The Poetry of Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis

Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis wrote from the heart of Philadelphia’s free Black abolitionist community, and her verse carried the cause of emancipation into print at a time when few African American women saw their words published. Signing herself ‘Ada’ and ‘Magawisca,’ she contributed poems to William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator through the 1830s, pleading against slavery and calling on women to join the fight. This collection gathers her surviving work, which moves between righteous protest, tender feeling, and a clear moral vision shaped by faith and family. Slim but historically significant, it preserves the voice of a poet whose activism ran in her blood. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.