Abolitionists soon found that assembly halls and churches in the city refused to host their meetings, often for fear of mob attacks (Phildaphelia was wracked by multiple race riots in the 1830’s). So they decided to build their own meeting house, where they could organize, convert more people to their cause, and celebrate the persuasive power of free speech. Forty thousand dollars were raised during a quick stock-offering camping, with many of the initial funders being women. "Here shall Free Discussion find a refuge and a home!" one abolitionist said at a fundraising event.8
When Pennsylvania Hall opened on May 14, 1838, it was one of the city’s grandest structures. The first floor boasted an abolitionist bookstore, offices for the abolitionist newspaper the Pennsylvania Freeman, and several meeting spaces available for rent to the public. The large auditorium on the second floor, known as the “Grand Saloon,” was envisioned as a place where lively debates on the issues of the day would unfold. Abolitionists from across the North attended the opening ceremonies–white leaders like William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott, as well as black ones like James Forten and Sarah Mapps Douglass. This was the space where the nation could chart a course to an egalitarian future.
But white Philadelphians seethed when they observed men and women attending meetings in the same space–and worse, seeing black and white people walking arm in arm together into the building. A rumor spread that the abolitionists were championing “amalgamation”--intermarriage between the races. The evening after the Hall opened, anonymous placards were placed around the city, defending slaveholders’ rights and urging white people to head to the hall to “interfere, forcibly if they must” in the opening activities.9
The next morning a rowdy crowd formed outside the hall and grew more belligerent as the day wore on. Philadelphia’s ineffectual mayor and sheriff did little to quell their anger. The women abolitionists, for their part, refused to be cowed. They continued with their meetings and speeches as the mob grew. “What would the breaking of every window be? What would the leveling of this Hall be?” Angelina Grimké mused from the main stage. “What if the mob should now burst in upon us, break up our meeting and commit violence upon our persons — would this be anything compared with what the slaves endure?”10