Eliza Ann Gardner

Eliza Ann Gardner (May 28, 1831 – January 4, 1922) was an African-American abolitionist, religious leader and women's movement leader from Boston, Massachusetts. She founded the missionary society of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ), was a strong advocate for women's equality within the church, and was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

Early life Eliza Ann Gardner was born on May 28, 1831, in New York City to James and Eliza Gardner. As a child she moved with her family to Boston, where her father had a successful career as a ship contractor. The Gardners had been involved in the AME Zion Church for years, and by 1843, James was a member of the Boston church's board of trustees, and became second treasurer.

Career As a young woman, Gardner became active in her church and in the anti-slavery movement while making her living as a dressmaker, and later as keeper of a boarding house. As an activist she knew and worked with many abolitionist leaders including Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Wendell Phillips. Gardner and her mother became founding contributors of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in Boston when it raised funds to move locations in 1865. Gardner continued to raise funds for the church until her death.

Gardner's fundraising efforts met with resistance in 1884, when members of the male-dominated AMEZ Church objected to the creation of a women's society. At the church's quadrennial conference, Gardner successfully defended the role of women in the church: I come from Old Massachusetts, where we have declared that all, not only men, but women, too, are created free and equal....If you commence to talk about the superiority of men, if you persist in telling us that after the fall of man we were put under your feet and that we are intended to be subject to your will, we cannot help you in New England one bit. urging them to "strengthen [women's] efforts and make us a power." In 1895, when female chaplains were a rarity, she served as the chaplain of the First National Conference of the Colored Women of America. During the 1900s, she often gave speeches against racial discrimination, comparing the current fight for equality with the abolition movement she had been involved in.

Publications A Historical Sketch of the A. M. E. Zion Church of Boston, 1918