Through an analysis of words and images as they moved through material production, circulation, and reception, the essay explores the literary and pictorial practices of African American women who, at sites ranging from oral to scribal to print, forged discursive communities engaged in social and moral reform, especially radical abolitionism.

In their shared, mutually supportive reading and writing practices, antebellum evangelicals like the Smith family prepared themselves for national conversion and global millennium. Institutionalizing the spiritual and intellectual rewards of their “pen and ink communion” in churches, schools, moral reform societies, and family relationships, they helped advance a powerful evangelicalism that continues to shape our world today.