Willi Coleman

Leaping Over the Ocean Willi Coleman

Leaping Over The Ocean is a deliberate attempt to include/intrude specific Black women into existing narratives on race, gender and travel. My focus here is on the lives and specific motivations that pushed and pulled four Black women across the Atlantic Ocean before and into the turn of the 20th century. That Sarah Mar'gru Kinson Green, Anna Julia Cooper, Sarah Parker Remond and Mary Church Terrell were all born between the early 1830's and 1863 renders their travels all the more worthy of note. In an era when women across the globe were expected or required to remain tethered to hearth and home, three of this quartet found her own reasons to travel across the Atlantic Ocean more than one time. In doing so Mar'gru, Anna Julia, Sarah and Mary each provide insight into the many ways that the institution of slavery and new found freedom/s unfolded in the lives of Black women. It is from this group that we hear some of the earliest Black female interrogation of race and gender issues both at home and abroad. With apparent fearlessness each found her own reasons to step aboard a steamship and with deliberation move well beyond the boundaries of her known world.