Rosa Miller Avery

Rosa Miller Avery never had to read about slavery in books to understand its evils. Born on May 21, 1830, in Madison, Ohio, she grew up in a home that served as a station on the Underground Railroad, where she witnessed firsthand the human cost of bondage. Her father, Nahum Miller, was a pioneer anti-slavery agitator whose humanitarian convictions shaped the entire household.

Rosa Miller Avery

But it was her mother, Esther, who planted the seed that would guide Avery's lifelong activism. Esther observed that "the laws pertaining to property and the holding of children were as oppressive for women as for negroes." This insight connected two struggles in Avery's mind—the fight against slavery and the fight for women's rights were part of the same battle for human dignity.

Avery's activism began early and met fierce resistance. While attending Madison Seminary, she wrote passionate anti-slavery essays that were greeted with derision and abuse. Yet her words had power—two fellow students later told her that her arguments convinced them to abandon careers in ministry to study law and politics instead.

After marrying Cyrus Avery in 1853, she moved to Ashtabula, Ohio, where she organized the first anti-slavery society in that community. The opposition was stunning. Not a single clergyman in town would announce the society's meetings, and this was just two years before the Civil War, in the home county of prominent abolitionists Joshua Reed Giddings and Benjamin Wade. The churches' refusal so outraged local leaders that they withdrew and built their own church with a decidedly anti-slavery stance.

During the Civil War years, Avery's pen became her weapon. She wrote constantly for various journals on union and emancipation, but faced a humiliating obstacle—her words needed credibility that her female name apparently couldn't provide. So she adopted male pseudonyms to ensure her articles would be taken seriously.

The strategy worked. Her writings caught the attention of Governor Richard Yates of Illinois, future President James A. Garfield, abolitionist James Redpath, and renowned anti-slavery writer Lydia Maria Child. They all sent her appreciative letters, recognizing the moral force of her arguments. Yet the bitter irony remained—she could only command that respect while hiding behind a man's name.

For Avery, this indignity reinforced her core belief. The fight against slavery and the struggle for women's equality were inseparable. Both systems denied human beings their fundamental right to self-determination. Both reduced people to property or subordination based on arbitrary characteristics.

Avery's opposition to slavery was never merely political or intellectual. It was deeply moral, rooted in her childhood experiences helping fugitive slaves and in her mother's wisdom about the interconnected nature of all human oppression. She understood that America could never truly claim to stand for liberty while chains—whether literal or legal—bound any of its people.

Rosa Miller Avery continued her activism in Chicago after 1877, focusing on social reform and women's suffrage until her death in 1894. But her anti-slavery work, conducted with courage despite gender-based obstacles, remains a testament to the power of moral conviction and the written word.