Within Our Power: The Story of the Edenton Ladies’ Tea Party

In 1774, many peo­ple in thir­teen of Great Britain’s North Amer­i­can colonies were angry.  They had to pay tax­es to the British gov­ern­ment, yet they had no say in how they want­ed that mon­ey spent.  “Tax­a­tion With­out Rep­re­sen­ta­tion”  became their ral­ly­ing cry. Boy­cotts of tea, cloth, and oth­er British prod­ucts became pop­u­lar. Fear­ing pun­ish­ment for pub­lic protest, some colonists in Boston dis­guised them­selves to avoid recog­ni­tion, when they dumped tea in a har­bor. Oth­er peo­ple wrote about unfair tax­a­tion, but hid their iden­ti­ty by using an alias.

A group of fifty-one women in Eden­ton, North Car­oli­na strong­ly opposed tax­a­tion with­out  rep­re­sen­ta­tion.  At that time, women could not serve in the gov­ern­ment, nor were they per­mit­ted to vote.  But the Eden­ton ladies knew that their belief mat­tered. They decid­ed they would make a dif­fer­ence. Like oth­ers, they would boy­cott British prod­ucts. Unlike oth­ers, they shunned anonymity.

Edenton’s coura­geous women coura­geous­ly expressed their belief with a “tea par­ty” of a very dif­fer­ent sort. One that car­ried their voic­es through­out the North Amer­i­can colonies and also across the Atlantic Ocean.  The Eden­ton ladies’ courage still res­onates today. They show us that by join­ing togeth­er, peo­ple can cre­ate a strong voice that stands firm against injustice.