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Ashwin Bhat
Professor Searfoss
English 2350. 101.
2 December 2015
Lydia Maria Child and Racial Equality
Lydia Maria Child advocated racial equality very strongly through her anti-racist writing,
utilizing a plethora of rhetorical strategies and messages that are still relevant to this day. This
point is still a very important topic in the United States, as racist acts continually occur and racist
mindsets are held by many. In her acclaimed story “The Quadroons,” Child wrote about two
lovers’ trials and tribulations in Georgia prior to the Civil War. The story was first printed in the
antislavery compendium The Liberty Bell in 1842. The woman in this story, Rosalie, is a
“quadroon,” meaning she is one-fourth African American. Her husband, Edward, is a white man.
The story describes the troubles the couple goes through due to the fact that Rosalie is simply
one-fourth African American in a time of strong prejudice.
It is a well-known fact throughout the literary community that Lydia Maria Child was a
strong advocate of racial equality. Throughout “The Quadroons,” Child provides examples of
real-life racism that were factually accurate for the time period she was writing about (before the
Civil War). Rosalie and her supposed husband, Edward, were technically not married; although
they shared a strong love and considered themselves as married, the law did not grant them their
wish to be legally married due to Rosalie’s ethnic background. “The tenderness of Rosalie’s
conscience required an outward form of marriage; though she well knew that a union with her
proscribed race was unrecognized by law, and therefore the ceremony gave her no legal hold on
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Edward’s constancy” (Child, p. 183). This quote taken from the story describes what it was like
at the time to deal with not only severe racism and prejudice from people, but serious racism
from the government itself. The law of the land prohibited a white person from marrying a
person of African American descent, even if said person was only one-fourth African American.
Child makes sure to elaborate on the fact that even if two people are in love and desire to marry
each other, one’s race determines whether or not they can legally marry. Child appeals to the
readers’ emotions when she states “It was a marriage sanctioned by Heaven, though
unrecognized on earth.” She is hoping to persuade readers of this story to abandon their racist
views and understand how these perverse and appalling views adversely affected a large group of
people. Child did a great deal to fight for civil liberties of African Americans. In “Lydia Maria
Child (1802-1880)” out of the journal Legacy, author Patricia Holland describes a few of the
