User:Elmobigbirdberternie/sandbox

Jeremiah Burke Sanderson was born in New Bedford Massachusetts on August 10, 1821, to Daniel and Sarah Sanderson. Sarah was at least part Wampanoag but may have been full-blooded, and Daniel was part African American and may have been part Scottish. Jeremiah’s father left their family when Jeremiah was nine years old. Sanderson received a good education and pursued a career as a barber. Jeremiah Burke Sanderson was elected secretary of the New Bedford Colored Citizens at only 19. In 1840 he met William C. Nell and Frederick Douglass, who were abolitionists from Boston. Sanderson became good friends with both and worked with them throughout their lives. Throughout the 1840s Sanderson traveled to various cities in Massachusetts and New York lecturing about anti-slavery. One of the speeches he gave in Lynn Massachusetts was nearly published in the New York Tribune. When Sanderson traveled to Lynn, Massachusetts to give speeches, he would stay with Frederick Douglass and his family. In 1841 Sanderson gave a speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society meeting that impressed many other well-known abolitionists including Parker Pillsbury and Edward Quincy. In 1848 he married an unknown woman and had four children with her. One of his daughters, Mary Sanderson Graves, became the first African American schoolteacher in the state of California. Sanderson’s other three children are unknown. In 1853 Sanderson was appointed as a delegate for the National Convention of Colored People, and in 1954 became a member of the State Council of Colored People of Massachusetts. Jeremiah Burke Sanderson and his family moved to California in 1854 because Sanderson thought that there, he, and his children would find better racial equality. After discovering that his children did not have better opportunities in California than in Massachusetts, Sanderson set to work improving educational opportunities for African American Children in California.