on an island where the white ruling class was mostly Anglican, they used the church as a way to challenge the ideology and practice of slavery as well as to make a case for the empowerment of women.
Background
Elizabeth and Anne, born a year apart to Barry Conyers Hart and Anne Clearkley, were members of a small but relatively privileged class of blacks in Antigua. Their mother was a religious woman arid their father was a black plantation and slave owner, poet, and occasional writer for the local newspaper. The family lived on an estate in Popeshead, near the town of St. Johns. A biographer of the Hart sisters has described their father's conflict over owning slaves: "As a man who agonized over punishments and tried to act humanely toward his slaves, Hart helped slaves execute their affairs by preparing their manumission papers without charge and by offering general advice.
Education
Because of their social class and privilege, and the father's own level of schooling, the sisters were able to receive an education.
Career
In 1785 their mother died and 12-year-old Anne became surrogate mother to her siblings until she married in 1798, when Elizabeth took over those duties. Both sisters, however, acted as tutors to their brothers and sisters and their slaves, teaching them how to read and write as well as providing them with religious instruction. A turning point in the sisters' lives occurred in 1786 during the visit to Antigua of one of the principal founders of the Methodist foreign missions, Dr. Thomas Coke, when the sisters were baptized into the Methodist faith. Following their conversion to Methodism, their dress became plain and modest and they renounced things they considered worldly, including the piano which Elizabeth had previously enjoyed playing.
In the Methodist community, the Hart sisters had found an institutional base where they could legitimately advocate against an oppressive colonial system. In their roles as preachers, writers, and teachers the sisters carried out their goals within the white ruling-class establishment, but "boldly asserted their independent existence and status as free black women working for the social betterment and spiritual uplift of free and enslaved Africans in a slave colony".
In their marriages to white men and in their roles as educators, the Hart sisters occupied an unusual position within Antiguan society. Methodist missionary Richard Pattison asked each of them to write the island's Methodist history, which they both completed in 1804. Anne's version stresses black women's contributions, highlighting the names of particular women who had significant effects on Antiguan Methodism, an important historical and social position. Elizabeth's approach to the topic was very similar, but she laid more emphasis on the emancipation of slaves. In a very bold way, considering the time and place of black women in 1804, in a letter to an unidentified male friend, Elizabeth Hart addressed the oppression of blacks and clearly indicted Europeans and white islanders: "I agree with you, that there might be some clue to quite unknown to us; but this does not strike me as being the sins of the Africans; for, from all I can learn of them, according to their light, though barbarous and uncivilized, they are not so depraved as the generality of the Europeans, but more especially the West Indians".
By 1807, the Methodist Church's membership in Antigua totaled 22 whites and 3,516 black and colored members. Given the overwhelming numbers of black members, they were easily able to choose their own leaders, shape the agenda, and become a powerful lobby for change in the status quo. Having married men who were influential in the Methodist Church greatly fueled the Hart sisters' cause. They pressed on with their mission of empowering Africans, particularly women, with literacy skills and preaching the word of God in the face of the strong opposition from the Anglican ruling elite.
In 1809 they established the first Caribbean Sunday School in the West Indies, which welcomed whites and blacks regardless of social class. Elizabeth and her husband organized Sunday school classes among Antiguan plantation slaves in 1813. In 1815 the sisters established the Female Refuge Society of Antigua, an organization created to offset established stereotypes created by slavery that perpetuated the image of black female depravity and sexual excess. This organization would eventually begin to change the racist mainstream views of the time. The unprecedented and defiant commitment of two free black sisters to equality and education of slaves is especially notable given the fact that Antigua was a plantation and slave-owning society in the early nineteenth century.
Achievements
Connections
Through the vehicles of religious preaching and marriage, the sisters managed to challenge the practice of slave ownership. In 1798, in a move that immediately increased her social status, Anne married John Gilbert, a white man, and the cousin of Methodist Church elder and leader Nathaniel Gilbert. As a result, community members shunned Gilbert and his notary public commission was re-scinded. A few years later, Elizabeth's marriage to white evangelical educator and abolitionist Charles Thwaites, along with her abolitionist views, served to clinch the white community's displeasure with the Harts.