Amy Post

Amy Kirby Post (December 20, 1802 – January 29, 1889) was an American activist who was central to several important social causes of the 19th century, including the abolition of slavery and women's rights. Post's upbringing in Quakerism shaped her beliefs in equality of all humans, although she ultimately left the Religious Society of Friends because of her desire to actively support social change efforts that called upon her to collaborate with non-Quakers. A friend of many prominent activists including Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, Post provided key support to the causes that she believed in both publicly and in less-public ways. She was a signer of the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments and a life-long activist who committed herself to work toward a range of intersecting social issues. This blended activism approach sets Post apart from many other activists of her time who advocated for a single issue in the hopes that doing so would lead to sufficient social change.

Early life Amy Kirby was born in 1802 to a Quaker family living in a farming community in Long Island, New York. Her parents were Jacob and Mary Kirby, who had five children. In 1837, Post signed her first anti-slavery petition. The founding meeting of the society was chaired by Abby Kelley, a former Quaker, who was at the time an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The meeting drew together a wide range of attendees from various religious denominations including Baptists, Presbyterians, and Hicksite Quakers.

Amy Kirby Post published "The Underground Railroad in Rochester" in 1884.

Women's rights As part of the New York Western Anti-Slavery Society fundraising fair she helped to organize in 1846, Amy Kirby Post and other women abolitionists sold copies of Reverend Samuel J. May's "Sermon on the Rights of Women," marking an early public expression of her women's rights activism. The Declaration of Sentiments, signed by Amy Post and other attendees of the first women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848. Two weeks later, she and several other women who had participated in the Seneca Falls Convention organized the Rochester Women's Rights Convention in the Post's hometown of Rochester, New York. A planning meeting chose Amy Kirby Post as temporary chair and designated a nominating committee to propose a slate of officers. The Seneca Falls Convention had followed tradition by electing a man as president of the convention. Defying tradition, the Rochester organizers proposed a woman, Abigail Bush, for that position. When the convention assembled in the Rochester Unitarian Church on August 2, Amy Kirby Post called it to order and read the suggested slate of officers. The proposal for a woman to be president of the convention was strongly opposed by some of the leaders of the women's movement who were present, fearing that women were not yet ready to take that step. Bush was elected despite the opposition, making this the first public meeting of both men and women in the United States whose presiding officer was a woman. Amy Kirby Post continued to attend women's rights conventions, and at a convention in Rochester in 1853, she signed "The Just and Equal Rights of Women" resolution.

Amy Kirby Post had an early influence on suffragist Susan B. Anthony through her encouragement and support of women's rights activities.

Post also variously provided aid, medical care, employment, and/or housing to women who suffered abuse or abandonment by men in a more informal expression of her work to support women in need. After the birth of a daughter, Mary, Isaac Post moved Hannah Post and their baby to Scipio, a township in the southern part of Cayuga County, New York. until she returned to Hannah and Isaac Post's home after the birth of their son, Edmund, in 1825. Hannah Post became critically ill and died in April 1827, with Amy providing care in the home at this time. By September 1828, Amy Kirby married Issac Post, the widow of her late sister, Hannah, thus becoming the stepmother to Mary and Edmund. Amy and Issac went on to have five children—Jacob Kirby Post, Joseph W. Post, Henry Post, Willett E. Post, and Matilda Post. Henry, Edmund, and Matilda all died in childhood.

Legacy Amy Kirby Post has been remembered for being an early model of "lifestyle politics" that blended activist efforts with daily living. These lifestyle politics included one's everyday practices of marital relations, language use, childbearing, methods of healing, choice of clothing, style of worship, and use of leisure time. Such choices could be a reflection of political commitments, and Post embraced this approach to expressing her activist commitments through her daily living and in addition to her organizing efforts. This type of activism enabled women to be as committed to political change as men even when they were denied the right to vote.

Post's activism also remains an example of an enmeshed social movement approach that advocated for multi-faceted forms of social justice rather than single-issue approaches such as abolition or women's rights that were thought to individually hold the potential to sufficiently change society.