Julia Griffiths

{{Short description|British abolitionist (1811 – 1895)}}

File:Plaque for Julia Griffiths Crofts.jpg]]

{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2021}}

Julia Griffiths (21 May 1811 – 1895)National Archives, London, England. 1871 England Census, South Ward, Gateshead, England, p. 41. was a British abolitionist who worked with the American former slave Frederick Douglass. The two met in London, England, during Douglass's tour of the British Isles in 1845–47. In 1849, Griffiths joined Douglass in Rochester, New York, and edited, published and promoted his work. She was one of six founding members of the influential Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society.{{cite web | title=timeline of Frederick Douglass and family | website=University at Buffalo | url=http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0history/hwny-douglass-family.html | access-date=2020-05-21}} She is most noted for publishing Autographs for Freedom,{{cite web | title=Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) by Julia Griffiths | website=Project Gutenberg | date=2006-11-28 | url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19949 | access-date=2020-05-21}} an anthology of anti-slavery literature. In 1854, there were unfounded accusations, leveled by William Lloyd Garrison, that Douglass and Griffiths engaged in infidelity.{{cite book|last=Martin|first=Waldo E. Jr.|title=The Mind of Frederick Douglass|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KXgrCH0bkHwC&pg=PA42|year=2000|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-8078-6428-9|page=42}} Griffiths returned to England in 1855, where she continued to organize ladies' anti-slavery societies, write columns for Douglass's newspapers, and raise funds for the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society, later called the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery and Freedmen's Aid Society. In 1859, she married Henry O. Crofts, a Methodist minister and former missionary in Canada. After her husband's death, Crofts ran a school for girls in St. Neots.{{cite journal | author-first=Erwin | author-last=Palmer | url=https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/3476 | title=A Partnership in the Abolition Movement | date=1970 | journal=University of Rochester Library Bulletin | volume=26 | issue=1}}