This virtual lecture is free and open to the public!
To receive a link, contact Antje Petty: apetty@wisc.edu
Alison Clark Efford explores how German-American feminist Mathilda Franziska Anneke responded to the 1859 “seduction” trial of Wisconsin’s leading abolitionist, Sherman Booth. Anneke, a Forty-Eighter and woman suffragist, was a friend and comrade of Sherman Booth, whose fame stemmed from fighting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Using evidence from Anneke’s correspondence, Dr. Efford shows that Anneke walked a fine line between seeking justice for the girl Booth raped and defending the abolitionist cause Booth represented.
Alison Clark Efford, is Associate Professor of History at Marquette University. She recently published a co-edited collection with Viktorija Bilic (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee): Radical Relationships: The Civil War–Era Correspondence of Mathilde Franziska Anneke.