{{Short description|American teacher and activist}} {{Infobox person | name = Rosetta Douglass | image = Frederick Douglass first child Rosetta Douglass Sprague.png | alt = | caption = | birth_name = Rosetta Douglass | birth_date = {{Birth date|1839|06|24}} | birth_place = New Bedford, Massachusetts, US | death_date = {{Death date and age|1906|11|25|1839|06|24}} | death_place = Washington, D.C., US | relatives = Douglass family | other_names = | occupation = | years_active = | known_for = Activism | notable_works = "My Mother as I Recall Her" }}
'''Rosetta Douglass-Sprague''' (June 24, 1839 – November 25, 1906) was an American teacher and activist. She was a founding member of the National Association for Colored Women. Her parents were Anna Murray Douglass and Frederick Douglass.<ref name="UR">{{cite web|title=Rosetta Douglass Sprague|url=http://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2662|website=University of Rochester Frederick Douglass Letters Project - River Campus Library|publisher=River Campus Library|access-date=April 15, 2017}}</ref><ref name="FDE">{{cite book|last1=Temple|first1=Christel|first4=Nancy J. Dawson|editor1-last=Thompson|editor1-first=Julius|editor2-last=Conyers|editor2-first=James|editor3-last=Dawson|editor3-first=Nancy|title=The Frederick Douglass encyclopedia|date=2010|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Santa Barbara, Calif.|isbn=978-0313319884}}</ref>
==Early life and education== Rosetta was born to Anna Murray-Douglass and Frederick Douglass in 1839, in New Bedford, Massachusetts.<ref name=FDE /><ref name="TCN">{{cite book|last1=Culp|first1=Daniel|title=Twentieth Century Negro Literature: Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro|date=1902|publisher=J. L. Nichols & Company|url=https://archive.org/details/twentiethcentur00culpgoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/twentiethcentur00culpgoog/page/n221 166]|quote=rosetta douglass sprague.}}</ref> She was the eldest of five children, with her younger siblings being Lewis Henry Douglass, Frederick Douglass Jr., Charles Remond Douglass, and Annie Douglass (died at the age of ten).
When she was five, she moved with her parents to Lynn, Massachusetts.<ref name=TCN /> When she was six, she stayed with Abigail and Lydia Mott, from Albany, New York. Abigail taught her to read and write, and Lydia taught her to sew.<ref name=TCN /> At the age of 11, she assisted her father in making and packaging his newspaper.
In 1845, the Rochester Board of Education closed public schools to black students. Frederick Douglass sent Rosetta to a private school rather than send her to an all-black school that Rochester set up for black students. She eventually was tutored between the ages of two and seven.<ref name=UR /><ref name=FDE /> In 1848, Rosetta was admitted into the Seward Seminary in Rochester, New York. Rosetta was segregated from the white students while she was there, and her father spoke out against this in his newspaper.<ref name=FDE /> She was expelled after a vote by her white classmates with only one vote against her, proposed by the white, abolitionist director. She also attended Oberlin College’s Young Ladies Preparatory and Massachusetts' Salem Normal School.<ref name=FDE />
[[File:RosettaDSprague1902.tif|thumb|Rosetta D. Sprague from Daniel Wallace Culp’s 1902 book in that also profiled her and included her essay on African Americans in the United States]]
== Marriage and Family Life == On December 24, 1863, she married Nathan Sprague.<ref name="TCN" /> Her husband had been enslaved and was poorly educated. He struggled to find his footing and a job.<ref name="WYS">{{cite book|last1=Sterling|first1=Dorothy|title=We are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century|date=1984|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0393316292|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EzGVKN0BHFQC&q=rosetta+douglass+sprague&pg=PA418}}</ref> She had seven children (including Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry), and many grandchildren.<ref name="DF">{{cite web|last1=Vaughn|first1=Valeria|title=Descendants of Frederick Douglass|url=http://files.usgwarchives.net/md/annearundel/history/family/douglas.txt|website=US GenWeb Archives|publisher=US GenWeb Archives|access-date=April 15, 2017}}</ref>
Rosetta was a critical thinker like her father, but struggled against the demands of gender roles during her time.<ref name="FDE" /> Douglass worked with her father, and had a keen sense of social justice issues.<ref name="FDE" /> She did not support her father's interracial marriage with Helen Pitts Douglass after her mother's death.<ref name="FDE" /> She also advised her father against accepting the presidency of the Freedman’s Bank.<ref name="FDE" />
==Teaching, writing, and activism== Douglass worked as a teacher. She eventually became primarily a homemaker and wife. She wrote the paper ''My Mother as I Recall Her'' in 1900, as well as the paper ''What Role is the Educated Negro Woman to Play in the Uplifting of Her Race?''<ref name="TP">{{cite book|last1=Yellin|first1=Jean|last2=Bond|first2=Cynthia|title=The Pen is Ours: A Listing of Writings by and about African-American Women Before 1910 with Secondary Bibliography to the Present|date=1991|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=978-0195062038|page=[https://archive.org/details/penisourslisting0000yell/page/150 150]|edition=1st|url=https://archive.org/details/penisourslisting0000yell|url-access=registration|quote=rosetta douglass sprague.}}</ref>
She wrote “The galling chain and merciless lash were the instruments used to accomplish humiliation and degradation of the African. Avarice was the factor in the composition of the character of a large number of white men of America that wrought such ravishes in the well-being of the African.” She also wrote, “Allow the Negro two hundred and fifty years of unselfish contact to offset the two hundred and fifty years of Caucasian selfishness, and be as assiduous in his regeneration as you were in his degradation - then judge him.”<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RZgLAAAAIAAJ | title=Twentieth Century Negro Literature: Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro | isbn=9780598621122 | last1=Culp | first1=Daniel Wallace | year=1902 }}</ref>
She went on to become a founding member of the National Association for Colored Women.<ref name=FDE />
==Death== Douglass was a member of the First Church of Seventh-day Adventists, in Washington, D.C. until her death.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=187421|title=First Church of Seventh-day Adventists|website=The Historical Marker Database|access-date=June 27, 2023}}</ref> She died on November 25, 1906.
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
==External links== * [https://www.loc.gov/resource/mfd.02007/?st=gallery "My Mother As I Recall Her, by Rosetta Douglass Sprague"]. Library of Congress * {{Find a Grave | id=7407693 | name=Rosetta Sprague}}. Mount Hope Cemetery, Washington, DC. Includes links to headstones for her husband and children.
{{Frederick Douglass|state=collapsed}} {{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Douglass, Rosetta}} Category:1839 births Category:1906 deaths Category:African-American founders Category:African-American women educators Category:African-American people with free status before 1865 Category:American Seventh-day Adventists Category:American women founders Category:American organization founders Category:Activists from Rochester, New York Rosetta Douglass