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Zilpha Elaw

Biography

United States

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Biography

Zilpha Elaw (c. 1790 – 1873) was an African-American preacher and spiritual autobiographer. She has been cited as "one of the first outspoken black women in the United States." Mitzi Smith suggests that Elaw and other Black women of the time such as Old Elizabeth used Pauline biblical texts to develop their own "politics of origins".

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Biography text · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source checked 2026-10-13

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