On a summer day in July of 1830, Rebecca Cox Jackson, a freeborn black seamstress, stood face to face with one of her greatest fears: a thunderstorm.

Rebecca: "I opened all the windows in the house to let the lightning in, for it was like streams of bright glory to my soul".

This fateful thunderstorm would inspire Jackson at 35 years old to entirely change the course of her life against tremendous odds.

She would leave behind her husband and her community in her quest for a more inclusive spiritual home, inspiring others along the way.

For over three decades, Jackson traveled with her companion and protege, Rebecca Perot, a black woman referenced frequently in Jackson's journal.

They traveled across Pennsylvania and New York preaching celibacy, encouraging women to take control of their own bodies, and more radically to take control away from their husbands.

In a time where black women were not guaranteed freedom, love or safety, how did these two Rebeccas, create and lead their own spiritual family?

Most of what remains of Rebecca Jackson and Rebecca Perot's story are from Jackson's published diaries, and this single photo of Rebecca Perot.

Jackson's diaries are full of vividly intimate accounts of Perot.

The two women shared a home, meals, friends and ministry until Jackson's death in 1871.

The pair was so close, they were dubbed the two Rebeccas by their Shaker family.

Rebecca Jackson was among a growing group of female religious leaders who believed that a higher power compelled them to ministry.

In early 19th century America, evangelical religion provided an attractive opportunity for women to occupy leadership roles.

After the Second Great Awakening, many women had their first experiences speaking publicly.

Within black religious circles, women formed praying bands, which were highly democratic collectives of women who supported one another outside the boundaries of the church and shared their divine gifts with other women.

19th century Philadelphia was one of few places where black people could live with relative freedom, a rarity in a country with over 2 million people still enslaved in 1830.

At the time, there were 14,500 free Black Philadelphians.

They worked as tradespeople, entrepreneurs, and teachers in schools for Black youth.

Rebecca Jackson, her husband, and her brother all worshiped at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest black churches in America.

For freeborn Black women like Rebecca Jackson this kind of fellowship helped build confidence and self-esteem in the face of the knowledge that their freedom was merely conditional.

This freedom was accompanied by segregation and rampant mob violence.

Rebecca began to sense the presence of an energy that she would later refer to as the Mother and the Deity.

This deity was on the same level as capital g God, but was nurturing, patient, gentle.

Traits that were ridiculed in women revealed themselves to Jackson as holy.

Jackson grew up in a society that had strict instructions on how a Black woman should act in public.

But this inner voice, revealed to her in a thunderstorm, gave her explicit permission to rebel.

Jackson began preaching this alternate idea of God, a God that was both feminine and masculine.

Some of the first attendees to her revival meetings were fellow congregants at Bethel AME.

Congregants who wanted a more intimate exploration of scripture.

As her popularity grew, black and white men and woman called on Rebecca Jackson for prayer and a healing word, a gift she believed came to her during that thunderstorm.

During the winter of 1836 Rebecca held 69 unsanctioned covenant meetings up and down the East Coast.

She wrote about Methodist preachers who told her in explicit detail how she should die for leading the men.

Jackson asserted that all people had a right to celibacy, even in marriage.

Her beliefs led to heated, sometimes violent arguments with her husband.

To protect her body at home, Jackson performed dramatic acts of self-harm that she described as miracles in front of her husband.

At one point, setting her hands on a burning stove.

When she showed her husband that her hands had not been scarred by the blazing metal, that was her unmistakable proof that her body now belonged to a heavenly power, not to any man on Earth.

From this point on, Jackson would document almost 30 years of her spiritual and private life.

Jackson separated from her husband in 1836, but being a single, Black free woman was a dangerous proposition in 19th century America.

Many 19th century Black women had two paths ahead of them: a life of enslavement or freedom directly tied to the whims of a man, her father, her brother, her husband.

There were no real legal protections for Black women, their bodies or their children at the time.

Monet: When we think about the 19th century, we think of the women who are enslaved, how their agency may be taken away while under the control of their enslaver.

But we also have to consider free Black women, and how they were also limited in their mobility and their agency.

They faced the challenges of not having ownership or power not just of themselves, but of material objects, leadership positions.

As a Black woman, you had to exude sexual purity, moral behavior, and you also had to uplift the race.

So on top of worrying about how others perceived you, you also had to uplift mainly in these cases, the Black men in your life.

Harini: Finally, free from her marriage, Jackson began to travel with her message as the divine voice instructed her.

At Rebecca's prayer meetings, her visions revealed illnesses, deaths, and conversions to come.

In 1837, church leadership accused her of heresy.

But when she demanded a formal trial in her home she was denied.

It was clear to Jackson that she would need to go find a new spiritual home.

Jackson's writings stopped between 1836 and 1840.

When she returned her journal, we find her regularly visiting a mostly white Shaker community in Watervliet, New York.

Jackson initially believed she had found the ideal fit, writing, "these are my people".

The Shakers' beliefs aligned directly with Jackson's.

They believed in creating an earthly utopia through sharing resources and land.

They believed in the Mother Deity who blessed Jackson through lightning only a few years before.

Their founder was Mother Ann Lee.

Child care was a group activity as Shakers prioritized communal bonds over marriages.

Unlike many other denominations, Shaker women had every right to speak in church, since 1787.

It is during this time that Jackson writes extensively in her journal about Rebecca Perot.

Jackson writes about one dream Perot recounted to her, where she fantasizes that the two Rebeccas would one day reign as king and queen.

Then in 1847, they arrived together in Watervliet.

Rebecca: "I saw a garden of excellent fruit and it appeared to come near, even into my bed and around me.

And I was permitted to eat and to give a portion to Rebecca Perot.

And she ate and was strengthened."

Harini: The Shakers later recognized Rebecca Jackson as a true prophet, a status that she could never achieve as part of the AME Church in Philadelphia.

She adopted the title Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson as a signal of her religious authority.

After looking around the beautiful Watervliet community, a question lingered in Rebecca's mind.

Where were all the Black believers?

While the Shakers appeared to be on their way to building an ideal society in their corner of the world, the rest of America was in turmoil.

In 1830, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, requiring slaves to be returned to the people who enslaved them, even if they lived in a free state.

This meant any Black person in the United States was at risk of kidnaping, even people who were officially free.

Jackson's writings frequently refer to, "the burden of my people".

It was in this alarming context that Jackson wrestled with a choice should she stay and try to shift the Shakers to recruiting more Black members, or should she strike on her own without permission, as the divine Voice instructed her so long ago.

After a few years in Watervliet, Jackson and Perot returned to Philadelphia in the 1850s to start their own version of a Shaker community for mostly Black women, years before they were given official approval.

This unique community married Shaker practices two traditions of Black praying bands, call and response, dancing freely, sharing resources and direct communication to spirits through seances.

A core group of sisters lived together, pooling their talents and sharing their dreams of a peaceful future.

Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson had finally manifested the spiritual home she had always needed.

Rebecca Cox Jackson died in 1871 after a lively 40 year career as an orator, healer, seer and caregiver.

After Jackson's death, Rebecca Perot took on Jackson's name, becoming Mother Rebecca Jackson.

She continued her companion's mission and lived under that name until she died in 1901 in Watervliet.

Over a century after the ink dried from Rebecca Jackson's pages, women's studies professor Jean McMahon Humez carefully edited Jackson's work into a book, Gifts of Power, published in 1981.

At the time of publishing, Humez wrote that today they would probably be considered lesbians.

Monet: I think now we have a sense of what it means to be queer, bi, trans.

And when I think of the two Rebeccas, I think of an essay that Alice Walker actually wrote on Rebecca Jackson in her writings called Gifts of Power.

And in this essay, Alice Walker, she concludes her article by saying what was their word for it?

how would the two Rebeccas identify themselves, especially when we're thinking about the fact that both of them committed a life to celibacy?

Does that apply to same sex relationships or does that only apply to relationships between men and women?

Harini: But we must contextualize Black spiritual woman in the 19th century, whether they're Shakers, medicine women, AME or Hoodoo practitioners, as people finding joy in a time of survival by any means necessary.

While the two Rebeccas may not have had a name for their relationship, they clearly had a calling to one another, and to the spiritual wellness of the people around them.

The pair traveled together, prayed together, and built a life together.

These imaginative and willful women challenged cultural norms and formed a community that centered the joy and expression of Black women.