Abby Folsom

Who was Abby Folsom?

Abigail Folsom was a 19th-century American feminist and abolitionist. Ralph Waldo Emerson termed her “the flea of conventions” for her habit of insisting on a woman’s right to speak, which would derail abolitionist and other conferences. One source relates the following anecdote:

She was often removed from the halls she afflicted by gentle force. As she was a nonresistant, she never struck back, save with her tongue which was keen enough. One day Wendell Phillips and two others placed her in a chair and were carrying her down the aisle through the crowd when she exclaimed: “I’m better off than my master was. He had but one ass to ride — I have three to carry me.”