tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/frederick-douglass-15093/articlesFrederick Douglass – The Conversation2023-01-24T13:23:57Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1964312023-01-24T13:23:57Z2023-01-24T13:23:57ZHow some enslaved Black people stayed in Southern slaveholding states – and found freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505473/original/file-20230119-21-os9hya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=578%2C228%2C2959%2C2185&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black fugitives fleeing slavery on the Underground Railroad,</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fugitive-slaves-fleeing-from-maryland-to-delaware-by-way-of-news-photo/815687998?phrase=underground%20railroad%20slavery&adppopup=true">Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For generations, the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/underground-railroad">Underground Railroad</a> has been the quintessential story of resistance against oppression.</p>
<p>Yet, the story is incomplete. </p>
<p>What is far less known is that the majority of enslaved people who fled Southern slavery before the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation">1863 Emancipation Proclamation</a> never crossed <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mason-and-Dixon-Line">the Mason-Dixon line</a> to freedom in the Northern states.</p>
<p>Instead, they remained within the slaveholding Southern states.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/en/about-us/people/faculty/postdoctoral-researchers/viola-mueller">a scholar</a> of slavery, labor and resistance, I have written about the thousands of enslaved Black people who gravitated to the burgeoning cities and towns of the South, where they lived camouflaged among urban Black residents in Baltimore; Charleston, South Carolina; New Orleans; and Richmond, Virginia.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469671062/escape-to-the-city/">my book</a> “Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South,” my research reveals that the resistance of Black people in the antebellum South was much larger and much more active than we have thought. </p>
<h2>A natural part of Southern cities</h2>
<p>Despite their numbers, this parallel story to the Underground Railroad did not leave a mark that is very discernible today. </p>
<p>Unlike fugitives who fled to the North – or to Mexico – those who stayed in the South did not cause political debates that historians can analyze.</p>
<p>And newspaper coverage was so meager that, for the most part, generations of historians have simply overlooked the fact that thousands of runaway slaves went to Southern cities. They overwhelmingly came from nearby plantations and towns.</p>
<p>Intriguingly, it is exactly this gap in the historical record which suggests that urban fugitives prevailed, because it testifies to their virtual invisibility.</p>
<p>My research has found snippets and snapshots of information about them. </p>
<p>Autobiographies, such as the ones by <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/runaway/menu.html">James Matthews</a> and <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/teamoh-george-1818-after-1887/">George Teamoh</a>, reveal how they procured work in a new place. </p>
<p>When Matthews went to Charleston, he wrote that he “went down to the stevedore’s stand and waited there with the rest of the hands” until he was recruited for “stowing away cotton in a vessel.” </p>
<p>Likewise, Teamoh wrote that he “found employment during a few days” at the dockyard at the Richmond Basin. </p>
<p>South Carolina slaveholders complained <a href="https://dlas.uncg.edu/petitions/petition/11385404/">in petitions</a> that their runaways were hired in Charleston to load vessels. Jail ledgers give insight into those who were caught.</p>
<p>For contemporary residents, escaped slaves in Southern cities were a normal occurrence, as the routine handling of them suggests. </p>
<p>When the New Orleans Daily Picayune in 1852 reported that runaway slaves “were hustled up by the police last evening,” it concluded that none of the cases “were of sufficient interest to be worth narrating.”</p>
<p>Some refugees from slavery were apprehended, but as I learned during my research, most could live and work unmolested by police, co-workers or neighbors. </p>
<p>They could be the washerwoman or the neighbor’s cleaning girl or the bricklayer in the street – all hidden in plain sight.</p>
<h2>Collective resistance</h2>
<p>When the Black populations in Southern cities grew throughout the antebellum era between 1800 and 1860, individual family members, friends and sympathizers offered support to Black fugitives to help find housing and work. </p>
<p>As a whole, Black society functioned as a community in which fugitives could remain invisible to slaveholders, police and authorities. </p>
<p>Harboring or aiding an enslaved Black fugitive had been a punishable offense long before the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/fugitive-slave-act">Fugitive Slave Act of 1850</a>, which enabled anyone to capture and return any Black man or woman, often regardless of legal status, to slavery. If caught involved in an enslaved person’s escape, helpers could face as many as seven years in prison.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A poster claims to have a $100 reward for the capture of a runaway slave." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A reward poster for a runaway enslaved person that circulated in Ripley County, Missouri, in March 1860.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/reward-poster-circulated-in-ripley-county-missouri-after-news-photo/517213316?phrase=%20slavery%20%20runaway&adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But shared social and political experiences bound people of African descent together. In contrast to Colonial times, it is well known that during the antebellum era, Black families often counted both free and enslaved members.</p>
<p>This mobilized a broad intraracial solidarity that furnished fugitives with the right environment to carve out new lives outside the reach of their masters and mistresses. My <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469671062/escape-to-the-city/">research</a> shows that men and women took the opportunity to find jobs, tie new friendships and join local churches.</p>
<h2>The need to be invisible</h2>
<p>Very clearly, fugitives in Southern cities could only make it with the help of others. </p>
<p>And while flight to the North by no means meant that safety was guaranteed, success in the South depended more than anywhere else on the silence of everyone involved, as my book shows.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of men and women in the antebellum years defied slavery by running away, thereby sending an explicit message of their refusal to accept exploitation and oppression. </p>
<p>Yet in Southern cities, there was no one like <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/06/reading-to-explore-the-resonance-of-douglass-famous-speech/">Frederick Douglass</a>, who used his writing and orating skills to fight for abolition, and no one like <a href="https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/15263">William Still</a>, who compiled records on the 649 people he helped gain freedom. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of Black men and women are posing for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harriet Tubman, far left, poses with her family, friends and neighbors near her barn in Auburn, N.Y.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-american-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-as-she-news-photo/514885176?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nor was there a counterpart to <a href="https://theconversation.com/harriet-tubman-led-military-raids-during-the-civil-war-as-well-as-her-better-known-slave-rescues-179730">Harriet Tubman</a>, whose leadership qualities and survival skills earned her the nickname “Moses” because of her work on the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/undergroundrailroad/what-is-the-underground-railroad.htm">Underground Railroad</a>. Between 1850 and 1860, she successfully rescued nearly 70 friends and family members, all of whom had been enslaved. </p>
<p>For those who remained in slaveholding states, publicity would have been way too risky, in large part because the law was in the hands of the largest slaveholders, who controlled state legislatures.</p>
<p>The strategy of runaways and those who aided them was not to attract attention. </p>
<p>Their lives depended on being invisible.</p>
<h2>What we won’t know</h2>
<p>While it is a story of how people defied all odds to fight against enslavement and built up new lives, the success of their strategies to seamlessly become part of a city comes at a delayed price – for historians. </p>
<p>The heroes in this story have no names. </p>
<p>And in the rare instances that they do, a name is all that’s left. </p>
<p>We will probably never know much about individual children, women and men who escaped slavery in Southern cities.</p>
<p>What we do know now is that this type of flight relied on collective resistance that permeated virtually the entire Black population – and it was done in whispers rather than shouts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196431/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Viola Franziska Müller received funding from the Dutch Research Council NWO. </span></em></p>Instead of using the secret routes along the Underground Railroad to find freedom in the North, thousands of enslaved Black people fled to free Black communities in Southern slaveholding states.Viola Franziska Müller, Postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in history, University of BonnLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1797302022-04-28T12:19:54Z2022-04-28T12:19:54ZHarriet Tubman led military raids during the Civil War as well as her better-known slave rescues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458942/original/file-20220420-34130-tnbejy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C134%2C3594%2C5577&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A portrait of Harriet Tubman in 1878.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-african-american-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-news-photo/928187262?adppopup=true">Library of Congress/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Harriet Tubman was barely 5 feet tall and didn’t have a dime to her name. </p>
<p>What she did have was a deep faith and powerful passion for justice that was fueled by a network of Black and white abolitionists determined to end slavery in America. </p>
<p>“I had reasoned this out in my mind,” <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/harriet/harriet.html">Tubman once told</a> an interviewer. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”</p>
<p>Though Tubman is most famous for her successes along the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/hatu/index.htm">Underground Railroad</a>, her activities as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/02/08/harriet-tubman-spy-civil-war-union/">Civil War spy</a> are less well known. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/wsrc/scholars/current.html">a biographer</a> of Tubman, <a href="http://www.katecliffordlarson.com/">I think</a> this is a shame. Her devotion to America and its promise of freedom endured despite suffering decades of enslavement and second class citizenship. </p>
<p>It is only in <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/pols-ride-harriet-tubmans-coattails-in-her-bicentennial-year/">modern times</a> that her life is receiving the renown <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1842/text?r=1&s=1">it deserves</a>, most notably her likeness appearing on a US$20 bill in 2030. The Harriet Tubman $20 bill will replace the current one featuring a portrait of U.S. President Andrew Jackson. </p>
<p>In another recognition, Tubman was <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/243867/leader_warrior_military_intelligence_operative_harriet_tubman_davis_honored_in_womens_history">accepted in </a>June 2021 to the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. She is one of 278 members, 17 of whom are women, honored for their special operations leadership and intelligence work. </p>
<p>Though traditional accolades escaped Tubman for most of her life, she did achieve an honor usually reserved for white officers on the Civil War battlefield. </p>
<p>After she led a successful raid of a Confederate outpost in South Carolina that saw 750 Black people rescued from slavery, a white commanding officer fetched a pitcher of water for Tubman as she remained seated at a table. </p>
<h2>A different education</h2>
<p>Believed to have been born in March 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Rit and Ben Ross.</p>
<p>“Minty” was the fifth of nine Ross children. She was <a href="http://www.harriet-tubman.org/early-life/">frequently separated</a> from her family by her white enslaver, Edward Brodess, who started leasing her to white neighbors when she was just 6 years old. </p>
<p>At their hands, she <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1535.html">endured physical abuse</a>, harsh labor, poor nutrition and intense loneliness. </p>
<p>As I learned during my research into <a href="https://www.biography.com/news/harriet-tubman-timeline-facts?li_source=LI&li_medium=m2m-rcw-biography">Tubman’s life</a>, her education did not happen in a traditional classroom, but instead was crafted from the dirt. She <a href="https://www.delmarvanow.com/in-depth/news/local/maryland/2019/10/29/harriet-tubman-free-slavery-knowledge-woods-water-and-gun-underground-railroad-maryland/3829341002/">learned to read</a> the natural world – forests and fields, rivers and marshes, the clouds and stars. </p>
<p>She learned to <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/harriet-tubman-unsung-naturalist-used-owl-calls-signal-underground-railroad">walk silently</a> across fields and through the woods at night with no lights to guide her. She foraged for food and learned a botanist’s and chemist’s knowledge of edible and poisonous plants – and those most useful for ingredients in <a href="https://www.tubmannaturecenter.org/harriet-tubman-and-nature.html">medical treatments</a>. </p>
<p>She could not swim, and that forced her to learn the ways of rivers and streams – their depths, currents and traps.</p>
<p>She studied people, learned their habits, watched their movements – all without being noticed. Most important, she also figured out how to distinguish character. Her survival depended on her ability to remember every detail.</p>
<p>After <a href="https://harriettubmanbyway.org/harriet-tubman/">a brain injury</a> left her with recurring seizures, she was still able to work at jobs often reserved for men. She toiled on the shipping docks and learned the secret communication and transportation networks of Black mariners.</p>
<p>Known as <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674076273">Black Jacks</a>, these men traveled throughout the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic seaboard. With them, she studied the night sky and the placement and movement of the constellations.</p>
<p>She used all those skills to navigate on the water and land. </p>
<p>“… and I prayed to God,” she told one friend, “to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.” </p>
<p>Tubman was clear <a href="https://www.nps.gov/hatu/index.htm">on her mission</a>. “I should fight for my liberty,” she told an admirer, “as long as my strength lasted.”</p>
<h2>The Moses of the Underground Railroad</h2>
<p>In the fall of 1849, when she was about to be sold away from her family and free husband John Tubman, she fled Maryland to freedom in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Between 1850 and 1860, she returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland about 13 times and successfully rescued nearly 70 friends and family members, all of whom were enslaved. It was an extraordinary feat given the perils of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Fugitive-Slave-Acts">1850 Slave Fugitive Act</a>, which enabled anyone to capture and return any Black man or woman, regardless of legal status, to slavery. </p>
<p>Those leadership qualities and survival skills earned her the nickname “Moses” because of her work on the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/undergroundrailroad/what-is-the-underground-railroad.htm">Underground Railroad</a>, the interracial network of abolitionists who enabled Black people to escape from slavery in the South to freedom in the North and Canada. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of black men and women are posing for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harriet Tubman, far left, poses with her family, friends and neighbors near her barn in Auburn, N.Y., in the mid- to late 1880s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-american-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-as-she-news-photo/514885176?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a result, she attracted influential abolitionists and politicians who were struck by her courage and resolve – men like <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1561.html">William Lloyd Garrison</a>, <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/john-brown">John Brown</a> and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/frederickdouglass.htm">Frederick Douglass</a>. <a href="https://susanb.org/">Susan B. Anthony</a>, one of the world’s leading activists for women’s equal rights, also knew of Tubman, as did abolitionist <a href="https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/lucretia-mott/">Lucretia Mott</a> and women’s rights activist <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/amy-kirby-post-biography-4117369">Amy Post</a>. </p>
<p>“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” Tubman once said. “and I can say what most conductors can’t say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”</p>
<h2>Battlefield soldier</h2>
<p>When <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Civil_War_Begins.htm">the Civil War</a> started in the spring of 1861, Tubman put aside her fight against slavery to conduct combat as a soldier and spy for the United States Army. She offered her services to a powerful politician. </p>
<p>Known for his campaign to form the <a href="https://exhibits.tufts.edu/spotlight/john-brown-tufts/feature/54th-massachusetts-infantry-regiment">all-Black 54th</a> and <a href="https://thereconstructionera.com/55th-massachusetts-volunteer-infantry/">55th regiments</a>, Massachusetts Gov. <a href="https://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0250">John Andrew</a> admired Tubman and thought she would be a great intelligence asset for the Union forces.</p>
<p>He arranged for her to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, to work with Army officers in charge of the recently captured <a href="https://lowcountrygullah.com/hilton-head-harriet-tubman-underground-railroad-mitchelville/">Hilton Head District</a>. </p>
<p>There, she <a href="https://www.nursing.virginia.edu/news/flashback-harriet-tubman-nurse/">provided nursing care</a> to soldiers and hundreds of newly liberated people who crowded Union camps. Tubman’s skill curing soldiers stricken by a variety of diseases became legendary. </p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>But it was her <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-harriet-tubmans-heroic-military-career-now-easier-envision-180975038/">military service of spying</a> and scouting behind Confederate lines that earned her the highest praise.</p>
<p>She recruited eight men and together they skillfully infiltrated enemy territory. Tubman made contact with local enslaved people who secretly shared their knowledge of Confederate movements and plans.</p>
<p>Wary of white Union soldiers, many local African Americans trusted and respected Tubman. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:mc87qp95g">George Garrison</a>, a second lieutenant with the 55th Massachusetts Regiment, Tubman secured “more intelligence from them than anybody else.”</p>
<p>In early June 1863, she became the first woman in U.S. history to <a href="https://www.history.com/news/harriet-tubman-combahee-ferry-raid-civil-war">command an armed military raid</a> when she guided Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina Colored Volunteers Regiment along the Combahee River. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The inside of a room is filled with rubbish and broken furniture." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ruins of a slave cabin still remain in South Carolina where Harriet Tubman led a raid of Union troops during the Civil War that freed 700 enslaved people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-ruins-of-a-slave-cabin-still-remain-on-a-former-news-photo/1196725463?adppopup=true">Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While there, they <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/combahee-ferry-raid">routed Confederate outposts</a>, destroyed stores of cotton, food and weapons – and liberated over 750 enslaved people. </p>
<p>The Union victory was widely celebrated. Newspapers from Boston to Wisconsin reported <a href="http://harriettubmanbiography.com/harriet-tubman-s-civil-war.html">on the river assault</a> by Montgomery and his Black regiment, noting Tubman’s important role as the “Black she Moses … who led the raid, and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted.” </p>
<p>Ten days after the successful attack, radical abolitionist and soldier Francis Jackson Merriam witnessed Maj. Gen. David Hunter, commander of the Hilton Head district, “go and fetch a pitcher of water and stand waiting with it in his hand while a black woman drank, as if he had been one of his own servants.” </p>
<p>In that <a href="https://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0236">letter to Gov. Andrew</a>, Merriam added, “that woman was Harriet Tubman.” </p>
<h2>Lifelong struggle</h2>
<p>Despite earning commendations as a valuable scout and soldier, Tubman still faced the racism and sexism of America after the Civil War. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An elderly Black woman holds her hands as she sits in a chair and poses for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harriet Tubman is seen in this 1890 portrait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-abolitionist-leader-and-former-slave-harriet-news-photo/2666879?adppopup=true">MPI/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When she sought payment for her service as a spy, the U.S. Congress <a href="http://www.harriet-tubman.org/compensation-for-civil-war-services/">denied her claim</a>. It paid the eight Black male scouts, but not her. </p>
<p>Unlike the Union officers who knew her, the congressmen did not believe – they could not imagine – that she had <a href="https://history.house.gov/Blog/2021/March/3-30-Tubman/">served her country</a> like the men under her command, because she was a woman.</p>
<p><a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/bradford.html">Gen. Rufus Saxton</a> wrote that he bore “witness to the value of her services… She was employed in the Hospitals and as a spy [and] made many a raid inside the enemy’s lines displaying remarkable courage, zeal and fidelity.”</p>
<p>Thirty years later, in 1899, Congress <a href="https://www.archives.gov/legislative/resources/education/tubman">awarded her a pension</a> for her service as a Civil War nurse, but not as a soldier spy.</p>
<p>When she died from pneumonia on March 10, 1913, she was believed to have been 91 years old and had been fighting for gender equality and the right to vote as a free Black woman for more than 50 years after her work during the Civil War.</p>
<p>Surrounded by friends and family, the deeply religious Tubman showed <a href="http://www.harriet-tubman.org/death/">one last sign</a> of leadership, telling them: “I go to prepare a place for you.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Clifford Larson received funding from the National Park Service and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Department of Tourism </span></em></p>Harriet Tubman has long been known as a conductor on the Underground Railroad leading enslaved Black people to freedom. Less known is her role as a Union spy during the Civil War.Kate Clifford Larson, Visiting Scholar Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1683632021-11-04T12:27:38Z2021-11-04T12:27:38ZRacial discrimination is linked to suicidal thoughts in Black adults and children<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426017/original/file-20211012-17-1b7su46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C29%2C6437%2C4874&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Researchers are exploring the impacts that racial discrimination is having on Black Americans' emotional and psychological health.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/let-me-help-you-royalty-free-image/939030782?adppopup=true">PeopleImages via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Frederick Douglass is regarded as one of the most prominent abolitionists the world has ever seen. Alongside his extraordinary contributions as an influential <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts/_files/resources/texts/c/1852%20Douglass%20July%204.pdf">speaker</a>, <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass55/douglass55.html">writer</a>
and human rights advocate, Douglass – who was born into slavery and gained freedom in <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html">September 1838</a> – also wrote openly about his struggles with suicidal thoughts. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/frederick-douglass-papers/about-this-collection/">Douglass’ writings</a> are both revolutionary and transformative, particularly when considering that he lived during a time when several anti-literacy laws prevented enslaved Black persons from learning to read and write. </p>
<p>Douglass published his <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html">first autobiography</a> – “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” – in 1845. In it, he boldly shared, “I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.” </p>
<p>It’s not hard to imagine why formerly enslaved persons like Douglass would consider ending their own lives. It may, however, be harder for some to understand the links between racism, discrimination and thoughts of suicide among Black Americans today. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Portrait photograph of Frederick Douglass." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427295/original/file-20211019-27-1awg672.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427295/original/file-20211019-27-1awg672.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427295/original/file-20211019-27-1awg672.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427295/original/file-20211019-27-1awg672.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427295/original/file-20211019-27-1awg672.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427295/original/file-20211019-27-1awg672.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427295/original/file-20211019-27-1awg672.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frederick Douglass described how his feelings of despair were countered by his hope of becoming free.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=2813693&id=3020EE0B-1DD8-B71C-075CB26DC2D69D44&gid=3020ED03-1DD8-B71C-07C2C1EA7AD31EF7">Frederick Douglass National Historic Site/NPS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The United States abolished chattel slavery through the <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilWarAmendments.htm">13th Amendment</a> in 1865. However, Black Americans are still grappling with the effects of both <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abj7779">structural</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1XA5DQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=philomena+everyday+racism&ots=afTXYfxkGI&sig=McgPlpVf3dOf5BPJcEUdk9RoaEQ#v=onepage&q=philomena%20everyday%20racism&f=false">everyday </a> forms of racism that permeate U.S. customs, culture and laws. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://neubauerassistantprofessors.uchicago.edu/faculty/janelle-goodwill/">researcher and assistant professor</a> at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice, I <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Z5Ihr7IAAAAJ&hl=en">explore how factors</a> like discrimination, stigma and depression contribute to suicide risk in Black Americans. I also assess how positive psychological forces – like having a sense of life purpose or receiving social support from others – may improve an individual’s mental health outcomes. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032814-112728">Several studies</a> have reported that exposure to discrimination is related to negative mental and physical health outcomes in Black Americans. These can include increased rates of depression, hypertension and sleep disturbance. Fewer studies have explored how racial discrimination is related to suicidal risk.</p>
<p>Therefore, in 2019 I <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2019.1660287">led a study</a> that examined whether racial discrimination was linked to depression and suicidal thoughts in adult Black men. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/pain-of-police-killings-ripples-outward-to-traumatize-black-people-and-communities-across-us-159624">events that have unfolded</a> since this study was published underscore the need for this line of research.</p>
<p>My work, along with research done by a host of other scholars, affirms that any attempt to systematically address inequitable treatment of Black Americans – such as the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/10/19/executive-order-on-white-house-initiative-on-advancing-educational-equity-excellence-and-economic-opportunity-for-black-americans/">recent White House executive order</a> on advancing educational equity and economic opportunity – should also account for the ways in which racial discrimination has impacted mental health outcomes among this particular population. </p>
<h2>Racial discrimination and mental health</h2>
<p>My co-authors and I analyzed survey responses from more than 1,200 African American men ages 18 to 93 who resided in different states across the U.S. Data was originally collected from 2001 to 2003 through the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/mpr.177">National Survey of American Life</a>. This project was led by the late social psychologist James S. Jackson, <a href="https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/james-jackson-tribute">whose groundbreaking career</a> shifted the way that Black Americans were represented and studied in research. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8">This survey</a> is one of the few nationally representative data sources that uses probability – or random – sampling to explicitly address the mental health experiences of Black adolescents and adults. </p>
<p>We decided to focus our study on Black men because historically, Black males have been four to six times <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1049731517702745">more likely to die by suicide</a> compared to Black females. </p>
<p>Participants in this national survey were asked to indicate how frequently they encountered discrimination in their everyday lives. The experiences surveyed ranged from being treated with less courtesy or respect to being harassed and followed in stores, along with being perceived as dishonest, not smart or not as good as others. </p>
<p>We analyzed men’s responses with a series of statistical tests that measured whether different forms of discrimination were related to negative mental health outcomes. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2019.1660287">We found that</a> Black men who reported more frequent encounters with racial discrimination were more likely to experience depression symptoms and thoughts of suicide at some point during their lifetime. </p>
<p>These <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2019.1660287">findings suggest</a> that experiences of discrimination do not have to be overt or extreme in order to be harmful. Rather, regularly occurring acts of racial discrimination that may initially seem minor can become increasingly stressful over time.</p>
<p>When interpreting these results, it is important to note that we analyzed findings from a cross-sectional study. This means that surveys were administered to participants at only one point in time. Therefore, we were able to establish associations among the variables, but cannot use this data to confirm that racial discrimination caused subsequent thoughts of suicide. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, our findings still offer an important step forward by establishing that links between racial discrimination, depression symptoms and lifetime suicidal thoughts do exist. </p>
<h2>Mental health of Black children and youth</h2>
<p>Our study builds on other research that has also identified links between racial discrimination and suicidal thoughts in Black Americans. </p>
<p>For example, University of Houston clinical psychologist Rheeda Walker and her colleagues <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12251">found that among 722 Black children</a>, experiences of racial discrimination were linked to more depression and greater odds of suicidal thoughts two years later. Members of the research team contacted participants two times and asked the same survey questions - once at age 10 and again at age 12. </p>
<p>Findings generated from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12251">their 2017 study</a> are particularly meaningful because the authors analyzed data over time, which allowed them to confirm that racial discrimination significantly predicts an increase in suicidal thoughts, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12251">not the other way around</a>. </p>
<p>Since then, clinicians, researchers and organizational leaders have partnered with members of the <a href="https://cbc.house.gov/">Congressional Black Caucus</a> to call attention to the urgent mental health needs of Black youth. In 2019, this group created an emergency task force and released a <a href="https://watsoncoleman.house.gov/uploadedfiles/full_taskforce_report.pdf">powerful report</a> that carefully describes the current state of suicide among Black youth. </p>
<p>As detailed in various studies, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.0399">Black children ages 5 to 12 </a>
were two times more likely to die by suicide relative to white children, with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0465">young Black boys</a> being particularly vulnerable to suicide risk. Notably, rates of suicide have also significantly increased among Black teenage girls in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2021.08.021">recent years</a>. </p>
<p>In response to these concerns, leaders at the National Institutes of Health have <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/messages/2020/addressing-the-crisis-of-black-youth-suicide">allocated research funds and invited applications</a> for projects promoting suicide prevention among Black youth. </p>
<p>Researchers have also begun to explore the links between structural forms of racism and suicide risk. For instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2019.11.128">a study published in 2020</a> found that being unfairly fired from a job and experiencing abuse from the police were linked to suicidal thoughts, plans and attempts among Black adults.</p>
<p>Despite these advances in research, it remains unclear whether any existing suicide prevention interventions account for the specific ways that racial discrimination impacts Black Americans’ psychological and emotional well-being. </p>
<p>Therefore, it will be essential for researchers, clinicians and community members to work together in promoting the mental health needs of Black children and adults, while simultaneously encouraging Black Americans to hold on to the hope that Frederick Douglass professed more than 175 years ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168363/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janelle R. Goodwill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The evidence is growing that experiencing both systemic and everyday race-based discrimination may lead some Black Americans to become depressed and think about suicide.Janelle R. Goodwill, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1679322021-10-14T15:30:15Z2021-10-14T15:30:15ZHow the experience of Black people freed from slavery set a pattern for African Americans today<p>The Black Lives Matter movement and the harrowing events that gave rise to it have ensured that global attention remains focused on the enduring legacy of African American slavery. There are numerous ways its continued relevance persists in the public eye, from debates over <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/19/slavery-reparations-from-where-things-stand-to-how-much-it-might-cost.html">reparations for Black people</a> in the US and how slavery’s history is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/apr/30/senate-republicans-black-history-schools-1619-project">taught in schools</a>, to a number of recent <a href="https://www.searchlightpictures.com/12yearsaslave/">big Hollywood films</a> and popular <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/may/14/the-underground-railroad-review-barry-jenkins">TV shows</a>.</p>
<p>The legacy of racism and violence that originated in slavery, and which continued throughout the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws">Jim Crow period</a> of segregation, also survives in many forms today, from persistent inequality to <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/how-you-start-is-how-you-finish">police brutality</a> and the denial of Black people’s democratic rights. </p>
<p>What often gets lost in the discussion of slavery are the experiences of free Black people who co-existed throughout the entire period of enslavement. Of the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-african-slave-ship-arrives-jamestown-colony">20 Africans first traded to British settlers</a> in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, some served out their indentures and became free.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_Pq5Usc_JDA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>A parallel experience</h2>
<p>Granted, the numbers of free Black people were always significantly smaller than those who were enslaved, but there were communities all over what would become the United States. On the eve of the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war">American Civil War in 1860</a> – a conflict fought over slavery – free Black people numbered <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kSFwAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA201&lpg=PA201&dq=on+the+eve+of+the+american+civil+war+there+488,000+free+black+people&source=bl&ots=99N9ao-Kqa&sig=ACfU3U16Auwc7h_7pR16ZLM5WOCiuNE1_A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXieG26MnzAhVM-aQKHXmjDYgQ6AF6BAguEAM#v=onepage&q=on%20the%20eve%20of%20the%20american%20civil%20war%20there%20488%2C000%20free%20black%20people&f=false">488,000</a> in the US compared to 4 million enslaved – not an insignificant number.</p>
<p>A parallel and often intertwined experience, freedom and was not always a permanent condition, but one marked with permeable boundaries between enslavement and liberty. As well-known figures like <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass#:%7E:text=Frederick%20Douglass%20was%20an%20escaped,and%20during%20the%20Civil%20War.&text=His%20work%20served%20as%20an,of%20the%201960s%20and%20beyond.">Frederick Douglass</a> and <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth">Sojourner Truth</a> – both escaped slaves who became abolitionists and reformers – demonstrated, one could be born into slavery and eventually gain one’s freedom.</p>
<p>In my <a href="http://generationsoffreedom.com/the-book/">book</a> Generations of Freedom: Gender, Movement, and Violence in Natchez 1779-1865, I distinguish between those who were born into the system of slavery and later freed – the foundational generation – and those who were born free, known as the conditional generations.</p>
<p>Regardless of which generation they belonged to, a free Black person’s ability to exist within this ambiguous state of liberty was not guaranteed. Although they were technically free – not legally owned – there were limitations on their freedom.</p>
<p>Just like <a href="https://www.biography.com/writer/solomon-northup">Solomon Northup</a>, whose experiences are related in his autobiography Twelve Years a Slave, some people in Natchez, Mississippi, had been born into freedom only to be kidnapped and illegally enslaved. Others lost their freedom for being prosecuted for crimes like living without a proper licence as a free person of colour or incurring jail costs for being held as a runaway. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/z02Ie8wKKRg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Becoming – and staying – free</h2>
<p>Free Black people lived complicated lives and had to work to ensure their survival in Natchez on the Mississippi River, one of the wealthiest cotton-growing areas in the South. In 1860, Mississippi had one of the <a href="https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/a-contested-presence-free-blacks-in-antebellum-mississippi-18201860">largest enslaved populations</a> (436,631), but a relatively tiny number of free Black people (775). Natchez contained the <a href="http://generationsoffreedom.com/">biggest free Black community in the state</a> with 225, dwarfed by the 14,292 who were enslaved. </p>
<p>People became free in a variety of ways. Some families’ origins derived from enslaved women who were in sexual relationships with white men. A number of these women gave birth to children in slavery and then worked for the liberty of themselves and their families.</p>
<p>In some cases they inherited property in addition to their freedom or worked to save money to purchase themselves out of slavery. Others were promised their future freedom and entered into contracts to work for a number of years before they were freed, all of which different paths to independence. </p>
<p>But however freedom was acquired, it was often limited and contested. Free Black people lived under a different justice system with a higher level of scrutiny by the local police board and state. They had to prove themselves of “good character”, “industrious” and “lawful” or they could be imprisoned or ordered to leave the state.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Original book cover reproduction of 12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northup" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426419/original/file-20211014-21-1opk0ee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426419/original/file-20211014-21-1opk0ee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426419/original/file-20211014-21-1opk0ee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426419/original/file-20211014-21-1opk0ee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426419/original/file-20211014-21-1opk0ee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426419/original/file-20211014-21-1opk0ee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426419/original/file-20211014-21-1opk0ee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Twelve Years A Slave.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/solomon-northup/twelve-years-a-slave/9781329794641?gclid=Cj0KCQjwqp-LBhDQARIsAO0a6aLghkGKgIE3GtVJPKHEbL-lmwBX4-c-SpkcwFEtKbadgFzjYxRORzIaAuZBEALw_wcB">World of Books</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Legislation was passed to prevent free Black people from voting, from serving on juries and on commissions, and engaging in certain occupations such as selling alcohol, operating houses of entertainment or printing establishments – even though they were taxpayers. Their movements were monitored, and suspicion inevitably fell upon them for crimes or during times of slave insurrection.</p>
<p>Despite these challenges, free Black people managed to create community through friendships and kin networks, buy property, build businesses, educate their children and use the court systems to protect their freedoms – in short, to survive and thrive.</p>
<p>Along with the enslaved, their experiences laid the foundation for the development of the uneven colour-conscious system of democracy and criminal justice in the US. The end of slavery did not result in unconditional freedom in 1865. Ever since, people of African descent have had to contend with severe disparities in employment, health, education, voting rights, wealth and countless other factors persisting to this day.</p>
<p>Black people live under a dual criminal justice system that subjects them to heavier policing, racially biased stops, searches and seizures, imprisonment, violence, and even death at the hands of the state. In so many ways, the experiences of free Black people during the era of slavery provided a blueprint for the way future generations would have to negotiate the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nik Ribianszky is affiliated with the Enslaved: People of the Historical Slave Trade project. </span></em></p>Escaping slavery did not result in unconditional freedom.Nik Ribianszky, Lecturer in US History, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1662332021-10-08T16:01:19Z2021-10-08T16:01:19ZJames McCune Smith: new discovery reveals how first African American doctor fought for women’s rights in Glasgow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421090/original/file-20210914-15-2i37hj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=34%2C14%2C973%2C667&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Engraving of James McCune Smith by Patrick H. Reason.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nyhistory.org/web/africanfreeschool/bios/james-mccune-smith.html">New York Historical Society</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>James McCune Smith was the first African American to receive a medical doctorate from a university. Born in 1813 to a poor South Carolina runaway slave who had escaped to New York City, he went on to attend Glasgow University during the 1830s. When he returned to America, he became a leading black physician, a tireless abolitionist, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FwvIir4VSX4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=black+hearts+of+men&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=black%20hearts%20of%20men&f=false">activist and journalist</a>.</p>
<p>McCune Smith led an amazing life. He exposed false medical data in the 1840 American census. He supported women’s suffrage alongside the noted feminist <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/susan-b-anthony">Susan B. Anthony</a>. And he wrote the introduction to Frederick Douglass’s sensational 1855 autobiographical slave narrative, <a href="https://archive.org/details/mybondagemyfreed00indoug">My Bondage and My Freedom</a>.</p>
<p>Now, for the first time, my research has revealed that McCune Smith was also the first African American known to be published in a British medical journal – and that he used this platform to reveal a cover-up by an ambitious medical professor who was experimenting on vulnerable women in Glasgow in the 1830s.</p>
<p>I am a historian of science and medicine. I study how people learned scientific skills and I am especially intrigued by the history of how scientists and physicians made discoveries and how that knowledge then circulated between the academy and the public.</p>
<p>One way to track this process is to compare what students learned in educational settings to how they used their scientific training to solve problems and make decisions later in life. My forthcoming book, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3769533/Media_and_the_Mind_Art_Science_and_Notebooks_as_Paper_Machines_1700_1830_Chicago_University_of_Chicago_Press_2022_550_pp_60_figures">Media and the Mind</a>, for example, uses school and university notebooks to reconstruct how students historically learned to create, analyse and visualise scientific data in ways that helped them understand the human body and the natural world when they finished their education. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Black and white photograph of a man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421555/original/file-20210916-17-1fmymfm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421555/original/file-20210916-17-1fmymfm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421555/original/file-20210916-17-1fmymfm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421555/original/file-20210916-17-1fmymfm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421555/original/file-20210916-17-1fmymfm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421555/original/file-20210916-17-1fmymfm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421555/original/file-20210916-17-1fmymfm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). Douglass, a former slave, was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/portrait-of-frederick-douglass-1818-1895-c1879-douglass-a-former-slave-was-an-american-social-reformer-abolitionist-orator-writer-and-statesman-image369103564.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=9734BCF8-26ED-47AA-9F2A-215197A21E9E&p=176541&n=3&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3Dbar%26st%3D0%26sortby%3D2%26qt%3DFrederick%2520Douglas%26qt_raw%3DFrederick%2520Douglas%26qn%3D%26lic%3D3%26edrf%3D0%26mr%3D0%26pr%3D0%26aoa%3D1%26creative%3D%26videos%3D%26nu%3D%26ccc%3D%26bespoke%3D%26apalib%3D%26ag%3D0%26hc%3D0%26et%3D0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3D0%26loc%3D0%26ot%3D0%26imgt%3D0%26dtfr%3D%26dtto%3D%26size%3D0xFF%26blackwhite%3D%26cutout%3D%26archive%3D1%26name%3D%26groupid%3D%26pseudoid%3D818036%26userid%3D%26id%3D%26a%3D%26xstx%3D0%26cbstore%3D1%26resultview%3DsortbyPopular%26lightbox%3D%26gname%3D%26gtype%3D%26apalic%3D%26tbar%3D1%26pc%3D%26simid%3D%26cap%3D1%26customgeoip%3DGB%26vd%3D0%26cid%3D%26pe%3D%26so%3D%26lb%3D%26pl%3D0%26plno%3D%26fi%3D0%26langcode%3Den%26upl%3D0%26cufr%3D%26cuto%3D%26howler%3D%26cvrem%3D0%26cvtype%3D0%26cvloc%3D0%26cl%3D0%26upfr%3D%26upto%3D%26primcat%3D%26seccat%3D%26cvcategory%3D*%26restriction%3D%26random%3D%26ispremium%3D1%26flip%3D0%26contributorqt%3D%26plgalleryno%3D%26plpublic%3D0%26viewaspublic%3D0%26isplcurate%3D0%26imageurl%3D%26saveQry%3D%26editorial%3D%26t%3D0%26filters%3D0">IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Several years ago, I decided to investigate the history of how the testimony of hospital patients was transformed into scientific data by physicians. I eventually stumbled across the 1837 case of a young Glasgow doctor who sought to expose painful experimental drug trials that had been conducted on the impoverished women of a local hospital. </p>
<p>That doctor was James McCune Smith. He had written articles detailing how the women of a local charity hospital were being subjected to a painful experimental drug. It was a career changing moment for me because I had not encountered this kind of activism in my previous research on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/1112014/The_Language_of_Mineralogy_John_Walker_Chemistry_and_the_Edinburgh_Medical_School_1750_1800_London_Routledge_2008_hardback_2016_paperback_Full_text">medical education</a>. </p>
<h2>Early life</h2>
<p>Who was this doctor? What led him to speak out? Where did he learn to place his knowledge of science and medicine in the service of equality and justice? Upon closer examination, despite his many accomplishments, virtually nothing had been written about McCune Smith’s time in Glasgow or about his work as a practising physician in New York. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/frederick-douglass-the-ex-slave-and-transatlantic-celebrity-who-found-freedom-in-newcastle-90886">Frederick Douglass: the ex-slave and transatlantic celebrity who found freedom in Newcastle</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Like the children of many runaway slaves in New York, McCune Smith grew up in Five Points, Lower Manhattan, one of the poorest and most densely populated urban areas of America at that time. Though the state fully emancipated all former slaves <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TZx6A_M0yjQC&vq=1827&dq=New+york+An+Act+Relative+to+Slaves+and+Servants,+1817&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s">in 1827</a>, when McCune Smith was a teenager, discriminatory educational policies, unsanitary living conditions, chronic illness and infectious diseases ensured that the prospects for a free African American teenager in the early part of the 19th century were limited. </p>
<p>Indeed, in an article entitled Freedom and Slavery for African-Americans, published in the New York Tribune in 1844, McCune Smith <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zQUqIOmsdLkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=stauffer+black+hearts+of+men&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=new%20york%20tribune&f=false">observed</a> that only six of the 100 boys who attended school with him from 1826 to 1827 were “still now living”. He noted further that they were “all white”. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>This story is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>Though technically “free”, the lives of African Americans in New York during the 1820s and 1830s were marred by the legacy of slavery and discrimination. Runaway slaves were <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ahfQDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+kidnapping+club&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwioivPjvuLyAhWDnVwKHQMjDx4Q6AEwAHoECAsQAg#v=onepage&q=the%20kidnapping%20club&f=false">openly hunted</a> in the city’s alleys, streets and wharves. McCune Smith reflected on these events <a href="https://archive.org/details/memorialdiscour00garn/page/n7/mode/2up">in an essay</a> that he wrote about the life of his school classmate, Henry Highland Garnet.</p>
<p>An abolitionist and Presbyterian minister, Garnet was the first African American to speak before Congress. McCune Smith recalled the trauma experienced by Garnet’s family in 1829 when they were tracked by slave-hunters. They barely escaped by jumping out of a two-story building and hiding in the house of a local grocer. When they returned to their home they found, in the <a href="https://archive.org/details/memorialdiscour00garn/page/24/mode/2up">words of McCune Smith</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The entire household furniture of the family was destroyed or stolen; and they were obliged to start anew in life empty-handed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite many challenges, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=U4A7lqZHPokC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=black+gotham&source=gbs_navlinks_s">New York’s African Americans</a> founded their own businesses, churches, political associations, printing presses and more. In addition to receiving support and encouragement from a community of relatives and friends, McCune Smith’s path to becoming a doctor was significantly aided by his education at the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dkaODwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=educated+for+freedom&source=gbs_navlinks_s">African Free School</a>. </p>
<p>Older students were taught penmanship, drawing, grammar, geography, astronomy, natural philosophy and navigation. When American universities denied his medical school applications, the free school community played a role in raising funds for him to attend Glasgow University.</p>
<h2>Progressive Glasgow</h2>
<p>After sailing from New York to Liverpool, McCune Smith arrived in Glasgow in 1832. Thanks to maritime trade, it was one of the largest cities in the country and the university’s medical school was one of the best in Europe. </p>
<p>Britain had prohibited the slave trade <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/tradeindustry/slavetrade/">in 1807</a> and it fully abolished slavery the year after his arrival in 1833. Though there were not many African Americans in Glasgow, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3RNwDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=britain+abolition+slavery&source=gbs_navlinks_s">black writers</a> had been operating in Britain since the 1770s. Then, in 1809 Edinburgh University admitted <a href="http://uncover-ed.org/1809-william-fergusson/">William Fergusson</a> who was from Jamaica and was the university’s first student of African descent. </p>
<p>Though he took medical courses at the university, Fergusson did not stay to complete a medical doctorate. Instead, he received a license from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh in 1813. He then practised as a surgeon in the British military and eventually became governor of the then-British colony of Sierra Leone. McCune Smith joined the ranks of these torchbearers and became the first African American known to graduate with a BA, MA and medical doctorate from Glasgow University.</p>
<p>By the time McCune Smith began his studies in Glasgow, opposition to slavery had moved beyond the walls of the university. There was a active abolitionist community and it founded the <a href="http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2641/">Glasgow Emancipation Society</a> in 1833. McCune Smith, still only an undergraduate, was one of the founding members. After he graduated, a number of black students attended the university over the course of the century.</p>
<p>Despite living in a foreign country, McCune Smith excelled at his studies and received several academic awards. The Glasgow medical faculty placed equal emphasis on scientific rigour and hands-on clinical experience. In addition to learning chemistry, anatomy and physiology from some of Britain’s leading doctors, he witnessed cutting-edge experiments and new medical technologies being demonstrated in his lectures. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white image of a Glasgow street in the 1820s." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421103/original/file-20210914-17-hc38o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421103/original/file-20210914-17-hc38o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421103/original/file-20210914-17-hc38o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421103/original/file-20210914-17-hc38o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421103/original/file-20210914-17-hc38o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421103/original/file-20210914-17-hc38o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421103/original/file-20210914-17-hc38o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An image of High Street, Glasgow, around 1821, looking south towards the Tolbooth Steeple at Glasgow Cross. The front of the Old College of the University of Glasgow is on the left side of the street, with the university tower looming above it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.theglasgowstory.com/image/?inum=TGSA01107&t=2">Mitchell Library/Joseph Swan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He graduated with honours in 1837 and was immediately given a prestigious clinical residency in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mHMIAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA194&dq=coats+medical+institutions+glasgow&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwix_MrY2eLyAhUGV8AKHT_KCbkQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=snippet&q=lock%20hospital&f=false">Glasgow’s Lock Hospital</a>. He worked there alongside the eminent Scottish obstetrician and gynaecologist, <a href="https://archive.org/details/memorialsoffacul00dunc/page/274/mode/2up?q=cumin">William Cumin</a>, treating women who had contracted venereal diseases.</p>
<h2>Missing records and racist medical theories</h2>
<p>The difficulty in pursuing a project of this nature is that many of the scientific papers and publications of black physicians have been lost to the sands of time. Unlike the many collections that university libraries have dedicated to preserving the legacy of white doctors who were alumni or donors, there is no “James McCune Smith Medical Collection” where scholars can go to study his medical career and scientific ideas. </p>
<p>No one has yet told the full story of how African Americans like McCune Smith became doctors or how they used their knowledge of medical science to fight injustice and prejudice. The hidden histories of these black physicians based in countries spread around the Atlantic Ocean led me to start my current research project on how they used their scientific training to counter the rise of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Kn5IMQAACAAJ&dq=tropical+freedom&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y">racist medical theories</a> – theories which erroneously suggested that black bodies were physically different from other bodies and could more easily withstand the stress, pain and labour of enslavement.</p>
<p>Though a number of McCune Smith’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zQUqIOmsdLkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=mccune+smith&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=mccune%20smith&f=false">articles</a> were republished several years ago, the whereabouts of his personal medical library, clinical notebooks, patient records, office ledgers and article drafts are unknown. Likewise, his manuscript Glasgow diary and letters have been lost. Though aspects of his career have received attention from historians in <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Black_Hearts_of_Men/FwvIir4VSX4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=black+hearts+of+men&printsec=frontcover">recent years</a>, a biography of his extraordinary life has not been written.</p>
<p>This was the situation when I discovered his efforts to expose the harmful drug trials that were being conducted on the women of the Glasgow Lock Hospital. The evidence consisted of two articles that he had published during the spring and summer of 1837 in the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TPQaAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA971&dq=%22m%27cune+smith%22+london+medical+gazette&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=journal%201837&f=false">London Medical Gazette</a>, a weekly journal with articles about medicine and science. </p>
<p>I originally came upon these articles by reading page after page of medical journals housed in the <a href="https://www.nls.uk/">National Library of Scotland</a> in Edinburgh. When I found them, they immediately stood out because they took the testimony of poor female patients seriously. When I realised that McCune Smith was the first African American to graduate from a Scottish university, I could not believe what I had discovered.</p>
<h2>New discoveries</h2>
<p>Discovering McCune Smith’s articles was momentous because they are the first currently known to have been published by an African American medical doctor in any scientific journal. Scientists in the 19th century published articles for many reasons. Some wanted to popularise their research in a way that advanced their careers. Others hoped their research would benefit the general public. </p>
<p>The fascinating aspect about McCune Smith’s articles in relation to the historical emergence of the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tIRaDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=alex+csiszar&source=gbs_navlinks_s">scientific journal</a> is that they were published to expose the unethical misapplication of scientific experiments. This means that they offer new insight into how he learned to combine the power of the press with his medical training to fight inequality and injustice in Britain prior to returning to New York.</p>
<p>The story they tell is extraordinary. The events occurred in the spring and summer of 1837 while McCune Smith was serving in the Glasgow Lock Hospital as a resident physician in gynaecology. The hospital was a charity institution set up by the city for impoverished women suffering from acute venereal diseases such as gonorrhoea and syphilis. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A page of text from a medical journal." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423109/original/file-20210924-14-p0j994.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423109/original/file-20210924-14-p0j994.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423109/original/file-20210924-14-p0j994.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423109/original/file-20210924-14-p0j994.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423109/original/file-20210924-14-p0j994.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423109/original/file-20210924-14-p0j994.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423109/original/file-20210924-14-p0j994.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">McCune Smith’s article in the London Medical Gazette.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TPQaAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA971&dq=%22m%27cune+smith%22+london+medical+gazette&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=journal%201837&f=false">Google Books</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After consulting the ward’s records and speaking with the patients, McCune Smith discovered that <a href="https://archive.org/details/memorialsoffacul00dunc/page/280/mode/2up?q=hannay">Alexander Hannay</a>, a senior doctor in the hospital, was treating women suffering from gonorrhoea with an experimental drug called <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Silver-nitrate">silver nitrate</a>, a compound that a handful of doctors used as a topical treatment for <a href="https://archive.org/details/essayonuseofnitr00higg/page/n9/mode/2up">infected skin tissue</a> or to stop bleeding. But it was normally used in low concentrations mixed into a solution, with doctors emphasising that it should be applied with caution and as a last resort.</p>
<p>But Hannay was administering the drug in a solid form, which meant that it was highly concentrated and caused a terrible burning sensation. He fancied this usage to be innovative and was relatively unfazed when his patients repeatedly asked for less painful forms of treatment. After speaking with the women and further consulting the hospital’s records, McCune Smith realised that Hannay was effectively treating the women as guinea pigs – as non-consenting participants – in an experimental trial that involved a very painful drug. </p>
<p>At that time, silver nitrate was a newly available substance and its long-term effects were relatively unknown. There were a handful of <a href="https://archive.org/details/essayonuseofnitr00higg/page/n9/mode/2up">military doctors</a> who used it experimentally to cauterise skin ulcers or wounds of soldiers that would not stop bleeding. But some medical books classified it as a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TPQaAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA971&dq=%22m%27cune+smith%22+london+medical+gazette&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=journal%201837&f=false">poison</a>. Glasgow’s medical students, particularly those who studied with Prof William Cumin, avoided using it on internal organs due to its unknown effects. Instead, when it came to gynaecological cases involving ulcers or infections, students learned to use an <a href="https://archive.org/details/principlesofmidw00burnuoft/page/312/mode/2up?q=alum">alum solution</a> because its effects were generally considered to be effective and less painful.</p>
<p>Hannay went beyond using the silver nitrate on the skin. He applied it to the internal reproductive organs of women, at least one of whom was pregnant. McCune Smith’s article pointed out that the baby subsequently died through complications surrounding a miscarriage. It also intimates that a few women died after the application of silver nitrate. Since the drug’s effect on internal organs was unknown, he believed that that the deaths could not be treated as a separate occurrence.</p>
<p>In addition to being McCune Smith’s superior, Hannay was a medical professor at Glasgow’s newly established <a href="https://universitystory.gla.ac.uk/building/?id=35">Anderson University</a>. The easiest thing for McCune Smith to do was to say nothing. The plight of the Lock Hospital patients would not have been a major concern for many medical men at the time. The patients were impoverished women and most doctors assumed they were former prostitutes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Image of an old Glasgow college building and tower." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421551/original/file-20210916-25-1moyy5y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421551/original/file-20210916-25-1moyy5y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421551/original/file-20210916-25-1moyy5y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421551/original/file-20210916-25-1moyy5y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421551/original/file-20210916-25-1moyy5y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421551/original/file-20210916-25-1moyy5y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421551/original/file-20210916-25-1moyy5y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anderson University, Glasgow, in the 1830s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/h8pckdyq/images?id=ykpgaavq">Wellcome Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But McCune Smith’s perspective was different. Unlike his peers, he had spent his early years in New York City witnessing the pain and suffering caused by poverty, inequality and exploitation. So he decided to place his knowledge of medical science in the service of these women.</p>
<p>McCune Smith knew that there were other effective treatments for gonorrhoea. This allowed him to see that Hannay was more interested in bolstering his reputation with a pharmaceutical discovery than helping his patients. But his studies had given him another equally powerful tool – data analysis. His ability to use this tool can be seen in his London Medical Gazette articles. The gazette was a journal of some repute, serving the British medical community as well as physicians based in Europe and America. In his article, he wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The materials of my paper on the subject of gonorrhoea of women were collected whilst I held the office of clerk to the Glasgow Lock Hospital.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He made his case against the experiments by extracting figures from handwritten registers that recorded the condition of patients being treated in the hospital over an entire year. He had learned to collect, categorise, and analyse data in the clinical lectures that were required for graduation. This method was part of the new science of “vital statistics” that used medical data to predict or prevent disease in people, cities and even countries. Known as “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ct_wofnMGlgC&dq=ultrich+troehler">medical statistics</a>” today, it was becoming more commonly used in journals that published articles on medical science. </p>
<h2>The cover-up</h2>
<p>McCune Smith’s articles showed that the drug trials were ineffective and presented an unwarranted risk. They also revealed that Hannay and his team of assistants had attempted to cover up data in the hospital records that damaged their claims about the drug’s efficacy and their position that its side effects were minimal. McCune Smith did not mince his words. He wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>By this novel and ingenious mode of recording the Hospital transactions for 1836, [Prof Hannay’s team] keeps out of view the evidence of the severity of the treatment, and the amount of mortality, while, at the same time, the residence of the patients in the house seems shorted, the cost of each diminished, and the treatment made to appear more than usually successful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Accordingly, he called for the trials to stop immediately. But McCune Smith was not happy to simply cite statistics. He wanted to give these women a voice too. To achieve this, he emphasised the extreme pain that they were experiencing. Their suffering had been played down by those conducting the experimental trials. Hannay even suggested that the women were dishonest and unreliable witnesses. </p>
<p>To counter this suggestion, McCune Smith quoted the women themselves, some of whom said that the drug felt like it was “burning their inside with caustic”. This was strong language. They were effectively saying that the drug felt like a flame being applied to their bodies.</p>
<h2>‘Hidden gem’ in library archive</h2>
<p>McCune Smith’s decision to use this kind of visceral language on behalf of impoverished women in a scientific article was rare at the time. Nor was it common in the lengthy, fact-laden lectures given at Glasgow’s medical school. So where did McCune Smith learn to write like this? Finding an answer to this question has been difficult because hardly any of McCune Smith’s manuscripts from his Glasgow years are known to have survived. But thanks to a recent discovery that I made with the rare books librarian Robert MacLean in the Archives and Special Collections of Glasgow University, a better picture is starting to emerge. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A library borrowing register." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421563/original/file-20210916-27-lj9g5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421563/original/file-20210916-27-lj9g5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421563/original/file-20210916-27-lj9g5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421563/original/file-20210916-27-lj9g5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421563/original/file-20210916-27-lj9g5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421563/original/file-20210916-27-lj9g5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421563/original/file-20210916-27-lj9g5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James McCune Smith’s name can be seen at the top of his library borrowing record.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert MacLean, with the permission of University of Glasgow Library ASC.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Based on my previous research on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/11429336/The_Interactive_Notebook_How_Students_Learned_to_Keep_Notes_during_the_Scottish_Enlightenment_Book_History_19_2016_87_131">Scottish student notekeeping</a>, I knew that Glasgow University kept handwritten registers of books borrowed by students from its libraries during the 19th century. Luckily, it turned out that McCune Smith’s manuscript library borrowing record did, in fact, still exist. It was a gem that had remained hidden for the past two centuries in the dusty pages of Glasgow’s library registers.</p>
<p>The discovery was historic because it revealed that he definitely took the university’s moral philosophy class. The course was taught by <a href="https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/8941">James Mylne</a> and it encouraged students to judge the accuracy of statistical data when making moral decisions. The registers also showed that McCune Smith consulted the <a href="https://www.thelancet.com">Lancet</a>, the leading <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1498905/">medical journal</a> of research and reform that promoted the same kind of public health activism evinced in his 1837 Gazette articles.</p>
<p>Finding the student reading record for any historical figure is like striking gold. In McCune Smith’s case it was doubly exciting because so little is known about his intellectual development. In addition to literature relevant to his studies, he checked out several 1835 issues of the Lancet which regularly identified links between pain and maltreatment. </p>
<p>It is likely these accounts inspired him to use a similar approach in his gazette articles. But even the Lancet’s references to pain and cruelty barely addressed the plights of impoverished women, let alone those who had been regularly subjected to experimental drugs. In this respect McCune Smith’s concern for the Lock Hospital patients surpassed the reform agenda promoted by Britain’s most progressive medical journal.</p>
<h2>Legacy</h2>
<p>Further investigations have revealed that there were many other black physicians who lived in America in the decades after McCune Smith became a doctor. As revealed in research by the Massachusetts Historical Society, there was, for example, <a href="http://www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2020/11/a-visit-with-dr-degrasse-the-medical-account-book-of-bostons-first-black-physician/">John van Surly DeGrasse</a>. He studied at Bowdoin College in Maine, received a medical doctorate in the 1840s, set up a practice in Boston and became the first African American member of the Massachusetts Medical Association. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421564/original/file-20210916-23-163oo43.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421564/original/file-20210916-23-163oo43.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421564/original/file-20210916-23-163oo43.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421564/original/file-20210916-23-163oo43.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421564/original/file-20210916-23-163oo43.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421564/original/file-20210916-23-163oo43.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421564/original/file-20210916-23-163oo43.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Van Surly DeGrasse was one of only two African American physicians who received a commission in the army.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/bindingwounds/exhibition.html">Massachusetts African American Museum and the Massachusetts Historical Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was also <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26298851">Alexander Thomas Augusta</a>, who, despite Virginia laws that banned free blacks from learning to read, was educated by a minister, moved to Toronto and graduated from Trinity College’s medical school in 1856. Notably, both Augusta and DeGrasse served in the union army as physicians with the rank of major during the American Civil War.</p>
<p>After McCune Smith returned to America in the autumn of 1837, he served as a professional role model for African Americans who studied medicine from the 1840s onward. By the time younger black physicians such as DeGrasse and Augusta began their studies, McCune Smith had already opened a practice that served patients from both sides of the colour line and had published several scientific articles. For the rest of his career his name was a frequent byline in articles about health and society published by the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Y80OAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=african+american+press&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwid283ZkuXyAhWOXsAKHQqxB04Q6AEwAnoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=african%20american%20press&f=false">African American press</a>, as well as larger newspapers with mixed readership, like the New York Tribune. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Old portait image of a Black man who served during the American Civil War." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421565/original/file-20210916-15-csxpml.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421565/original/file-20210916-15-csxpml.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421565/original/file-20210916-15-csxpml.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421565/original/file-20210916-15-csxpml.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421565/original/file-20210916-15-csxpml.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421565/original/file-20210916-15-csxpml.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421565/original/file-20210916-15-csxpml.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexander Augusta became the first African American commissioned medical officer in the United States Army when he was appointed surgeon with the Union Army in April 1863.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/bindingwounds/inuniform.html">Oblate Sisters of Providence Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An excellent example of McCune Smith’s later medical activism is the collection of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zQUqIOmsdLkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=stauffer+black+hearts+of+men&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=new%20york%20tribune&f=false">articles</a> that he published during the 1840s about the national census. The main issue was that slavery advocates had noticed that the mortality rates of African Americans in northern asylums were higher than those of black people in the southern states. This led them to conclude, erroneously, that freedom somehow damaged their mental and physical health.</p>
<p>Rather than engage with their desire to co-opt convenient data, McCune Smith used his knowledge of medical statistics to skillfully undermine their attempts to find scientific data that fit their discriminatory world view. He conducted his own investigation and proved that the original collection of the figures on site in the northern asylums had been flawed and that, as a result, the data was incorrect and could not be used to accurately determine the health of black asylum patients. </p>
<p>McCune Smith did not stop there. He turned the tables on slavery advocates by transforming the new accurate mortality statistics into a tool that could be used to fight inequality. His 1844 New York Tribune <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zQUqIOmsdLkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=stauffer+black+hearts+of+men&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=new%20york%20tribune&f=false">article</a> about the census concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These facts prove that within 15 years after it became a Free State, a portion of the Free Black Population of New York have improved the ratio of their mortality 13.28% – a fact without parallel in the history of any People.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Put simply, the correct data revealed that the health of African Americans unburdened by the deprivation and forced labour of slavery thrived once they left the south and lived lives as free citizens in the north. </p>
<p>McCune Smith’s publications are a significant early chapter in the history of how black activists have worked tirelessly over the past two centuries to disentangle erroneous interpretations of scientific data from discriminatory claims about poverty, gender and race. They provide crucial historical insight into the relationships between race, science and technology that exist <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=G6-hDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&dq=race+after+technology&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=race%20after%20technology&f=false">today</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/honouring-the-slaves-experimented-on-by-the-father-of-gynaecology-148273">Honouring the slaves experimented on by the 'father of gynaecology'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In many respects McCune Smith’s desire to locate and publicise correct data about asylum patients built on the approach that he had developed in his articles about the mistreatment of women in Glasgow’s Lock Hospital. He continued to publish articles throughout his career that challenged those who sought to use science to justify discrimination and inequality. In 1859 he even went so far as to challenge former President Thomas Jefferson’s discriminatory racial assumptions when he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zQUqIOmsdLkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=stauffer+black+hearts+of+men&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=will%20forever%20prevent&f=false">wrote</a>: “His arrangement of these views is so mixed and confused, that we must depart from it.”</p>
<p>McCune Smith’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FwvIir4VSX4C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=stauffer+black+hearts+of+men&source=gbs_navlinks_s">activism</a> showed aspiring African Americans that becoming a professional black physician could be more than simply treating patients. For him, being an expert in medical science also included using his training to fight injustice and inequality. </p>
<p>His publications are an indispensable chapter in the American history of science and medicine. But they are an important part of British history too. Because it was in Britain where he first published articles that placed his knowledge of medicine in the service of equality and justice. It was the libraries of Glasgow University – which now has a building <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-45776580">named in his honour</a> – and the wards of the Lock Hospital which fed his towering intellect and fired his passion for medical knowledge, as well as the pursuit of justice for the powerless and oppressed.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/cant-face-running-have-a-hot-bath-or-a-sauna-research-shows-they-offer-some-similar-benefits-158552?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Can’t face running? Have a hot bath or a sauna – research shows they offer some similar benefits</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-culture-of-silence-and-stigma-around-emotions-dominates-policing-officer-diaries-reveal-152657?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">A culture of silence and stigma around emotions dominates policing, officer diaries reveal</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-double-lives-of-gay-men-in-chinas-hainan-province-153945?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">The double lives of gay men in China’s Hainan province</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Daniel Eddy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>James McCune Smith was the first African American to receive a medical doctorate from a university. He dedicated his life to fighting injustice.Matthew Daniel Eddy, Professor and Chair in the History and Philosophy of Science, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1547212021-02-26T21:55:32Z2021-02-26T21:55:32ZHow Black people in the 19th century used photography as a tool for social change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386116/original/file-20210224-21-161orsb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1225%2C761&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jubilee singers at Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee, pose for
promotional photograph, circa 1871.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wcl1ic/x-178/WCL000251?from=index;lasttype=boolean;lastview=thumbnail;med=1;resnum=141;size=20;sort=relevance;start=141;view=entry;rgn1=ic_all;q1=African+American;evl=undefined">William L. Clements Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Frederick Douglass is perhaps best known as an abolitionist and intellectual. But he was also the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/15/douglass/?arc404=true">most photographed American of the 19th century</a>. And he encouraged the use of photography to <a href="https://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/identities/why-abolitionist-frederick-douglass-loved-the-photograph/">promote social change for Black equality</a>.</p>
<p>In that spirit, this article – using images from the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan – examines different ways Black Americans from the 19th century used photography as a tool for self-empowerment and social change. </p>
<h2>Black studio portraits</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cabinet card portraits of African Americans" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cabinet card portraits of African Americans from the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. Left: Man with Pipe, circa 1887. Right: Woman in Silk Dress, circa 1888.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William L. Clements Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Speaking about how accessible photography had become during his time, Douglass once <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frederick-douglass-photographed-american-19th-century">stated</a>: “What was once the special and exclusive luxury of the rich and great is now the privilege of all. The humblest servant girl may now possess a picture of herself such as the wealth of kings could not purchase fifty years ago.” </p>
<p>To pose for a photograph became <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/turn-of-century-african-americans-camera-tool-empowerment-180971757/">an empowering act for African Americans</a>. It served as a way to counteract <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_2001-0930-23">racist caricatures</a> that distort facial features and mocked Black society. African Americans in urban and rural settings participated in photography to demonstrate dignity in the Black experience.</p>
<p>The first successful form of photography was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/daguerreotype">daguerreotype</a>, an image printed on polished silver-plated copper. The invention of <a href="https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/find-out-when-a-photo-was-taken-identify-a-carte-de-visite/">carte de visite</a> photographs, followed by <a href="https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/find-out-when-a-photo-was-taken-identify-a-cabinet-card/">cabinet cards</a>, changed the culture of photography because the process allowed photographers to print images on paper. Cartes de visite are portraits the size of a business card with several copies <a href="https://www.gallery.ca/photo-blog/collecting-cards-cartes-de-visite">printed on a single sheet</a>. The change from printing images on metal to printing on paper made them <a href="https://www.familytree.com/blog/cost-of-that-19th-century-photo/#:%7E:text=One%20would%20run%20between%2025,the%20was%20at%20that%20time.">more affordable to produce</a>, and anyone could commission a portrait.</p>
<h2><strong>Collecting kinship: Arabella Chapman albums</strong></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Arabella Chapman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arabella Chapman poses for a portrait from her public carte de visite album, circa 1878 - 1880s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William L. Clements Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During Victorian times, it was <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-victorian-brits-obsessed-trading-tiny-photo-portraits">fashionable for people to exchange cartes de visite</a> with loved ones and collect them from visitors.<br>
<a href="https://www.albany.edu/arce/ChapmanXX.html">Arabella Chapman</a>, an African American music teacher from Albany, New York, assembled two cartes de visite photo albums. The first was a private album of family pictures, while the other featured friends and political figures for public viewing. The creation of each book allowed Chapman to store and share her photographs as intimate keepsakes. </p>
<h2><strong>Innovative entrepreneurs: The Goodridge Brothers</strong></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Goodridge Brothers, Backview of the Washington Street fire," src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children stare at the burned remains from the Washington Street fire, circa 1870s. David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William L. Clements Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When photography became a viable business, African Americans started their own photography studios in different locations across the country. <a href="https://www.svsu.edu/newsroom/news/2016/october/preservingthegoodridgebrothersphotos/preservingthegoodridgebrothersphotos.html">The Goodridge Brothers</a> established one of the earliest Black photography studios in 1847. The business, opened first in York, Pennsylvania, moved to Saginaw, Michigan in 1863.</p>
<p>The brothers – Glenalvin, Wallace and William – were known for producing studio portraits using a variety of <a href="https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/science-and-technology/victorian-photography/victorian-photography/victorian-photographic-techniques/">photographic techniques</a>. They also produced documentary photography printed on <a href="https://www.reframingphotography.com/page/stereo-cards">stereo cards</a> to create 3D images. </p>
<p>Saginaw, Michigan, was an expanding settlement, and the brothers photographed new buildings in the town. They also documented natural disasters in the area. Photographers would capture 3D images of fires, floods and other destructive occurrences to record the impact of the event before the town rebuilt the area. </p>
<h2>Documenting communities: Harvey C. Jackson</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Burning the mortgage of the Phyllis Wheatley Home" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Burning the Mortgage of the Phyllis Wheatley Home in Detroit, Michigan, on Jan. 4, 1915. By Harvey C. Jackson.
David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William L. Clements Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The development of Black photography studios allowed communities greater control to style images that authentically reflected Black life. <a href="https://www.hourdetroit.com/the-way-it-was-articles/the-way-it-was-harvey-c-jackson-1910/">Harvey C. Jackson</a> established Detroit’s first Black-owned photography studio in 1915. He collaborated with communities to create cinematic scenes of important events. In one photo, Jackson documents a mortgage-burning celebration at the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/phyllis-wheatley-womens-clubs-1895/">Phyllis Wheatley Home</a>, established in 1897. Its mission was to improve the status of Black women and the elderly by providing lodging and services.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.phillytrib.com/news/vine-memorial-baptist-holds-mortgage-burning-ceremony/article_f0874e1c-663d-5616-be36-ed28d340dc10.html">Mortgage-burning ceremonies</a> are a tradition churches observe to commemorate their last mortgage payment. Harvey Jackson documented this occasion with each person holding a string attached to the mortgage to connect each person in burning the document.</p>
<p>African Americans’ engagement with photography in the 19th century began a tradition for <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2020/08/04/black-photographers-document-movement/">Black photographers’ use of photography today</a> to promote social change. African Americans, whether they are in front or behind the camera, create empowering images that define the beauty and resilience contained within the Black experience. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samantha Hill is affiliated with the Society of American Archivists</span></em></p>Cameras played a critical role in the quest for social equality for Black Americans in the post-slavery era.Samantha Hill, 2019 - 2021 Joyce Bock Fellow at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan and current graduate student at U-M School of Information, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1518052021-02-11T15:11:34Z2021-02-11T15:11:34ZJohn Brown was a violent crusader, but he blazed a moral path that the cautious Lincoln followed to end slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384066/original/file-20210212-17-lk7x4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=67%2C21%2C1936%2C1319&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Abolitionist John Brown, left, and President Abraham Lincoln, right, were both moral crusaders. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-american-president-abraham-lincoln-mid-19th-news-photo/145890325?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images & Stock Montage/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the most underappreciated figures in the nation’s history, John Brown, was re-introduced to Americans by the Showtime series “<a href="https://www.sho.com/the-good-lord-bird">The Good Lord Bird</a>,” based on the <a href="https://www.jamesmcbride.com/good-lord-bird/">James McBride novel</a> of the same name. </p>
<p>Too often dismissed as a failed zealot, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Brown-American-abolitionist">Brown was an unconventional anti-slavery leader</a> who blazed a trail that Abraham Lincoln would follow just a few years later. </p>
<p>Commentators then and now are more likely to see <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/925362418/john-brown-and-abraham-lincoln-divergent-paths-in-the-fight-to-end-slavery">differences between Lincoln’s and Brown’s approaches</a> to civic leadership. Lincoln was cautious and deliberate; Brown was a revolutionary on fire. </p>
<p>Though this contrast is instructive, there’s another way to look at both men. In the end, they were both moral crusaders who exercised uncompromising moral leadership. </p>
<h2>Unwavering commitment</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Brown-American-abolitionist">John Brown was a leading white abolitionist</a> who engaged in many peaceful efforts to free and assist enslaved African Americans before the Civil War. </p>
<p>But his methods eventually shifted. In 1856, a 55-year-old Brown joined two of his sons in the Kansas territory and led anti-slavery paramilitary forces to victory in the violent period that became known as “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Bleeding-Kansas-United-States-history">Bleeding Kansas</a>.” </p>
<p>In 1859, Brown’s abolitionist efforts culminated in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Harpers-Ferry-Raid">a raid on a federal armory at Harpers Ferry</a> in what is now West Virginia. This was the first step in Brown’s broader plan to emancipate slaves throughout the South. The attempt was unsuccessful, and Brown was captured, tried and hanged shortly thereafter.</p>
<p>In a speech delivered at Harpers Ferry more than 20 years later, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/frederick-douglass.htm">abolitionist Frederick Douglass</a> <a href="https://www.nps.gov/hafe/learn/historyculture/frederick-douglass-at-harpers-ferry.htm">claimed</a> that “John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382074/original/file-20210202-15-77el1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Civil War broadside featuring a song about John Brown." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382074/original/file-20210202-15-77el1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382074/original/file-20210202-15-77el1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382074/original/file-20210202-15-77el1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382074/original/file-20210202-15-77el1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382074/original/file-20210202-15-77el1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382074/original/file-20210202-15-77el1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382074/original/file-20210202-15-77el1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1863 broadside entitled ‘A Song for the Times or John Brown,’ telling the story of a man who insisted that slaves should be freed and treated like everyone else.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/broadside-from-the-american-civil-war-entitled-a-song-for-news-photo/578389278?adppopup=true">JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Defending his positive view of Brown’s turn to violence, Douglass explained that Brown was an “agent” of God’s “retributive justice.” Douglass argued that a higher logic – what Brown <a href="https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/t-05508-051.pdf">referred to</a> as the “law of God” – provided a special justification and vindication for Brown’s actions.</p>
<p>As I have explored at length <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo17607560.html">elsewhere</a>, such higher-law arguments to justify actions are more than mere rhetoric in the service of political causes. They have been carefully developed throughout the history of political thought by some of the most profound thinkers from around the world, and from ancient times to our own. </p>
<p>Brown possessed – or, perhaps better, was possessed by – a clarity of moral principle that simply ruled out inaction or compromise in the face of grave injustice. One of Brown’s refrains was “<a href="http://www.wvculture.org/history/jbexhibit/bbspr05-0032.html">Whenever there is a right thing to be done, there is a ‘thus saith the Lord’ that it shall be done</a>.” </p>
<p>When questioned about his motives by federal authorities following his capture, Brown said simply: “<a href="https://www.famous-trials.com/johnbrown/615-interview">We came to free the slaves, and only that</a>.” </p>
<p>In stark contrast to the great American political leaders of his day, Brown shunned compromise and accommodation and instead was driven by an unwavering commitment to moral principle.</p>
<h2>Statesman versus radical</h2>
<p>The greatest American political leader of the mid-19th century was Abraham Lincoln, who was elected to the presidency the year following Brown’s famous raid. If Brown began the war that ended slavery, Lincoln is the man who finished it.</p>
<p>The inextricable link between the two anti-slavery leaders was forged, in fact, years earlier and hundreds of miles away on the plains of Kansas. The <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Kansas_Nebraska_Act.htm">Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854</a> and its <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Missouri_Compromise.htm">repeal of the Missouri Compromise</a> was <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1234">“like a fire bell in the night”</a> for both Brown and Lincoln. By allowing slavery to be legalized by popular vote in new states north of the Missouri Compromise line, this law sparked a flood of settlers to the Kansas territory who were determined to tip the scales either for or against slavery.</p>
<p>Given the highly polarized nature of the issue of slavery by this time, many of these new settlers were prepared to engage in violence to influence the outcome of the vote. The ensuing conflict drew Brown into direct, violent confrontation with proponents of slavery for the first time. </p>
<p>And the federal government’s new openness to slavery’s extension beyond the existing states <a href="https://politicalsciencereviewer.wisc.edu/index.php/psr/article/view/618">transformed</a> the issue of slavery from being a “<a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-in-reply-to-douglas-at-springfield-illinois/">minor question” in Lincoln’s mind</a> to the centerpiece of his political thought and career.</p>
<p>While debating political rival Stephen Douglas a few years later, Lincoln stated the importance of moral principle to his campaign with Brown-like simplicity and clarity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/debate7.htm">The real issue in this controversy</a> is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as a wrong.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, according to Lincoln, abstract legal doctrines relating to states’ rights or the nature of the constitutional union were, at best, secondary. Opposite opinions about the morality of slavery drove the controversy that would result in the Civil War.</p>
<p>And yet, in his <a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm">Cooper Union Address</a> in 1860 – the speech that would catapult him to the presidency – Lincoln was at pains to distance himself from Brown. </p>
<p>“John Brown was no Republican,” said Lincoln, the party’s leader. He was a deluded madman who convinced himself that he was “commissioned by Heaven” to liberate the enslaved. </p>
<p>Lincoln presented himself as the clearheaded, prudent statesman who would work within the legal framework to combat the moral evil of slavery; Brown was the dangerous radical who would indiscriminately destroy both.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382079/original/file-20210202-19-1q3ydqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The House joint resolution in favor of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382079/original/file-20210202-19-1q3ydqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382079/original/file-20210202-19-1q3ydqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382079/original/file-20210202-19-1q3ydqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382079/original/file-20210202-19-1q3ydqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382079/original/file-20210202-19-1q3ydqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382079/original/file-20210202-19-1q3ydqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382079/original/file-20210202-19-1q3ydqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lincoln ‘fought tirelessly’ for House passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/13th-amendment">National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Distance vanishes between Lincoln and Brown</h2>
<p>Yet five years later, as Lincoln unknowingly entered what would be the final weeks of his life, his differences with Brown appeared to narrow. </p>
<p>Lincoln had fought tirelessly in January 1865 for <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Passes_the_Thirteenth_Amendment.htm">the passage in the House of Representatives of the 13th Amendment</a>, which abolished slavery, using every tool at his disposal to influence reluctant members. </p>
<p>In the first week of February, Lincoln approved Congress’ resolution to move the 13th Amendment forward to ratification and rejected a Confederate peace proposal. As the Civil War raged on and thousands of additional lives were lost, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment">Lincoln seemed to focus his energy not on securing the peace, but on abolishing slavery</a>. </p>
<p>Lincoln had achieved just what Brown had attempted in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry: abolition through violent conflict with slaveholders. </p>
<p>Lincoln’s second inaugural address the following month, moreover, <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=38&page=transcript">framed</a> the Civil War in precisely the same terms Brown had used to justify his actions. In this speech, Lincoln casts himself as a mere agent in the service of God’s providential plan to punish the evil of slavery. </p>
<p>With the 13th Amendment on its way to ratification, all that remained was the fulfillment of divine justice, Lincoln said – a mystical moment of equilibrium when “all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk,” and “<a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=38&page=transcript">every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword</a>.”</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>In his final words on the defining event of his political career, the distance between Lincoln and Brown all but vanishes. Brown’s “thus saith the Lord” echoes clearly in Lincoln’s concluding prayer: “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” </p>
<p>Lincoln appreciated the prudent statesmanship of pre-Civil War politicians such as Henry Clay, but the defining quality of Lincoln’s leadership was forged of less pliable stuff. Lincoln was ultimately more crusader than compromiser. </p>
<p>In this way, he and John Brown share a model of moral leadership that is still worthy of study, even in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151805/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Seagrave does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Lincoln was a statesman. John Brown was a radical. That’s the traditional view of how each one fought slavery, but it fails to capture the full measure of their devotion.Adam Seagrave, Associate Professor of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1466532020-10-02T13:24:16Z2020-10-02T13:24:16ZIn ‘The Good Lord Bird,’ a new version of John Brown rides in at a crucial moment in US history<p>Was abolitionist <a href="https://www.historynet.com/john-brown">John Brown</a> a psychopath, a sinner or a saint?</p>
<p>The answer depends on whom you ask, and when.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://tvreleasedates.com/the-good-lord-bird-delayed-showtime-announces-new-release-date/">long-awaited premiere</a> of Showtime’s “<a href="https://www.sho.com/the-good-lord-bird">The Good Lord Bird</a>,” based on <a href="https://www.jamesmcbride.com/">James McBride’s</a> <a href="https://www.nationalbook.org/books/the-good-lord-bird/">novel</a> of the same name, comes at a time when evolving popular perceptions of Brown have once again gotten people thinking and talking about him.</p>
<p>Since he cemented his place in history by leading a failed slave revolt at Harpers Ferry, the flinty-eyed militant’s cultural significance has waxed and waned. To <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3097254?seq=1">some</a>, he’s a revolutionary, a freedom fighter and a hero. To <a href="https://www.historynet.com/john-brown">others</a>, he’s an anarchist, a murderer and a terrorist. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.vermonthumanities.org/video-reading-the-rails/">My research</a> tracks how scholars, activists and artists have used Brown and other abolitionists to comment on contemporary racial issues.</p>
<p>With the prominence of the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> movement and the president’s push for “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/us/politics/trump-patriotic-education.html">patriotic education</a>,” Brown is perhaps more relevant now than at any other time since the dawn of the Civil War. </p>
<p>So which version appears in “The Good Lord Bird”? And what does it say about Americans’ willingness to confront racial oppression?</p>
<h2>From farmer to zealot</h2>
<p>Born in 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut, John Brown was living a relatively undistinguished life as a farmer, sheep drover and wool merchant until the 1837 murder of abolitionist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elijah-P-Lovejoy">Elijah Lovejoy</a>. An outraged Brown publicly announced his dedication to the eradication of slavery. Between 1837 and 1850 – the year of the passage of the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts">Fugitive Slave Act</a> – Brown served as a “conductor” on the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html">Underground Railroad</a>, first in Springfield, Massachusetts, and then in the Adirondacks, near the Canadian border. </p>
<p>Gifted a farm by wealthy abolitionist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gerrit-Smith">Gerrit Smith</a>, Brown settled in <a href="https://parks.ny.gov/historic-sites/johnbrownfarm/amenities.aspx">North Elba, New York</a>, where he continued helping escaped slaves and assisting the residents of <a href="https://www.adirondack.net/history/timbuctoo/">Timbuctoo</a>, a nearby community of fugitive slaves, with their subsistence farming. </p>
<p>In 1855, Brown took his anti-slavery fight to Kansas, where five of his sons had begun homesteading the previous year. For the Browns, the move to “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/bleeding-kansas">Bleeding Kansas</a>” – a territory riven by violence between pro- and anti-slavery settlers – was an opportunity to live their convictions. In 1856, pro-slavery forces sacked and burned the anti-slavery stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas. Outraged, Brown and his sons captured five settlers from three different pro-slavery families living along Pottawatomie Creek and slaughtered them with broadswords.</p>
<p>These brutal murders thrust Brown onto the national abolitionist stage.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="John Brown, arms splayed out, triumphantly screams as troops battle behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Tragic Prelude,’ a mural painted by John Steuart Curry, depicts John Brown’s role in ‘Bleeding Kansas,’ with the bloodshed, fire and tornado hinting at the coming Civil War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/The_Tragic_Prelude_John_Brown.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the next two years, Brown led raids in Kansas and went east to raise funds to support his fights. Unbeknownst to all but a few co-conspirators, he was also planning the operation that he believed would deal slavery a death blow. </p>
<p>In October 1859, Brown and 21 followers raided <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/john-browns-day-of-reckoning-139165084/">the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia</a>. </p>
<p>Brown had hoped that both <a href="http://ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/failure-compromise/essays/admiration-and-ambivalence-frederick-douglass-and-john-brow">Frederick Douglass</a> and <a href="https://exhibits.tufts.edu/spotlight/john-brown-tufts/about/harriet-tubman">Harriet Tubman</a> would join him, but neither did; perhaps their absences help explain why Brown’s expected uprising of enslaved Virginians never materialized. In addition to dooming the initial raid, the absence of a slave army torpedoed Brown’s grand plan to establish mountain bases from which to stage raids on plantations throughout the South, which he referred to as taking “<a href="http://www.wvculture.org/history/jbexhibit/jbchapter7.html">the war to Africa</a>.” </p>
<p>In the end, Harpers Ferry was a debacle: Ten of his band died that day, five escaped, and the remaining seven – <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-brown-hanged">Brown included</a> – were tried, imprisoned and executed. </p>
<h2>The myth of John Brown</h2>
<p>From Pottawatomie to the present, Brown has been something of a <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095824238">floating signifier</a> – a shape-shifting historical figure molded to fit the political goals of those who invoke his name.</p>
<p>That said, there are certain instances in which opinions coalesce. </p>
<p>In late October 1859, for instance, he was roundly vilified and decried as a violent madman. The outrage was so strong that five of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/brown-secret-six/">the Secret Six</a> – his most ardent supporters and active financial backers – denied association with Brown and condemned the raid.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="John Brown kisses a Black baby on the way to his execution." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In his circa 1884 painting ‘The Last Moments of John Brown,’ Thomas Hovenden depicts Brown as a martyr.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/profzucker/49646423671">profzucker/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But by that December, the cultural tide shifted in Brown’s favor. His jailhouse interviews and abolitionist missives, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538119105/Freedom%27s-Dawn-The-Last-Days-of-John-Brown-in-Virginia">published in papers ranging from The Richmond Dispatch to the New-York Daily Tribune</a>, galvanized admiration for Brown and amplified Northern horror over the evils of slavery. Historian <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/140728/john-brown-abolitionist-by-david-s-reynolds/">David S. Reynolds</a> deems those documents Brown’s most important contribution to the destruction of American chattel slavery. </p>
<p>Praised and defended by <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/">Transcendentalist</a> writers <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2922276?seq=1">Henry David Thoreau</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a>, who declared the freedom fighter would “<a href="https://www.ushistory.org/us/32c.asp">make the gallows glorious like the cross</a>,” Brown was later described as a <a href="http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh18-1.html">martyr</a> to the anti-slavery cause. During the Civil War, Union troops sang <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/brown-history-john-browns-body/">a tribute to him</a> as they went into battle. For many, he was the patron saint of abolitionism.</p>
<p>Artists, meanwhile, conjured and deployed versions of Brown in service of their work. In the 1940s, painter <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/artist/jacob-lawrence-2828">Jacob Lawrence</a> created a <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/education/oh-freedom/jacob-lawrence-john-brown">wild-eyed firebrand Brown</a> while <a href="https://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/pippin-bio.htm">Horace Pippin</a> depicted a <a href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/horace-pippin/john-brown-reading-his-bible-1942">contemplative, sedentary Brown</a> to showcase their divergent perspectives on Black history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young John Brown, freshly shaven, sits at a table in front of an open Bible." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Horace Pippin’s ‘John Brown Reading His Bible’ (1942).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/horace-pippin/john-brown-reading-his-bible-1942">Wikiart</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, during the <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm">Jim Crow era</a>, most white Americans – even opponents of segregation – either ignored Brown or condemned him as an anarchist and a murderer, perhaps because the delicate politics of the civil rights struggle made him too dangerous to discuss. For followers of <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/nonviolence">Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy</a> of nonviolence, Brown was a figure to be feared, not admired.</p>
<p>In contrast, Black Americans from <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/303226?seq=1">W.E.B. DuBois</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_McKissick">Floyd McKissick</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7411333-we-need-allies-who-are-going-to-help-us-achieve">Malcolm X</a>, faced with waves of seemingly endless white hostility, celebrated him for his willingness to fight and die for Black freedom. </p>
<p>The past three decades brought renewed interest in Brown, with no fewer than 15 books on Brown appearing, including children’s books, biographies, critical histories of Harpers Ferry, an assessment of Brown’s jailhouse months and the novels “<a href="https://movies2.nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/daily/cloudsplitter-book-review.html">Cloudsplitter</a>” and “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/daily/33127.html">Raising Holy Hell</a>.” </p>
<p>At the same time, right-wing extremists have invoked his legacy. Oklahoma City bomber <a href="https://oklahoman.com/article/700006/ready-for-execution-mcveigh-says-hes-sorry-for-deaths">Timothy McVeigh</a>, for instance, expressed the hope that he would “be remembered as a freedom fighter akin” to Brown.</p>
<p>Yet Brown’s contemporary admirers also include left-wing Second Amendment advocates like the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/22/if-others-have-rifles-well-have-rifles-why-leftist-groups-are-taking-up-arms">John Brown Gun Club</a> and its offshoot, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/22/if-others-have-rifles-well-have-rifles-why-leftist-groups-are-taking-up-arms">Redneck Revolt</a>. These groups gather at events like Charlottesville’s 2017 <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/sites/default/files/Unite_the_Right_Rally_in_Charlottesville_Timeline.pdf">Unite the Right March</a> to protect liberal counterprotesters. </p>
<h2>John Brown the … clown?</h2>
<p>Which brings us to McBride’s novel, the inspiration for Showtime’s miniseries.</p>
<p>Among the most distinctive features of McBride’s novel is its bizarre humor. Americans have seen a devout John Brown, a vengeful John Brown and an inspirational John Brown. But before “The Good Lord Bird,” Americans had never seen a clownish John Brown. </p>
<p>McBride’s Brown is a tattered, scatterbrained and deeply religious monomaniac. In his ragged clothes, with his toes bursting out of his boots, Brown intones lengthy, discursive prayers and offers obtuse interpretations of Scripture that leave his men befuddled. </p>
<p>We learn all of this from Onion, the narrator, a former slave whom Brown “rescues” from one of the families living on Pottawatomie Creek. At first, all Onion wants is to get back home to his owner – a detail that speaks volumes about the novel’s twisted humor. Eventually, Onion embraces his new role as Brown’s mascot, although he continues to mock Brown’s ridiculously erratic behavior all the way to Harpers Ferry.</p>
<p>Like many <a href="https://www.latimes.com/books/la-xpm-2013-aug-30-la-ca-jc-james-mcbride-20130901-story.html">reviewers</a> – and apparently <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/21/the-many-faces-of-ethan-hawke">Ethan Hawke</a>, who plays Brown in the Showtime series – I laughed loud and hard when I read “The Good Lord Bird.” </p>
<p>That said, the laughter was a bit unsettling. How and why would someone make this story funny? </p>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urOO9cedz54">Atlantic Festival</a>, McBride noted that humor could open the way for “hard conversations” about America’s racial history. And Hawke’s hilarious portrayal of Brown, along with his commentary about the joys of playing this character, suggests he shares McBride’s belief that humor is a useful mechanism for fostering discussions about both slavery and contemporary race relations. </p>
<p>While one might reasonably say that the history of American race relations is so horrific that laughter is an inappropriate response, I think Hawke and McBride may be on to something. </p>
<p>One of humor’s key functions is to change people’s way of seeing, to open the possibility for a different understanding of the subject of the joke. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>“The Good Lord Bird” gives readers and viewers a mechanism for seeing past the historical Brown’s violence, which is the defining feature of most iterations of him and the basis for most judgments of his character. For all of Brown’s madness, for all of his commitment to ending slavery, his care and affection for Onion show that he is fundamentally kind – an attribute that invests him with an appealing humanity more powerful than any physical blow he strikes.</p>
<p>Given all of the cultural baggage that John Brown has carried since Pottawatomie, giving audiences a means of empathizing with him is no mean feat. </p>
<p>Perhaps it will help Americans move the needle in the ongoing struggle for racial understanding – an outcome that’s as necessary now as it was in 1859.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The abolitionist’s legacy is often molded to fit various political agendas. Yet the Brown who appears in Showtime’s new miniseries is one we haven’t seen before.William Nash, Professor of American Studies and English and American Literatures, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1421532020-07-13T11:50:49Z2020-07-13T11:50:49ZSmartphone witnessing becomes synonymous with Black patriotism after George Floyd’s death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346396/original/file-20200708-3987-18z1qle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C0%2C4473%2C3078&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters against racist police violence encounter police in Washington, D.C., on May 31.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-protesting-the-death-of-george-floyd-talk-to-news-photo/1216617277">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A flashbulb emits a high-pitched hum. A photograph of the legendary 19th-century abolitionist and newspaperman Frederick Douglass fades in on-screen.</p>
<p>We hear the “Hamilton” alumnus actor Daveed Diggs before we see him.</p>
<p>“What, to my people, is the Fourth of July?” <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE">Diggs asks</a> in a plaintive voiceover, as a police siren and the opening chords of Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” clash aurally.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WuCeUyItpzE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘What, to my people, is the Fourth of July?’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In just two minutes and 19 seconds, the <a href="https://m4bl.org/">Movement for Black Lives</a> short film released in 2020 provided a highlight reel of African American oppression that spans 400 years. </p>
<p>The juxtapositions are jarring in the Independence Day-themed video. A historic <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=23">image of a Black toddler picking cotton</a> slams into a modern picture of a <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=24">masked Black boy marching in protest</a>. Imagery of <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=15">fireworks at the Lincoln Memorial</a> follows footage of <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=12">flash grenades</a> being lobbed at protesters. Regal shots of <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=20">Black soldiers standing in formation</a> dissolve into a forlorn image of a <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=28">homeless Black veteran</a>. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=84">Hurricane Katrina</a> footage. <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=40">Amy Cooper in Central Park</a> footage. Photos of <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=41">slaves at work</a>. <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=43">Emmett Till</a>’s remains. Police in riot gear. And so much more.</p>
<p>Perhaps what is most remarkable about this short film, however, is not the sheer volume of source material with which the producers had to work. It’s that this film is rooted in a concept I call “Black witnessing.” </p>
<p>This patriotic form of looking, which documents human rights injustices against Black people, dates back to the days of Frederick Douglass – and it may just be the crowning achievement of the Movement for Black Lives.</p>
<h2>What is Black witnessing?</h2>
<p>In my book, “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bearing-witness-while-black-9780190935535">Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism</a>,” I defined Black witnessing as a defiant, investigative gaze that has three qualities. </p>
<p>First, Black witnessing glares back at authorities in times of crisis or protest, using any available medium that it can to track violence against Black people. In the days of Frederick Douglass, the medium was the <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html">slave narrative</a> or the Black <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/abolitionists-douglass-published-north-star/">newspaper</a>. </p>
<p>During the civil rights movement, Black activists aimed to appear on the 15-minute evening news broadcasts on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08821127.2020.1715328?journalCode=uamj20">television</a> to highlight sit-ins or marches. Now, freedom fighters have smartphones to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cellphone-videos-of-black-peoples-deaths-should-be-considered-sacred-like-lynching-photographs-139252">capture fatal police encounters</a> or die-in demonstrations.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pll_5s10ils?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A CBS News report looks at how the civil rights movement used the media to deliver its message across America.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With these media-making tools, Black witnessing achieves its second characteristic. It forges a historic narrative that links new atrocities against African Americans, such as police brutality, with the original corporeal sins against Black people: slavery and lynching. </p>
<p>Many Americans now may connect the killings of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin together, for example, even though the boys died more than 50 years apart, since <a href="https://time.com/4228372/trayvon-martin-emmett-till-video/">Black witnesses talk about their deaths</a> as part of an ongoing racialized saga, rather than a mere isolated incident. </p>
<p>This spirit carries through the July 4 Movement for Black Lives video too, as it jumps back and forth through time to reimagine Frederick Douglass’ July 5, 1852 speech, “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html">The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro</a>,” through Daveed Diggs’ poetic voice.</p>
<p>The third quality of modern Black witnessing is that all of these historic narratives – and the viral messaging for which the Movement for Black Lives is so well known – rely on Twitter as its key distribution platform. The social network is like an ad-hoc Black news wire service that bypasses the gatekeeping role of the news media. </p>
<p>At the height of the George Floyd protests, for example, people tweeted the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BlackLivesMatter">#BlackLivesMatter</a> roughly 47.8 million times on Twitter from May 26 to June 7, which represents record level use since the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/10/blacklivesmatter-surges-on-twitter-after-george-floyds-death/">Pew Research Center</a> started tracking the hashtag in 2013. </p>
<p>These data mirror <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">recent polls</a> that indicate 15 million to 26 million people have demonstrated in more than 550 U.S. cities since George Floyd’s death, making Black Lives Matter the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">largest social movement in U.S. history</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/10/blacklivesmatter-surges-on-twitter-after-george-floyds-death/ft_2020-06-10_blm_01_new/"><img src="https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ft_2020.06.10_BLM_01_new.png?w=640"></a></p>
<h2>Black witnessing as the responsibility of patriots</h2>
<p>In my book I argue that we are living in an era of heightened Black witnessing, the likes of which we have never seen before, thanks to the perfect storm of smartphones, social media and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/29/views-of-racism-as-a-major-problem-increase-sharply-especially-among-democrats/">America’s changing attitudes</a> toward racial justice. </p>
<p>During Frederick Douglass’ lifetime, for example, Black slaves could not gaze upon one another as they were being beaten or otherwise punished, lest they incur the wrath of the master themselves.</p>
<p>Similarly, in the days of lynching, there were no Black people on the fringes of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cellphone-videos-of-black-peoples-deaths-should-be-considered-sacred-like-lynching-photographs-139252">murderous mob photographs</a>. </p>
<p>But now, for the first time, African Americans can use their smartphones to be there, physically, in a moment of shared trauma. Though it is excruciatingly painful to hit “record” during a violent police encounter, the Black witness is saying to the victim: “I will not leave you alone in your final moments. I will tell your family what happened. I will hold police accountable. I will say your name.” </p>
<p>Independence Day 2020 was the perfect time to reevaluate what all of the Black witnesses of centuries past have tried to tell America. From slave narratives to smartphones, they have highlighted the cruel hypocrisy that exists when the country celebrates freedom for some in the U.S., and bondage for others.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frederick Douglass, a powerful abolitionist orator and writer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-frederick-douglass-american-abolitionist-and-news-photo/515448848">Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Movement for Black Lives video is a true exercise in Black witnessing. It glares back at the July 4 national holiday. It’s gone viral on Twitter and YouTube. And it connects our nation’s current moment to Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech. He delivered it to the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100425400">Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society</a> in Rochester, New York, amid a <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/07/28/nyregion/heat-struck-july-1852.html">record-breaking, statewide heat wave</a>. </p>
<p>As Douglass gazed around the room at his audience on that day, I like to imagine that he dabbed sweat from his brow before he exhorted: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? … This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”</p>
<p>By the time Douglass finished his fiery oration, he used the word “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html">witness</a>” himself, pledging never to leave the work of abolishing slavery in his lifetime. He added: “Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.”</p>
<p>Black witnessing, therefore, is not a denouncement of one’s patriotism; it is an exercise of it. When African Americans press “record” to film police brutality, they are calling for accountability. They are standing in the gap for the dead, who can no longer speak. And they are, perhaps most importantly, challenging a nation not to look away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allissa V. Richardson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When African Americans press ‘record’ to film police brutality, they are challenging a nation not to look away.Allissa V. Richardson, Assistant Professor of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1345172020-06-08T12:25:34Z2020-06-08T12:25:34Z19 facts about the 19th Amendment on its 100th anniversary<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337968/original/file-20200527-20219-pzyofi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=185%2C1149%2C7971%2C4165&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women portraying suffragettes walk with the Pasadena Celebrates 2020 float at the 131st Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Rose-Parade/9e774400ab8f45be85d0a17bb0df94c8/13/0">AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One hundred years ago, the 19th Amendment enfranchised millions of women across the United States following a seven-decade campaign. The struggle to expand voting rights to women resonates today as the country continues to debate who should vote and how. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/karen-m-kedrowski/">scholars</a> <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/dianne-bystrom/">of</a> <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/01/14/introduction-from-director-karen-kedrowski/">civic engagement</a> and <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=A4580C">women’s suffrage</a>, we have compiled “19 Things to Know” about this landmark amendment. Together they reveal the strength and determination of the suffrage movement as it battled for this fundamental right of citizenship.</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong>
Many early <a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/not-for-ourselves-alone/abolition-suffrage">suffragists were also abolitionists</a>. They include <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14850.html">Lucretia Mott</a>, <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/44gqy8bm9780252071737.html">Elizabeth Cady Stanton</a>, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20439/20439-h/20439-h.htm">Susan B. Anthony</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lucy-stone-9780199778393?cc=us&lang=en&">Lucy Stone</a>, <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B6198C">Sojourner Truth</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00064246.1973.11760855">Frederick Douglass</a> and <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B4127C">Harriet Tubman</a>. </p>
<p><strong>2.</strong>
The first women’s rights convention took place in <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/flexing-feminine-muscles-strategies-and-conflicts.htm">Seneca Falls, New York</a>, on July 19-20, 1848. Of the 11 resolutions demanding equality – in the workplace, family and education, for example – only women’s right to vote drew opposition before it was approved. Although abolitionists had called for women’s voting rights before 1848, suffragists later viewed the convention as launching the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. </p>
<p><strong>3.</strong>
In 1869 the movement <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/comrades-in-conflict.htm">split</a> over disagreements about the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xv">15th Amendment</a>, which granted voting rights to African American men but not women.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-woman-suffrage-association-3530492">National Woman Suffrage Association</a> lobbied for a federal amendment, while the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/american-woman-suffrage-association-3530477">American Woman Suffrage Association</a> pursued a state-by-state strategy. Recognizing that a divided movement was hurting their success, the groups merged in 1890 as the <a href="https://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united">National American Woman Suffrage Association</a>, or NAWSA. </p>
<p><strong>4.</strong>
Suffrage was a mass movement with diverse voices. They included the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-association-of-colored-women-45392">National Association of Colored Women</a>, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/womans-christian-temperance-union">Woman’s Christian Temperance Union</a>, <a href="https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9670&context=annals-of-iowa">farmers’ organizations</a> and the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/womens-trade-union-league-wtul-3530838">Women’s Trade Union League</a>. Most of these organizations became active in suffrage after the creation of NAWSA. </p>
<p><strong>5.</strong>
Women’s suffrage depended on male supporters, among them state legislators and members of Congress. Only men could vote in state referenda to extend the vote to women. Men did so in <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814757222/how-the-vote-was-won/">Colorado</a>, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501705557/women-will-vote/#bookTabs=1">New York</a> and <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SU002">Oklahoma</a>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0399.htm">thousands of women</a> opposed suffrage. They thought it would undermine women’s influence in the home and family. </p>
<p><strong>6.</strong>
Several political and social movements during the <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/progressive-era-reformers">Progressive Era</a>, 1890-1920, prioritized suffrage. Women realized they needed voting rights to reform child labor laws, promote public health, and prohibit alcohol and prostitution. These suffragists framed their roles, as wives and mothers, as political virtues to advance a more moral government. </p>
<p><strong>7.</strong>
Besides the leadership provided by the national women’s suffrage associations, hundreds of local and state organizations engaged thousands of volunteers as well. Some of the earliest state associations were organized in <a href="https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/women-s-suffrage/14524">Kansas</a> in 1867, <a href="http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/suffrage/IAWomenSuffrage.pdf">Iowa</a> in 1870 and <a href="https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/timeline/suffrage.htm">Washington state</a> in 1871. </p>
<p><strong>8.</strong>
African American women reformers saw suffrage as an important goal. They began forming their own clubs in the 1880s and founded the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-association-of-colored-women-45392">National Association of Colored Women</a> in 1896. Unlike predominantly white suffrage organizations, the NACW called for other reforms to address the economic, educational and social welfare of African American women and children, such as job training programs, fair wages and child care. </p>
<p><strong>9.</strong>
Millions of women enjoyed the right to vote before the 19th Amendment was ratified. Women had full voting rights in 15 states and the Alaska territory, and limited suffrage, including voting in presidential elections, in another 12 states <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw08_12159.html">before 1920</a>. Their influence helped build momentum for the 19th Amendment. </p>
<p><strong>10.</strong>
In 1913 <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/alice-paul">Alice Paul</a> organized NAWSA’s first women’s suffrage <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/woman-suffrage-procession1913.htm">parade</a> in Washington, D.C. The police failed to provide the suffragists with adequate protection, and spectators attacked the marchers. Paul formed a rival suffrage organization, the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/articles-and-essays/historical-overview-of-the-national-womans-party/">National Woman’s Party</a>, in 1916.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alice Paul, 1920, celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alice-paul-1920-celebrating-the-passage-of-the-19th-news-photo/646458988?adppopup=true">Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>11.</strong>
In a speech titled “<a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/the-crisis-sept-7-1916/">The Crisis</a>” at NAWSA’s 1916 convention, president <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/carrie-chapman-catt/">Carrie Chapman Catt</a> outlined her “Winning Plan” to focus efforts on a federal amendment while encouraging women to work in their states for the level of suffrage that could be achieved. </p>
<p><strong>12.</strong>
In 1916 <a href="https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/1790-jeannette-rankin">Jeannette Rankin</a>, a Republican from Montana, became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. Lawmakers greeted her with a <a href="https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RANKIN,-Jeannette-(R000055)/">standing ovation</a> when she was introduced in the House of Representatives. A committed suffragist, Rankin voted for the 19th Amendment in 1918. </p>
<p><strong>13.</strong>
In 1917 the National Woman’s Party organized <a href="https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/snapshot/alice-paul-and-suffragists-were-first-picket-white-house">protests</a> outside the White House to pressure President Woodrow Wilson to support women’s suffrage. For several months, suffragists protested in silence six days a week. Wilson initially <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-woodrow-wilson-picketed-by-women-suffragists">tolerated</a> the demonstrations but later became embarrassed by them. </p>
<p><strong>14.</strong>
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/">Thirty-three suffragists</a> picketing outside the White House on Nov. 10, 1917, were arrested and jailed. They were fed maggot-infested food, beaten and tortured. The suffragists protested with a hunger strike and were <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/NWP_project_ch3.shtml">brutally force-fed</a>. They were released after the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/">Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals</a> declared their arrests unconstitutional. </p>
<p><strong>15.</strong>
The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/09/15/carly-fiorinas-claim-that-the-gop-is-the-party-of-womens-suffrage/">Republican Party</a> was viewed as more supportive of women’s suffrage than Democrats until 1916, when both parties publicly supported state suffrage.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/People/Women/Part3_TheLastTrench.htm">Congress approved the 19th Amendment</a> in 1919 with bipartisan support: 83% percent of Republicans in the House and 82% in the Senate, and 53% of Democrats in the House and 54% in the Senate. Some Democrats from the South opposed voting rights for African American women.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carrie Chapman Catt, women’s suffrage leader and advocate for world peace, in the mid 1910s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mrs-carrie-chapman-catt-womens-suffrage-leader-and-advocate-news-photo/538789089?adppopup=true">PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>16.</strong>
Carrie Chapman Catt founded the <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2018/02/26/political-parties-and-women-voters-feb-14-1920/">League of Women Voters</a> on Feb. 14, 1920, at the NAWSA convention. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/tennessee-women-s-history.htm">Tennessee</a> became the final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment six months later.</p>
<p><strong>17.</strong>
Some 500,000 African American women could vote in states where their male counterparts were enfranchised, according to the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.1920.html">1920 U.S. Census</a>. But in the South, African American men and women remained disenfranchised through state-imposed literacy tests, poll taxes and violence. </p>
<p>African American women continued the fight for voting rights. In 1920 <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune">Mary McLeod Bethune</a> of Florida led voter registration drives while risking racist attacks. <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> of Mississippi organized African American voter registration efforts in the South in the early 1960s. The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/voting-rights-1965">Voting Rights Act</a> of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting barriers adopted in many Southern states after the Civil War. </p>
<p><strong>18.</strong>
Some 10 million women <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/century-of-votes-for-women/773D75DD40FA858F0412D8F2EE322B5C">voted in 1920</a>, a turnout rate of 36%, compared to 68% for men. Women voter turnout rates have gradually increased and exceeded male turnout rates since 1980, when 61.9% of women voted compared to 61.5% of men. <a href="https://cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/genderdiff.pdf">In 2016</a>, 63.3% of women voted compared to 59.3% of men. </p>
<p><strong>19.</strong>
In January <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/us/era-virginia-vote.html">Virginia</a> became the 38th state to ratify the <a href="https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/">Equal Rights Amendment</a>, following Nevada, in 2017; and Illinois, in 2018. The ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923, approved in 1972 and ratified by 35 out of constitutionally required 38 states by 1974. </p>
<p>The recent resurgence of women’s activism has refocused attention on gender equality issues, including the ERA, <a href="https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/why">which supporters argue is needed</a> to protect women’s rights. Although the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805647054/house-votes-to-revive-equal-rights-amendment-removing-ratification-deadline">U.S. House voted</a> in February to remove the original deadline set by Congress and pave the way for its final approval, <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/equal-rights-amendment-explained">no action is expected in the Senate this year</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dianne Bystrom is affiliated with the League of Women Voters, a non-partisan, non-profit, political organization. She currently serves as the co-president of the League of Women Voters of Nebraska (2019-2021). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen M. Kedrowski received funding from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also a member of the League of Women Voters. </span></em></p>On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, women’s historic struggles to vote continue to resonate as the country debates who should vote and how.Dianne Bystrom, Former Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, Iowa State UniversityKaren M. Kedrowski, Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1119542019-02-21T22:19:57Z2019-02-21T22:19:57ZA must-read list: The enduring contributions of African American women writers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260101/original/file-20190221-148520-ceix1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen are on this short list of enduring must-read writers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Left to right: Nobel Prize, U.S. Library of Congress, Yale archive</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In <em>Mules and Men</em> (1935), anthropologist, creative writer and Harlem Renaissance upstart Zora Neale Hurston relays the evocative folktale “Why the Sister in Black Works Hardest.” Fatigued after the work of Creation, God casts a massive bundle onto the earth. Intrigued by the mysterious object, a white Southern woman during the antebellum era asks her husband to retrieve it. <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ema01/grand-jean/hurston/chapters/Chapter4.html#3">Reluctant to tote the load himself, the master instructs a slave to fetch it</a>. </p>
<p>Soon wearied of the task, the slave then commands his wife to shoulder the burden. She does so, excited at the prospect of exploring the contents. When she opens the package, however, what leaps out at her and Black women for all posterity is none other than hard work.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260033/original/file-20190220-148523-19d3cyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260033/original/file-20190220-148523-19d3cyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260033/original/file-20190220-148523-19d3cyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260033/original/file-20190220-148523-19d3cyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260033/original/file-20190220-148523-19d3cyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260033/original/file-20190220-148523-19d3cyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260033/original/file-20190220-148523-19d3cyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ann Petry (right) was interviewed after she won a fiction award for ‘The Street.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2018600204/">All-American news 4 / All American news IV / All-American news reel no. 4/Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>African American women writers have tackled the hard work of representing a diverse spectrum of lived and imagined experiences, including and especially their own. This labour occurs against the backdrop of centuries-long struggles with racist oppression and gender-based violence, including — but not limited to — slavery’s culture of endemic rape, forced or interrupted motherhood, infanticide, concubinage, fractured families and egregious physical and mental abuse. </p>
<h2>Hard work as groundwork</h2>
<p>Renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass recalls in his 1845 slave narrative how witnessing the serial whippings of his Aunt Hester impacted him “with awful force.” He explains, <a href="http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abaufda3t.html">“it was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle.” </a> </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260041/original/file-20190220-148542-13szrjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260041/original/file-20190220-148542-13szrjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260041/original/file-20190220-148542-13szrjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260041/original/file-20190220-148542-13szrjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260041/original/file-20190220-148542-13szrjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260041/original/file-20190220-148542-13szrjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260041/original/file-20190220-148542-13szrjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These ordeals also emerge in slave narratives by women. Harriet Jacobs’ <em>Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl</em> (1861) emphasizes such travails. A target of relentless sexual harassment by her much-older master, Jacobs laments, “When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html">Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.”</a></p>
<p>Once emancipated, African American women still faced staggering impediments when pursuing educational, entrepreneurial and employment opportunities. Political participation meant restrictions on voting rights both as women and as people of colour. Racist caricatures impugned everything from a woman’s intelligence and moral capacity to <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mfsfront;c=mfs;c=mfsfront;idno=ark5583.0022.105;g=mfsg;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1">her skin color, texture of hair and body shape</a>. Stereotypes like the docile Mammy, the Tragic Mulatta, the clownish Topsy, the oversexed Jezebel, the greedy Welfare Queen, the amoral Hoodrat and the Mad Black Woman (still prevalent today) remain testaments to a history of disrespect and erasure. </p>
<p>Hurston’s tale symbolizes the enduring social struggles Black women have faced living in what feminist critic bell hooks has termed <a href="http://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf">white supremacist capitalist patriarchy</a>.</p>
<p>In addition to influential autobiographers like Maya Angelou, dramatists like Lorraine Hansberry and poets like Gwendolyn Brooks, fiction writers have consistently demonstrated how imaginative art can simultaneously inform, persuade, entertain, catalyze social change and address individual as well as collective concerns. </p>
<p>Here is a short list of pivotal texts by African American women from the past century. These writers are but a small sample of the artists and intellectuals whose output resisted the force of what contemporary feminist critic <a href="https://www.moyabailey.com/">Moya Bailey</a> has termed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395">misogynoir</a>, or the corrosive fusion of anti-Blackness and misogyny prevalent in popular culture today. These women have completed the groundwork — and hard work — of envisioning a more just, inclusive society going forward.</p>
<h2><em>Quicksand</em> (1928) and <em>Passing</em> (1929) by Nella Larsen</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260026/original/file-20190220-148513-1wjuxxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260026/original/file-20190220-148513-1wjuxxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260026/original/file-20190220-148513-1wjuxxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260026/original/file-20190220-148513-1wjuxxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260026/original/file-20190220-148513-1wjuxxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260026/original/file-20190220-148513-1wjuxxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260026/original/file-20190220-148513-1wjuxxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These novellas follow mixed-race women whose uneasy status on the colour line (including the lure of passing as white) complicates their lives in dangerous, even fatal ways. <em>Passing</em> is revolutionary for its depiction of homoerotic tension between two upper-middle-class Black women. <em>Quicksand</em> offers insight into the exoticization of African American women abroad and the contest between art and domesticity as viable avenues for a fulfilling life.</p>
<hr>
<h2><em>Their Eyes Were Watching God</em> (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260024/original/file-20190220-148536-1iwujpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260024/original/file-20190220-148536-1iwujpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260024/original/file-20190220-148536-1iwujpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260024/original/file-20190220-148536-1iwujpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260024/original/file-20190220-148536-1iwujpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260024/original/file-20190220-148536-1iwujpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260024/original/file-20190220-148536-1iwujpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This story is the lyrical account of thrice-married Janie Crawford who finds a mature vision of love and fulfillment amid incessant gossip and a difficult family history. The all-Black township of Eatonville, Fla., and the rich “muck” of the Everglades contribute to a portrait of community health, daily striving and resolute self-awareness.</p>
<hr>
<h2><em>The Street</em> (1946) by Ann Petry</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260027/original/file-20190220-148533-1h74vkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260027/original/file-20190220-148533-1h74vkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260027/original/file-20190220-148533-1h74vkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260027/original/file-20190220-148533-1h74vkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260027/original/file-20190220-148533-1h74vkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1250&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260027/original/file-20190220-148533-1h74vkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260027/original/file-20190220-148533-1h74vkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1250&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This social realist novel follows single mother Lutie Johnson as she attempts to make a life for her young son in a predatory urban space. Weathering sexism, racism, classism, poverty and intense personal frustration, Lutie attempts to resist the brutality of the environment that gives the novel its loaded name.</p>
<hr>
<h2><em>The Bluest Eye</em> (1970) by Toni Morrison</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260028/original/file-20190220-148506-nawre3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260028/original/file-20190220-148506-nawre3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260028/original/file-20190220-148506-nawre3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260028/original/file-20190220-148506-nawre3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260028/original/file-20190220-148506-nawre3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1269&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260028/original/file-20190220-148506-nawre3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260028/original/file-20190220-148506-nawre3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1269&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This book is a searing portrait of a young girl’s coming-of-age and eventual undoing in the years following the Great Depression. Tumultuous family dynamics, psychological trauma and incest, the quest for compassion and self-love, and the toxic myth of Black ugliness coalesce in this first novel by the Nobel Laureate and author of neo-slave narrative <em>Beloved</em> (1987).</p>
<hr>
<h2><em>Kindred</em> (1979) by Octavia Butler</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260029/original/file-20190220-148539-11osntp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260029/original/file-20190220-148539-11osntp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260029/original/file-20190220-148539-11osntp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260029/original/file-20190220-148539-11osntp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260029/original/file-20190220-148539-11osntp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260029/original/file-20190220-148539-11osntp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260029/original/file-20190220-148539-11osntp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oscillating between the 1970s and the early 19th century, this science fiction odyssey (re)connects a contemporary Black woman writer and her white husband with her ancestors on a Maryland plantation. The novel is buoyed up by the dramatic tension of time travel and the juxtaposition of the pre-civil War <a href="https://www.historynet.com/antebellum-period">Antebellum-era</a> with Civil Rights-era racial attitudes, including those about interracial love and allyship.</p>
<hr>
<h2><em>The Women of Brewster Place</em> (1982) by Gloria Naylor</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260030/original/file-20190220-148530-1244zgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260030/original/file-20190220-148530-1244zgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260030/original/file-20190220-148530-1244zgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260030/original/file-20190220-148530-1244zgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260030/original/file-20190220-148530-1244zgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260030/original/file-20190220-148530-1244zgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260030/original/file-20190220-148530-1244zgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Structured like a narrative quilt, these interconnected experiences of seven women span different generations, professions, class backgrounds and understandings of their place in the world. The eroded apartment complex that links them is the backdrop for unbearable pain as well as the promise of transformation and reconciliation.</p>
<hr>
<h2><em>The Color Purple</em> (1982) by Alice Walker</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260031/original/file-20190220-148545-7dl5qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260031/original/file-20190220-148545-7dl5qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260031/original/file-20190220-148545-7dl5qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260031/original/file-20190220-148545-7dl5qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260031/original/file-20190220-148545-7dl5qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260031/original/file-20190220-148545-7dl5qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260031/original/file-20190220-148545-7dl5qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A tale of two sisters, Celie and Nettie, this novel constellates their love and longing via letters and imagined conversations across the Atlantic. Unsparing in its critique of domestic violence and toxic masculinity, yet tender in its treatment of various human weaknesses, the novel underscores Black women’s need for self-regard and mutual care. Not only are these acts revolutionary, but they also offer a glimpse of the divine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111954/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy Kang has received grant funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs program. </span></em></p>Here is a small list of pivotal texts by African American women from the past century.Nancy Kang, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Transnational Feminisms and Gender-Based Violence, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/990122018-07-05T10:37:51Z2018-07-05T10:37:51ZAnti-slavery heroes Charles Langston and Simeon Bushnell deserve pardons too, President Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225808/original/file-20180702-116139-32tur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Oberlin rescuers, with Simeon Bushnell and Charles Langston 9th and 12th from the left</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump has exercised the pardon power more aggressively and creatively than most of his predecessors, granting pardons to political supporters such as <a href="https://www.justice.gov/pardon/file/993586">Joe Arpaio</a> and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/pardon/page/file/1067776/download">Dinesh D’Souza</a>, and a posthumous pardon to <a href="https://www.justice.gov/pardon/page/file/1066386/download">Jack Johnson</a>, the first black heavyweight champion, who was convicted on a racially fraught charge of violating the Mann Act. </p>
<p>Trump has mused about pardoning former Illinois Gov. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rod-blagojevich-martha-stewart-pardons-considered-by-trump/">Rod Blagojevich</a>, as well as Robert Mueller’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/08/politics/trump-michael-cohen-paul-manafort/index.html">probe targets</a> Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, and possibly even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-he-has-absolute-right-to-pardon-himself-of-federal-crimes-but-denies-any-wrongdoing/2018/06/04/3d78348c-67dd-11e8-bea7-c8eb28bc52b1_story.html?utm_term=.43270e977aa0">himself</a>. And it is unlikely that he is done. The president has asked NFL players <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/eagles/president-donald-trump-asks-nfl-players-pardon-recommendations">to suggest</a> other possible pardon recipients who have been “unfairly treated by the justice system.” </p>
<p>I may not be a member of the NFL, but I do have a recommendation of my own.</p>
<h2>A pardonable offense</h2>
<p>In the spring of 1859, Charles Langston and Simeon Bushnell were convicted in a Cleveland federal court of violating the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slave hunters to “recapture” their human quarry <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/fugitive.asp">in the northern states.</a>. Their crime was participating in the <a href="http://www2.oberlin.edu/archive/wellington_rescue/rescue.html">rescue of John Price</a>, a runaway from Kentucky who had been apprehended by slave hunters on the outskirts of Oberlin, Ohio. </p>
<p>The event, which drew international attention, was known as the <a href="http://www2.oberlin.edu/archive/wellington_rescue/rescue.html">Oberlin-Wellington Rescue</a>. As I explain in my book, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047044">“Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial,”</a> it was one of the many small acts of resistance that eventually led to the Civil War, and thus to emancipation.</p>
<p>That Charles Langston was involved in the rescue should not have surprised anyone.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/langston-charles-henry-1817-1892">Langston was born in Virginia in 1818</a>, the son of white plantation owner and Revolutionary War veteran Ralph Quarles. His mother was an enslaved woman named Lucy Langston. Ralph and Lucy lived openly together and might even have married if Virginia law had allowed it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225945/original/file-20180703-116117-1dgsgml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225945/original/file-20180703-116117-1dgsgml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225945/original/file-20180703-116117-1dgsgml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225945/original/file-20180703-116117-1dgsgml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225945/original/file-20180703-116117-1dgsgml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225945/original/file-20180703-116117-1dgsgml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225945/original/file-20180703-116117-1dgsgml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fugitive slave law political cartoon, 1850.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quarles recognized the couple’s children as his own, providing them with private tutors and freeing them, along with their mother, in his lifetime. Quarles left his entire estate to his children with Lucy, and arranged for them to move to Ohio at his death, so that they could live <a href="http://slavenorth.com/ohio.htm">in a free state</a>.</p>
<p>Langston grew to adulthood in Ohio, graduating from Oberlin College and embarking on a successful career as a teacher and journalist, while becoming a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SWusBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA316&lpg=PA316&dq=charles+langston+abolitionist&source=bl&ots=kQnzZ55k4M&sig=Lujn8n6Ut7SZwOaXFUUaeTOPyMA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI6ImQ7PnbAhVH74MKHdCgCqU4ChDoAQhZMBA#v=onepage&q=charles%20langston%20abolitionist&f=false">leader in the abolitionist movement</a>. In 1853, he was elected executive secretary of the <a href="http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Ohio_Anti-Slavery_Society">Ohio Anti-Slavery Society</a> – a position previously reserved for white men. </p>
<p>Later that year he served as a delegate to the <a href="http://coloredconventions.org/items/show/458">National Black Convention in Rochester, New York</a>, where he befriended <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frederick-douglass/">Frederick Douglass</a>. Like Douglass, Langston rejected the pacifism of many white abolitionists. He openly carried a pistol on his lecture tours, daring racists to challenge him.</p>
<h2>A kidnapping and a rescue</h2>
<p>On September 13, 1858, <a href="http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/Oberlin-Wellington_Rescue/rescuemain2.htm">John Price, a farm laborer in his mid-20s, was kidnapped</a> on a country road in northern Ohio. A posse of slave hunters led by a Kentuckian named Anderson Jennings hustled him into a wagon and headed for nearby Wellington, where they planned to take the next train south. Their first stop would have been Columbus, where they expected to obtain a “certificate of removal” from a cooperative fugitive slave commissioner, authorizing them to return Price to slavery in Kentucky. </p>
<p>Fortunately, the abduction was witnessed by an Oberlin <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1021&context=facultyworkingpapers">student named Ansel Lyman</a>, who raced back to town and raised the alarm.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/09/oberlin_ohio_s_community_challenge_to_the_fugitive_slave_law_the_abolitionist.html">Hundreds of Oberliners</a>, both black and white, quickly set off for Wellington, where they surrounded the kidnappers, who were holding their prisoner in a hotel near the railroad depot.</p>
<p>Langston attempted to negotiate with Jennings, explaining that he had no chance of reaching the train station. The slave hunter was intransigent, relying on a rumor that federal troops had been summoned to break up the mob. Langston <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1021&context=facultyworkingpapers">warned the Kentuckian</a> that the Oberliners would never allow Price to be returned to slavery and ended the negotiation. </p>
<p>As the crowd became more agitated, two groups of <a href="http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Oberlin-Wellington_Rescue_Case">Oberlin students rushed the hotel</a>, knocked down Jennings and his men, <a href="http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/Oberlin-Wellington_Rescue/the_rescuers.htm">and carried Price</a> to a waiting wagon – driven by young Simeon Bushnell – that bore him triumphantly to Oberlin.</p>
<h2>Appealing to a higher law</h2>
<p>Such open defiance was more than the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/james-buchanan-why-is-he-considered-americas-worst-president/">pro-slavery Buchanan administration</a> could tolerate. <a href="http://www.ohiohistoryhost.org/ohiomemory/archives/2457">Indictments were issued against Langston and Bushnell</a>, along with <a href="http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/Oberlin-Wellington_Rescue/trial_account.htm">35 others who had participated</a> in the rescue to varying degrees, for violating the Fugitive Slave Act.</p>
<p>Langston and Bushnell were the first two defendants to face trial in the Cleveland federal court. The prosecutor referred to the defendants as <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/llst.005/?sp=52&st=text">“outraging the law of the land”</a> and threatening to “tear down and annihilate the government of these United States.” The defense boldly replied that “slavery is like a canker” that must give way to “Higher Law.” The jury members, who had been hand-selected for their approval of the Fugitive Slave Act, did not take long to return the predictable convictions.</p>
<p>Bushnell, who was a white bookstore clerk, stood mute at sentencing. Langston, however, took full advantage of the platform and <a href="http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/Oberlin-Wellington_Rescue/c._langston_speech.htm">spoke to the nation</a>. </p>
<p>He condemned the slave hunters as “lying hidden and skulking about” and he praised the fugitives “who had become free … by the exercise of their own God-given powers – by escaping from the plantations of their masters.” </p>
<p>Rebuking the court itself for racism, he expressed no contrition and virtually promised to continue rescuing fugitives. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225933/original/file-20180703-116114-hjqvui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225933/original/file-20180703-116114-hjqvui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225933/original/file-20180703-116114-hjqvui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225933/original/file-20180703-116114-hjqvui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225933/original/file-20180703-116114-hjqvui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225933/original/file-20180703-116114-hjqvui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225933/original/file-20180703-116114-hjqvui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A welcome awaited the rescuers, including Bushnell and Langston.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oberlin College</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“If ever a man is seized near me, and is about to be carried South,” he said, “I stand here to say that I will do all I can, for any man thus seized and held.”</p>
<p>The judge was moved by Langston’s eloquence, which led him to impose a less-than-maximum jail sentence and fine. Even more impressed was John Brown, who paid close attention to the trial, and later obtained <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nkVxNVvex-sC&pg=PA619&lpg=PA619&dq=John+Brown,+Langston+two+black+Oberliners+for+the+raid+on+Harpers+Ferry.&source=bl&ots=awJhIBlE05&sig=7ETimhKv3-0RXfuo6dUfenCtbZw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpur2f2fnbAhUH5IMKHQRpAcAQ6AEIjAEwEg#v=onepage&q=John%20Brown%2C%20Langston%20two%20black%20Oberliners%20for%20the%20raid%20on%20Harpers%20Ferry.&f=false">Langston’s assistance</a> recruiting two black Oberliners for the raid on Harpers Ferry.</p>
<p>John Price was spirited to Canada by another anti-slavery activist, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-colored-hero-of-harpers-ferry/036DAF005AD60E0C1060C9CAFEBDFD45">John Anthony Copeland</a>, where he was reported by Langston’s brother, John Mercer Langston, to repose “under his own vine and fig tree, with no one to make him afraid.” </p>
<p>Little is known of Simeon Bushnell’s later life, but Charles Langston became the patriarch of a prominent African-American family. His younger brother, <a href="http://history.house.gov/People/Detail?id=16682">John Mercer Langston</a>, was the first dean of Howard Law School, was appointed U.S. ambassador to Haiti, and was elected to a term in Congress from Virginia. Charles’s grandson, as some readers may have intuited, was the <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/langston-charles-henry-1817-1892">poet and playwright Langston Hughes</a>.</p>
<p>Charles Langston and Simeon Bushnell were convicted for participating in a noble act than should never have been a crime. Few Americans have been more “unfairly treated by the justice system,” or are more deserving of a posthumous pardon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99012/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Lubet does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two men were convicted in 1859 of violating the Fugitive Slave Act. They had rescued a runaway slave from slave hunters in Ohio, one of the small acts of resistance that led to the Civil War.Steven Lubet, Williams Memorial Professor of Law, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/979812018-06-19T10:25:28Z2018-06-19T10:25:28ZWhat it means to be a Christian in America today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223374/original/file-20180615-85830-4j5aa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young people hold hands for a prayer during a gathering at sunset outside the Christian Fellowship Church in Benton, Kentucky.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/David Goldman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump spoke recently to the <a href="https://www.sba-list.org/gala">Campaign for Life Gala</a>, an annual Washington gathering of activists opposed to abortion. There he declared that Americans depend upon divine protection to ensure that “our nation will thrive and our people will prosper.” As long as we “trust in our God,” <a href="https://www.sba-list.org/newsroom/news/fox-news-trump-at-pro-life-gala-urges-supporters-vote-for-life">Trump said</a>, “then we will never, ever fail.” </p>
<p>The speech was recent, but the sentiments were not. Presidents have been uttering similar sentiments for <a href="http://www.nationaldayofprayer.org/history_of_prayer_in_america">decades</a>. </p>
<p>This may seem strange in a nation whose Constitution <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/estabinto.htm">declares</a> that the government will “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
But in fact, from my perspective as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KT0k4-8AAAAJ&hl=en">author</a> of the new book “<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737631">Christian: The Politics of a Word in America</a>,” these presidential invocations of religion reflect the fact that Americans have debated what it means to be religious in politics throughout American history.</p>
<p>Because a wide majority of Americans have claimed some form of Christian belief, these debates focused on Christianity. And they continue today.</p>
<h2>Many Christianities</h2>
<p>From the very beginning of European settlement in the United States, a wide range of Christian faiths appeared in America. Roman Catholics, Baptists and Methodists <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ema95/finseth/evangel.html">saw their numbers rise</a> in the early 19th century. By the 20th century, Americans <a href="http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/NRM.htm">were claiming</a> a variety of religious identities. They joined the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-russia-is-afraid-of-jehovahs-witnesses-77077">Jehovah’s Witnesses</a>, Mormonism, black Pentecostal churches and Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, among dozens of others. </p>
<p>At the same time, however, the Constitution forbade the federal government from instituting a state church. By the 1830s, <a href="http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-29">each state in the Union had also abolished</a> state-sponsored churches.</p>
<p>This meant all these new faiths competed for membership, attention and prominence in American culture. Indeed, it is this sense of religious competition that has driven religious growth in the United States. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, began his church because, <a href="https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1912&context=etd">he felt</a> that “<a href="http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/2">there</a> was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament.” </p>
<p>His solution to the conundrum encapsulates the energies of American Christianity. A visionary experience led him to conclude that no Christian church in the United States possessed the true gospel – and so the answer was to found a new one. By the time of his death 14 years after he had founded the church, <a href="https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3025&context=byusq">he had attracted some 12,000</a> followers.</p>
<p>Other American religious innovators followed a similar path. They contributed new ideas, new sects and new ways of being Christian. Often these new Christianities had social and political implications. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of Christian Science church founder Mary Baker Eddy, at the Longyear Museum, in Brookline, Mass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Julia Malakie</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, the escaped slave Frederick Douglass <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-february/frederick-douglass-at-200-remembering-his-radical-christian.html">denounced</a> white slave-holding Christians as hypocrites and became a preacher for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a branch of Methodism founded by African-Americans. Mary Baker Eddy <a href="https://www.christianscience.com/what-is-christian-science/mary-baker-eddy">despaired</a> that no Christian church she could find sufficiently embraced the doctrine of faith healing, and so she founded Christian Science.</p>
<p>In other words, Christianity multiplied into Christianities.</p>
<h2>Multiple beliefs</h2>
<p>There are as many variants of Christianity in the United States as there are ways of believing that Christianity is foundational to American politics. </p>
<p>For instance, some Protestants argue that their faith’s emphasis on the individual means that <a href="https://mises.org/library/christianitys-free-market-tradition">Christianity supports the free market</a>. However, Roman Catholics, who emphasize community and institution, have long been much more <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/propernomenclature/catholic-worker-inspirations-dorothy-day-on-capitalism-part-1/">skeptical</a> of capitalism. </p>
<p>Such disputes have often <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/why-paul-ryan-fired-the-house-chaplain.html">marked</a> the national debate about what government policies might most or least express Christian principles. </p>
<p>During the black freedom movement, when African-Americans protested segregation and voting restrictions, black religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-65/martin-luther-king-jr.html">maintained</a> that Christian teaching mandated political equality for people of all races. On the other hand, some white Christian leaders <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2014/07/09/sam-bowers-mississippi-burning-christian-identity/12394409/">argued</a> that Christianity taught that certain people were morally inferior to others and therefore segregation was desirable.</p>
<p>To American Christians, who still make up <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/">more than</a> two-thirds of the nation’s population, beliefs like these are fundamental to understanding how society should be organized. For many believers, a religion is <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/ReligiousStudies/chernus/4820-Nationalism/Readings/SUMMARYOFPETERBERGER.htm">more</a> than simply a moral code; it is a way of explaining the nature of the universe. It thus governs both how they think politics should work and what policies should be enacted. </p>
<h2>Christians and democracy</h2>
<p>White American Protestants have frequently <a href="https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/tocqueville-christianity-and-american-democracy">claimed</a> that American democracy derives from Protestant Christianity. They associate Protestantism’s emphasis on salvation through individual faith and the individual encounter with God with individual liberty in the political sphere. </p>
<p>They <a href="http://www.ebenezeroldhill.org.uk/articles/Christianity%20and%20Democracy.pdf">link</a>
the rise of democracy in Europe and the United States with the Protestant Reformation. For them, democracy and Christianity are inseparable from American roots in European history. </p>
<p>This assumption that Christianity is essential for democracy was <a href="https://www.politicalresearch.org/2018/04/06/christian-nationalism-and-donald-trump/">behind</a> white evangelicals’ support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. </p>
<p>Trump was widely <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/01/18/463528847/citing-two-corinthians-trump-struggles-to-make-the-sale-to-evangelicals">criticized</a> for his bungling of Christian scripture and his evident lack of adherence to Christian norms and behavior in his private life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Donald Trump, as he speaks during the Celebrate Freedom event at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, on July 1, 2017. Members of the First Baptist Dallas Church Choir are seated behind him.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, at the same time, Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/5/16796892/trump-cyrus-christian-right-bible-cbn-evangelical-propaganda">assured</a> one group of anxious American Christians that he understood their fears. White American Protestant evangelicals, who believed that American democracy and their form of Christianity were linked, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/why-evangelicals-still-support-trump/">voted</a> for Trump. They <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/12/rep-steve-king-warns-that-our-civilization-cant-be-restored-with-somebody-elses-babies/?utm_term=.cac03e018dd1">feared</a> that immigration was destroying America’s European heritage, and that as white Protestantism waned, democracy itself would collapse.</p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/news/articles/a-christian-case-against-donald-trump.aspx">many</a> who have claimed that Donald Trump does not understand Christianity. I would argue he understands the <a href="https://wallbuilders.com/america-christian-nation/">turbulence</a> and <a href="https://www.christianfreedom.org/the-christian-faith-is-under-siege/">chaos</a> of the American Christian marketplace all too well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Bowman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Americans have debated what it means to be Christian in politics throughout their history. Those debates continue today.Matthew Bowman, Associate Professor of History, Henderson State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/935432018-03-28T22:56:08Z2018-03-28T22:56:08Z‘Black Panther’ villain can teach us about revolutionary history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212259/original/file-20180327-109204-1po0wbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Killmonger, the evil villain of 'Black Panther,' has plans of global insurgencies to liberate Black people. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Marvel/Disney)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Black Panther’s</em> Erik Killmonger is the quintessential super-villain. His character fulfils the requirements of the typical superhero movie with good guys versus bad ones and his demise at the end is inevitable.</p>
<p>How could we possibly find anything positive about him? Actually, there is much more to his character than just evil. In fact, I think his character has a lot to teach us.</p>
<p>Many critics have highlighted <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/03/01/forget-the-abusive-killmonger-wakandas-women-are-black-panthers-true-black-liberators/?utm_term=.e892661f71dc">his killings</a>, <a href="https://lasentinel.net/wishing-for-wakanda-marooned-in-america-movies-and-matters-of-reflection-and-resistance.html">his CIA connection</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/02/black-panther-erik-killmonger/553805/">his imperialist power lust</a>. They focus on his bloody trail of slaughter and his destruction of the magical flowers that energize the spirit of Wakanda. </p>
<p>But consider his hate both for the oppressors of Black people and for the pretentious isolationism of Wakanda that cared nothing about Blacks elsewhere, and his plans of global insurgencies to liberate Black people.</p>
<p>While condemnation of Killmonger is to be expected, it’s unfortunate if it occludes his historical significance. Killmonger is larger, more complex, and deserving of more nuanced appraisal. His character reflects the anger, frustrations, hopes, yearnings and aspirations of young and old African-Americans today. </p>
<p>Killmonger’s character represents the dialectical struggles - the complex history of debates and raucous disagreements among African American leaders - over their conflicting strategies and methods to win freedom from slavery, colonialism, racism and oppression. </p>
<h2>Black liberation struggles</h2>
<p>Killmonger shares a central and enduring goal with many previous Black leaders; the dream of freedom for his people and of righting injustices against them. </p>
<p>Consider abolitionist <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2931.html">David Walker</a>, who in 1830, against the prevailing gradualism of the abolitionist movement, <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html">circulated an appeal</a> for Blacks to resist their oppressors with violence. He argued that kidnappers and murderers of Black people were enemies of God whose death when being resisted was justified. </p>
<p>In an argument similar to Walker’s, abolitionist and minister Henry Highland Garnet in 1843 informed his fellow Blacks how sinful it was for them to submit to degradation and oppression, to “<a href="https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=etas">a state of slavery where you cannot obey the commandments of the Sovereign of the universe</a>.” Calling for a violent rebellion, he contended it was the Blacks’ “solemn and imperative duty to use every means both, moral, intellectual, and physical, that promises success.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ida B. Wells was a journalist who lead the first anti-lynching campaign in the United States. In 1892, she advocated that Black families own rifles to defend themselves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?one=apf1-08637.xml">(University of Chicago Photographic Archive, (apf1-08637), Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Frederick Douglass opposed this view and at the <a href="http://coloredconventions.org/files/original/73369fab9bb261275b57276ccbdbded2.pdf">1843 National Convention of Colored Citizens narrowly won the majority vote against it</a>. Soon though, Douglass shifted his position to favour the use of direct action against slavery while maintaining his belief in the unity of the United States.</p>
<p>Frustrated by government abdication of its duty to protect Blacks from the Jim Crow lynchings, the famous Ida B. Wells urged that “…<a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3614">a rifle should have a place of honour in every Black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give</a>.” </p>
<h2>Killmonger reflects his environment</h2>
<p>As a special op in the U.S. army, Killmonger, née N'Jadaka (but also known as Erik Stevens), mastered the use of the rifle. There is a significant revolutionary symbolism to all this. <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/ida-b-wells-9527635">Ida B. Wells</a> applauded Black men who avoided being lynched because they armed themselves with the Winchester rifle. </p>
<p>Killmonger’s adoption of the violent revolutionary method also parallels revolutionary philosopher and Pan-Africanist <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=BdVRpzeA47YC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">Frantz Fanon.</a> Both of their experiences <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/fanon/#H1">participating as soldiers in violent national liberation struggles</a> shaped their dispositions to consider violence instrumental to physical and psychological liberation. </p>
<p>Erik Stevens grew up an orphan, experienced tough inner-city teen life and suffered racism and oppression. He was also roiled by what he felt was the needlessness of Blacks’ sufferings as he was aware of the technologically advanced Black Wakanda and their isolationist policy of not intervening to liberate other Blacks. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Killmonger’s ideas reflect historical debates around Black liberation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Marvel/Disney)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Killmonger responds to a history which tyrannized him and left him with no hope of remedy. His choice of method reflects his environment and his association with working class and unemployed Black people.</p>
<p>Like Marcus Garvey, the radical Black nationalist and pan-Africanist leader of UNIA, a back-to-Africa movement, Killmonger envisions an African empire led by technologically advanced Wakanda that straddles the Atlantic and that sends out liberation squads to turn the table of hegemony on the powers that oppress the Blacks. </p>
<p>Garvey, who pioneered this inverted hegemony idea, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=QmMIAzoVt80C&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=marcus+garvey+is,+without+doubt,+the+most+dangerous+enemy+of+the+Negro&source=bl&ots=sbQ5j-cHvA&sig=brp76N3OCz6D6_XQGp4VkN1rFPo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik2Znb7IzaAhXH6oMKHUtkAGIQ6AEIMjAC#v=onepage&q=marcus%20garvey%20is%2C%20without%20doubt%2C%20the%20most%20dangerous%20enemy%20of%20the%20Negro&f=false">was vilified as a lunatic and dangerous by the popular Black leader, W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Garvey was ahead of other Black leaders of his time in rousing the popular masses, gaining their allegiance and devising cross-continental structures and ventures to help in his audacious plans to create an economically self-sufficient and militarily powerful Black empire to liberate all Blacks.</p>
<p>We should also note that Killmonger operated only within a delimited historical moment. He is not absolute. His choice of method cannot be the absolute solution either. </p>
<h2>Remember Malcolm X and MLK</h2>
<p>Neither Malcolm X nor Martin Luther King Jr. and their choices of method for liberation achieved that status either. Indeed, both contradictorily held aspects of the other’s strategy. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/14/martin-luther-king-jr-met-malcolm-x-just-once-the-photo-still-haunts-us-with-what-was-lost/?utm_term=.27873cb6c134">Malcolm X came around to modify his strategy. He eventually accepted the unity of all oppressed across colour lines. Before his death, he manifested the possibility that hate and love could follow each other serially as underpinnings for liberation</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During months of anti-segregation campaigns in Albany, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested by Albany’s chief of police, Laurie Pritchett, after praying at City Hall in July 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rev. King, while maintaining his faith in “militant, powerful, massive, non-violence,” said that he would not condemn civil right riots. King said <a href="http://www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/mlk-gp-speech.pdf">“a riot is the language of the unheard” and that “America …has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.</a>” Even Mohandas K. Gandhi was emphatic that those unable to protect themselves by facing death with non-violence “<a href="https://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm">may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor.</a>” </p>
<p>Douglass before them also changed his position from advocating moral suasion to a more robust political activism and violent resistance to preserve freedom won by fugitive enslaved.</p>
<p>Thus, Killmonger’s character addresses the problem of Black liberation. His presence challenges the power of popular media and the hegemonic ruling opinion to dictate the acceptable methods to obtain Black freedom. The idea of Killmonger highlights the power of a global ethos to legitimate or delegitimate these choices.</p>
<p>The shallow development of Killmonger’s character in the movie subverts the universal scope of his liberation plans as well as his character’s ability to bring conversations of historical Black liberation figures together.</p>
<p>Black leaders and their revolutionary strategies like those of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, South Africa’s ANC and PAC, Mandela’s <em>Mkhonto we Sizwe</em>, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. all accomplished transformations in their societies. Their methods, conflicting and sometimes contradictory, provided answers over a stretch of time to different aspects of the big problem of liberation. </p>
<p>Each method fulfilled its role at auspicious moments that supported its popularity among significant sections of the oppressed Blacks. The simultaneous relevance and application of these conflicting methods in those struggles is evidence that no single method was sufficient for the purpose. </p>
<p>There has always been a Killmonger in the history of Black liberation struggles, and while history may not repeat itself, history often rhymes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>History Department
University of Guelph, Guelph, On. Canada.
I have in the past received research funding from Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p>The lead villain of Black Panther is a complex character who represents years of conflicting debates among African American leaders about how to achieve Black liberation.Femi Kolapo, Associate Professor, African History, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/908862018-02-21T11:17:47Z2018-02-21T11:17:47ZFrederick Douglass: the ex-slave and transatlantic celebrity who found freedom in Newcastle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207137/original/file-20180220-116346-vid04e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A photograph of Frederick Douglass, African American abolitionist, writer and statesman, taken in the 1870s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/frederick-douglass-18181895-african-americam-abolitionist-238058488?src=Zi_L4wsrGAwVmPHpZxrzTw-1-1">Shutterstock/By Everett Historical</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When President Donald Trump spoke at a breakfast to launch black history month last year, he gave the impression that he thought Frederick Douglass – the most eminent African American leader of the mid 19th-century – was still alive. Douglass, Trump explained, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv_fB3LpVck">has done an amazing job</a>”. </p>
<p>The Frederick Douglass Foundation <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/more-and-more-about-frederick-douglass_us_5892855fe4b01a7d8e512b13?%22">gently mocked</a> the president’s gaffe, explaining how Douglass’s contemporary legacy was so immense that it was perfectly legitimate to talk about him in the present tense. The foundation had a point. Douglass’s accomplishments are legion. But the story of how his travels to northeast England led to his ultimate emancipation is less well known.</p>
<p>Born in Cordova, Maryland, 200 years ago, Douglass escaped slavery in 1838 and became a tireless campaigner for black emancipation and racial justice, as well as advocating equal rights for women, Native Americans and immigrants. He was a passionate supporter of the <a href="https://glc.yale.edu/temperance-and-anti-slavery-address-delivered-paisley-scotland-march-30-1846">Temperance movement</a>, set up a crusading newspaper, The North Star, and battled to end segregation in public schooling.</p>
<p>After the Civil War, Douglass continued his efforts to secure equality of opportunity and constitutional protections for newly freed African Americans and even served as minister to Haiti under president Benjamin Harrison. In 1872, without his consent, Douglass became the first African American nominated for US vice president as the running mate to <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/victoria-woodhull-9536447">Victoria Woodhull</a> of the Equal Rights Party. He even received one vote at the Republican National Convention for the office of president in 1888.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207138/original/file-20180220-116333-1fpdo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207138/original/file-20180220-116333-1fpdo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207138/original/file-20180220-116333-1fpdo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207138/original/file-20180220-116333-1fpdo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207138/original/file-20180220-116333-1fpdo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207138/original/file-20180220-116333-1fpdo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207138/original/file-20180220-116333-1fpdo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A stamp printed in the US in 1973 shows Frederick Douglass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/united-states-america-circa-1973-stamp-93216166?src=Zi_L4wsrGAwVmPHpZxrzTw-1-6">Shutterstock/Neftali</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Orator, writer and thinker</h2>
<p>Douglass was an inspirational orator, an elegant writer and a sophisticated, progressive social thinker. He also had a remarkable capacity for self-promotion. In 1841, he sat for his first photographic portrait and went on to become the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/15/douglass/?utm_term=.d58df5db4d69">most photographed American of the 19th century</a>. He appreciated how this new and rapidly evolving medium would allow him to create his own dignified public image and challenge crude racist stereotypes of African Americans. </p>
<p>The 160 images made of Douglass during his lifetime, together with a number of oil paintings, his speaking tours and the publication of several versions of his <a href="http://dcc.newberry.org/items/narrative-of-the-life-of-frederick-douglass-an-american-slave--2">life story</a> kept him in the public eye. Since his death in 1895, Douglass has appeared on <a href="https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/us-postal-service-honors-frederick-douglass-with-his-own-stamp-february-14-1967/">US postage stamps</a> and coins. He has been portrayed – with varying degrees of fidelity to the facts of his life – in a host of novels, <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/frederick-douglass">poems</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki7gxLbhXkU">songs</a>, <a href="http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/1091312/Glory-Movie-Clip-Colored-Soldiers.html">films</a>, TV series and documentaries. He features on at least 110 murals and numerous other <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/art/other-statues/frederick-douglass">public monuments</a>.</p>
<p>Douglass’s celebrity was truly international. He visited Britain and Ireland on three separate occasions. Everywhere he went, he made an impact. In Ireland, Douglass’s commitment to Irish Home Rule is commemorated in the Solidarity Wall mural on <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Douglass_mural_on_the_%27Solidarity_Wall%27,_Belfast.jpg">Belfast’s Falls Road</a>. His time in Ireland is also the inspiration for Colum McCann’s 2013 novel TransAtlantic.</p>
<h2>Douglass, Newcastle and freedom</h2>
<p>On February 26, 2018, a plaque will be unveiled in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, marking perhaps the most significant of all Douglass’s transatlantic connections. It celebrates a relationship that literally changed Douglass’s life. </p>
<p>Douglass first came to Tyneside in 1846 and, over the course of several visits, <a href="http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/">spoke in the region on at least 16 separate occasions</a>. In Newcastle, the charismatic ex-slave met and formed a close bond with the Richardson family: Henry, his wife Anna and sister Ellen. The Richardsons were Quakers, abolitionists, and involved in peace activism and campaigns to expand the suffrage, including votes and other rights for women.</p>
<p>Douglass was struck by the peculiar intensity of Tyneside’s anti-slavery passions. In late December 1846, he told a cheering crowd of his pleasure at seeing “so large an audience assembled for so noble a cause” and of his joy “that Newcastle had a heart that could feel for three millions of oppressed slaves in the United States”. </p>
<p>Douglass had good reason to appreciate this local support. Over the previous few months, the Richardsons had been raising money to formally purchase Douglass’s freedom. On December 12, 1846, Hugh Auld, brother of Thomas Auld, who was Douglass’s nominal US master, registered the bill of manumission that officially made Douglass a free man.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207140/original/file-20180220-116360-pu8vzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207140/original/file-20180220-116360-pu8vzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207140/original/file-20180220-116360-pu8vzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207140/original/file-20180220-116360-pu8vzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207140/original/file-20180220-116360-pu8vzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207140/original/file-20180220-116360-pu8vzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207140/original/file-20180220-116360-pu8vzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frederick Douglass statue in Harlem, New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-january-6-2013-frederick-124101484?src=Zi_L4wsrGAwVmPHpZxrzTw-1-2">Shutterstock/stockelements</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The decision to buy Douglass’s freedom was not without its critics. Some felt that the purchase legitimised the idea that any human being could ever be owned by another human being, to be bought and sold like any other item of property. Douglass himself was more pragmatic. When he visited the region for the final time in 1886, he announced that he did so primarily to meet again the “two ladies who were mainly instrumental in giving me the chance of devoting my life to the cause of freedom”. He added:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These were Ellen and Anna Richardson, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne … without any suggestion from me they … bought me out of slavery, secured a bill of sale of my body, made a present of myself to myself and thus enabled me to return to the United States and resume my work for the emancipation of the slaves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The plaque to Douglass and the Richardsons opens up a rich, largely hidden, history of racial diversity in a place traditionally thought of as one of the “whitest” sections of the United Kingdom. </p>
<p>Douglass, like <a href="http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/">Olaudah Equiano</a> before him and <a href="https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/history/earl-grey-martin-luther-king-13814120">Martin Luther King</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHZZVYS0qc">Muhammad Ali</a> a century later, came to Tyneside and found there a remarkably warm welcome. </p>
<p>Of course, ugly, sometimes violent expressions of racial, ethnic and religious intolerance have occasionally punctuated the region’s history. Nevertheless, Douglass’s story and the ties he forged with the Richardsons and other local “people of goodwill” reflect the region’s progressive political traditions. As Douglass put it, in a quote that will adorn the Newcastle plaque: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I will unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90886/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Ward does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s 200 years since the legendary African American abolitionist and ex-slave Frederick Douglass crossed the Atlantic and found freedom in northeast England.Brian Ward, Professor in American Studies, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/907392018-02-12T11:40:25Z2018-02-12T11:40:25ZMark Twain’s adventures in love: How a rough-edged aspiring author courted a beautiful heiress<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205737/original/file-20180209-51694-inx5sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The wife and daughters of Mark Twain.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Boys'_Life_of_Mark_Twain_024.jpg">Albert Bigelow Paine</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the great courtships in American history is the wooing of an unenthusiastic 22-year-old Olivia Langdon by a completely smitten 32-year-old Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.</p>
<p>As I first learned while visiting Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri in preparation for teaching “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm">Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</a>,” the contrasts between the two were indeed stark, and the prospects for their eventual union exceedingly poor. Olivia Langdon, known as Livy, was a thoroughly proper easterner, while Sam was a rugged man of the West. Livy came from a family that was rich and well-educated, while Sam had grown up poor and left school at age 12. She was thoroughly pious, while he was a man who knew how to smoke, drink and swear. </p>
<p>On Valentine’s Day, their story is a reminder of the true meaning of love. Despite many challenges, once united, they never gave up on each other and enjoyed a fulfilling 34 years of marriage.</p>
<h2>The young Olivia</h2>
<p><a href="http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/applebaum/olivia.html">Olivia Langdon</a> was born in 1845 in Elmira, New York to a wealthy coal merchant. Her father, Jervis Langdon, was deeply religious but also highly progressive: He supported Elmira College, which had been founded in 1855 as one of <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Feminism_s_Founding_Fathers.html?id=xznaDAAAQBAJ">the first in the U.S.</a> to grant bachelor’s degrees to women. He was also an ardent abolitionist who served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, which offered shelter and aid to escaped slaves from the South. He even offered sanctuary to a fugitive <a href="https://www.biographyonline.net/writers/frederick-douglass.html">Frederick Douglass</a>, one of America’s greatest abolitionists, who became a lifelong friend.</p>
<p>Her mother, also Olivia, was active in many civic organizations and served as a strong advocate for her children’s education. The younger Olivia suffered from a delicate constitution her whole life. As a teenager she was bedridden for two years after a fall on the ice.</p>
<h2>Mark Twain and love at first sight</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19987">Born in 1835</a> and raised on the Mississippi River in Hannibal, the young Samuel Clemens worked as a typesetter, a riverboat pilot, a miner and a writer. His first national literary success came in 1865 with “<a href="http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/price/frog.htm">The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County</a>,” a story about a frog and a man who would bet on anything.</p>
<p>He soon moved into travel writing, filing dispatches from Hawaii (then the Sandwich Islands) before embarking in 1867 for Europe and the Middle East aboard the steamship Quaker City. Clemens would later cobble together his dispatches from the voyage into a book that became a 19th-century bestseller, “<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3176">The Innocents Abroad.</a>” </p>
<p>It was aboard the Quaker City that Clemens first laid eyes on a photograph of Livy. Her younger brother, Charles, who would later add to his father’s coal fortune, befriended Clemens on the voyage and showed him a picture of his sister. Clemens later claimed that it was love at first sight.</p>
<h2>Wooing the ‘dearest girl in the world’</h2>
<p>Back in the U.S., Clemens accepted an invitation from Charles to visit his family in Elmira. Within days of meeting Livy in 1868, he proposed marriage. She rebuffed him. Clemens later <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Mr-Clemens-and-Mark-Twain/Justin-Kaplan/9780671748074">wrote</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“She said she never could or would love me – but she set herself the task of making a Christian of me. I said she would succeed, but that in the meantime, she would unwittingly dig a matrimonial pit and end by tumbling into it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although Livy refused Sam’s proposal, she did offer to enter into a correspondence with him as “brother and sister.” He wrote to her the very next day and kept on writing for 17 months, a total of over <a href="http://mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk/mark-twains-letters-complete/">180 letters</a>. One of them reads as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Livy dear, I have already mailed today’s letter, but I am so proud of my privilege of writing the dearest girl in the world whenever I please, that I must add a few lines if only to say I love you, Livy. For I do love you … , as the dew loves the flowers; the birds love the sunshine; as mothers love their first-born… .</p>
<p>P.S. – I have read this letter over and it is flippant and foolish and puppyish. I wish I had gone to bed when I got back, without writing. You said I must never tear up a letter after writing it to you and so I send it. Burn it, Livy, I did not think I was writing so clownishly and shabbily. I was in much too good a humor for sensible letter writing.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Livy’s parents had good reason to be skeptical about the relatively uneducated and uncivilized Clemens, and they asked for references from his friends out west. As Clemens later <a href="http://marktwainstudies.com/a-disturbing-passion-mark-twain-the-angelfish/">reported</a>, his friends did little to ease their mind, reporting that he was wild and godless, an unsettled rover “who got drunk oftener than was necessary.” But Sam had already told them as much, which seemed to confirm his honesty. Plus, he tried to reform himself, for a time giving up drinking and attending church regularly.</p>
<h2>Marriage, lavish home and love’s travails</h2>
<p>Despite the Langdons’ initial objections, Jervis Langdon took a liking to Sam, who soon won Livy’s heart. On the couple’s first outing together, they attended a reading by <a href="https://www.biographyonline.net/writers/charles-dickens.html">Charles Dickens</a>, and in an effort to elevate her beau’s character, Livy began sending him copies of the <a href="https://archive.org/details/sermonsofhenrywa00beec">sermons</a> of one of America’s most famous preachers, Henry Ward Beecher.</p>
<p>They announced their engagement in February of 1869. A year later, they were married.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205733/original/file-20180209-51710-gqw6df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205733/original/file-20180209-51710-gqw6df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205733/original/file-20180209-51710-gqw6df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205733/original/file-20180209-51710-gqw6df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205733/original/file-20180209-51710-gqw6df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205733/original/file-20180209-51710-gqw6df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205733/original/file-20180209-51710-gqw6df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Twain with his family.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To Clemens’s surprise, his father-in-law provided lavishly for the newlyweds, purchasing for them a beautiful home in Buffalo, New York, staffed with servants. He also provided Clemens a loan with which to purchase an interest in a local newspaper. “<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3176">The Innocents Abroad</a>” was soon published, and Clemens rocketed to fame and fortune.</p>
<p>The Clemens’ <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2988/2988-h/2988-h.htm">life</a> was not always happy, however. Soon after their marriage, Jervis Langdon died of stomach cancer, and their first child, a son, was born premature and died of diphtheria at 19 months. Years later, their daughter Susy died at age 24 of meningitis, and another daughter, Jean, died of epilepsy at 29. Only one daughter, Clara, survived. She married a musician and lived to age 88.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205736/original/file-20180209-51710-vpo7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205736/original/file-20180209-51710-vpo7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205736/original/file-20180209-51710-vpo7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205736/original/file-20180209-51710-vpo7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205736/original/file-20180209-51710-vpo7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205736/original/file-20180209-51710-vpo7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205736/original/file-20180209-51710-vpo7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Twain with his wife, Olivia, and daughter, Clara.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Clemens’s brilliance as a writer was nearly matched by his financial ineptitude. His enthusiasm for new technology led to investments in a money-losing <a href="http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/yankee/cymach6.html">typesetting machine</a>. His publishing investments met initial success with the publication of the <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4367/4367-h/4367-h.htm">memoirs</a> of Ulysses Grant, but soon failed. Eventually the family had to shutter their house and move to Europe. Finally he turned over control of his financial affairs to a <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B02E3D8153EE733A25753C2A9639C946897D6CF&legacy=true">Standard Oil baron</a> who persuaded him to file bankruptcy before ensuring that his creditors were paid off.</p>
<h2>A lasting love affair</h2>
<p>Sam and Livy’s marriage was remarkable for its day, and perhaps any day. When they later built a mansion in Hartford, Connecticut – where they were next-door neighbors to another of the 19th century’s best-selling American novelists, <a href="https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/">Harriet Beecher Stowe</a> – the deed was in Livy’s name. Clemens also transferred the copyrights to some of his works to Livy, to avoid seizure by creditors.</p>
<p>More importantly, she became proofreader and editor of all his manuscripts. Without her, he believed, his most important works, such as “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” would never have been written. Of her role he <a href="https://www.delphiclassics.com/shop/mark-twain/">recalled</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I never wrote a serious word until after I married Mrs. Clemens. She is solely responsible – to her should go all the credit – for any influence my subsequent work should exert. After my marriage, she edited everything I wrote.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At home their children would listen as their mother read his stories. When she came to a passage that she thought needed more work, she would turn down the corner of the page. Clemens later claimed that he occasionally inserted passages to which he knew she would object simply to enjoy her reaction.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205742/original/file-20180209-51694-w6cwvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205742/original/file-20180209-51694-w6cwvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205742/original/file-20180209-51694-w6cwvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205742/original/file-20180209-51694-w6cwvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205742/original/file-20180209-51694-w6cwvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205742/original/file-20180209-51694-w6cwvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205742/original/file-20180209-51694-w6cwvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Twain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/with/14763660772/">Internet Archive Book Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sam and Livy remained deeply devoted to one another throughout their marriage, which ended only with Livy’s death in Italy in 1904 from heart failure. Clemens himself lived until 1910, devoting his last years to his autobiography. When the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/books/20twain.html?pagewanted=all">uncensored version</a> was finally published – at his request, 100 years after his death – it sold unexpectedly well, making him the author of best-sellers in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.</p>
<p>After Livy’s death, Sam found it difficult to live. One of the chroniclers of their lifelong love affair finds perhaps his most poignant testimony in 1905’s “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8525/8525-h/8525-h.htm">Eve’s Diary</a>,” in which the character of Adam says at Eve’s graveside, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.”</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It was aboard a steamship that Mark Twain first laid eyes on a photograph of Olivia Langdon, known as Livy. It was love at first sight. In their marriage of 34 years, they remained deeply devoted.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814422017-07-28T03:13:46Z2017-07-28T03:13:46ZWhy a 2,500-year-old Hebrew poem still matters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180033/original/file-20170727-22996-1l85kug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gebhard Fugel, 'An den Wassern Babylons.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gebhard_Fugel_An_den_Wassern_Babylons.jpg">Gebhard Fugel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At sundown on July 29, Jews around the world will observe <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/144575/jewish/The-9th-of-Av-Tisha-BAv.htm">Tisha B’av</a>, the most somber of Jewish holidays. It commemorates the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem, first by the Babylonians and then, almost seven centuries later, in A.D. 70, by the Romans. </p>
<p>Jews will remember these two historic calamities along with many others, including their <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-crusades">slaughter during the First Crusade</a>; the <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item103483.html">expulsions from England</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/history/expulsionfromfrance.shtml">France</a> and <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-spanish-expulsion-1492">Spain</a>; and the Holocaust. </p>
<p>The pattern of forced migration was set by the <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-babylonian-exile">Babylonian conquest of 587-586 B.C.</a>, when the elite of Judah were marched to Babylon and the temple destroyed. Like the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, which happened several centuries earlier, the Babylonian exile dwells at the heart of Judaism. The trauma served as a crucible, forcing the Israelites to rethink their relationship to Yahweh, reassess their standing as a chosen people and rewrite their history. </p>
<p>Psalm 137, the subject of my most recent book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/song-of-exile-9780190466831?cc=us&lang=en&#">“Song of Exile</a>,” is a 2,500-year-old Hebrew poem that deals with the exile that will be remembered on Tisha B'av. It has long served as an uplifting historical analogy for a variety of oppressed and subjugated groups, including African Americans. </p>
<h2>Origins of the psalm</h2>
<p>Psalm 137 is only <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+137&version=NRSV">one out of 150 psalms</a> in the Bible to be set in a particular time and place. Its nine verses paint a scene of captives mourning “by the rivers of Babylon,” mocked by their captors. It expresses a vow to remember Jerusalem even in exile, and closes with fantasies of vengeance against the oppressors. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176415/original/file-20170630-8210-ao7tlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176415/original/file-20170630-8210-ao7tlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176415/original/file-20170630-8210-ao7tlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176415/original/file-20170630-8210-ao7tlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176415/original/file-20170630-8210-ao7tlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176415/original/file-20170630-8210-ao7tlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176415/original/file-20170630-8210-ao7tlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Psalm 137 in 12th-century Eadwine Psalter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_137#/media/File:Eadwine_psalter_-_Trinity_College_Lib_-_f.243v.jpg">By Anonymous (Fitzmuseum) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exile story, which echoes through the Bible, is central to the major prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Lamentations and Isaiah. And the aftermath of exile, when Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and allowed the Judeans to return to Israel, is narrated in <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ezra-and-nehemiah-books-of">books of Ezra and Nehemiah</a>. Bible scholar <a href="http://www.uni-muenster.de/EvTheol/personen/albertz.html">Rainer Albertz</a> <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/by-the-irrigation-canals-of-babylon-9780567202468/">estimates that “about 70 percent</a> of the Hebrew Bible tackles the questions of how the catastrophe of exile was possible and what Israel can learn from it.”</p>
<h2>Inspiring music</h2>
<p>Because the psalm deals with music – a famous verse asks, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” – it has been like “poetic catnip,” intriguing to musicians and composers. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjGdq07Fkbo">Bach</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhBabz-emUY">Dvorak</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9BV4t9kvKo">Verdi</a> all wrote musical settings for it. Verdi’s first popular opera, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9BV4t9kvKo">“Nabucco</a>,” retells the story of the captivity.</p>
<p>Popular music versions have been recorded by American singer and songwriter <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/don-mclean-mn0000179205">Don McLean</a> (and used in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0voSWdX4jo">memorable scene in “Mad Men”</a>). It has featured in the musical <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFmGFWqAr68&feature=related">“Godspell</a>.” Dozens of artists have recorded their own version of “Rivers of Babylon.” This includes a Rastafarian-tinged <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-5E6_qtXAw">version by the Jamaican group the Melodians</a> and a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ybv4DOj-N0">version by Boney M</a> that became a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ybv4DOj-N0">blockbuster disco hit</a> in 1978.</p>
<h2>Message for social justice</h2>
<p>The psalm has also inspired numerous political leaders and social movements, and immigrants as varied as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=RSgGAAAACAAJ&dq=robert+grimes+how+shall&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4kcGpk6zUAhVo04MKHcYlDNAQ6AEIJDAA">Irish</a> and <a href="http://www.wjkbooks.com/Products/066422878X/singing-the-lords-song-in-a-new-land.aspx">Korean</a> have identified with the story.</p>
<p>America’s first homegrown composer, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674012905">William Billings</a>, who lived during the War of Independence, created an anthem that puts Bostonians in the role of oppressed Judeans and the British oppressors in the role of Babylonians. “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RurNWcC_DI">By the Rivers of Watertown we sat down and wept when we remember’d thee O Boston</a>….”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180039/original/file-20170727-22996-3mf2ce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180039/original/file-20170727-22996-3mf2ce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180039/original/file-20170727-22996-3mf2ce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180039/original/file-20170727-22996-3mf2ce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180039/original/file-20170727-22996-3mf2ce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180039/original/file-20170727-22996-3mf2ce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180039/original/file-20170727-22996-3mf2ce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Statue of Frederick Douglass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wcupa/14410155908/in/photolist-nXnPiW-pfSktC-8ChGva-p1piEP-p1qLRQ-p1qRai-8CkPG1-p1q3k9-p1pmEC-p1qSbg-phT7N9-phVdui-p1qhv1-p1qCUr-phUxca-p1qbRh-phSVuh-phUEKM-p1p6xT-ab4J5a-phD1dT-phSFQU-p1qZze-phCtAR-phSEsU-phV8ED-p1qRyA-p1qL9g-p1qsy6-p1psAq-phCLxB-pfSLX3-p1pRR2-p1pqJu-p1qBLe-phSsK5-62w2QS-4WXBEz-qDRh48-ac1Rk-dQXTHT-dR4u11-cWJvJb-8ChGd6-phUwDr-p1pQ7k-p1qdAQ-phCNz2-p1qK1L-dCgqH8">West Chester University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the anniversary of America’s independence, the abolitionist leader <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass">Frederick Douglass</a> made the psalm the centerpiece of his most famous speech, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466892781">“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”</a></p>
<p>Douglass told the audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, that for a free black like himself, being expected to celebrate American independence was akin to the Judean captives being mockingly coerced to perform songs in praise of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>About 100 years later, in the wake of World War II, the dissident actor and singer <a href="http://www.cpsr.cs.uchicago.edu/robeson/bio.html">Paul Robeson</a> saw deep parallels between the plight of Jews and African-Americans and loved to perform <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltbi8--Ds0E">Dvorak’s setting</a> of the psalm.</p>
<p>Some of the most celebrated African-American preachers, <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/57nme7tp9780252060878.html">including C. L. Franklin of Detroit</a> (Aretha Franklin’s father), also preached on the psalm. In Franklin’s case, he answered the psalm’s central question of whether to sing with a resounding yes. <a href="http://www.judsonpress.com/product.cfm?product_id=15434">So did Jeremiah Wright</a>, who was Barack Obama’s pastor when he lived in Chicago.</p>
<h2>Valuing the act of remembrance</h2>
<p>So, what is the central message of the psalm for today’s world? </p>
<p>The problem of what to remember, what to forgive and how to achieve justice <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/human-rights/religious-responses-mass-atrocity-interdisciplinary-perspectives?format=PB#LYPb56X0XhIfgo70.97">has never been more vexing</a>. </p>
<p>By the original rivers of Babylon, now <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/03/world/middleeast/syria-iraq-isis-rogue-state-along-two-rivers.html">war-torn regions of Iraq and Syria</a> devastated by the Islamic State, stories emerge of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/world/middleeast/surviving-isis-massacre-iraq-video.html?ref=middleeast&_r=0">captives taking refuge in the river</a>. The forced migration of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/world/middleeast/displaced-people-united-nations-global-trends.html?_r=0">millions of people from the region</a>, mainly from Syria, is having worldwide consequences. These include helping the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/world/europe/populism-far-from-turned-back-may-be-just-getting-started.html">rise of anti-immigration populism</a> across Europe and in the United States. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Bible scholars are working to interpret a trove of <a href="https://www.cdlpress.com/products/cusas-28-documents-of-judean-exiles-and-west-semites-in-babylonia-in-the-collection-of-david-sofer">recently discovered cuneiform tablets</a> that give a more nuanced picture of what life was really like in Babylon for the Judean exiles. And rightly so. For in the midst of all the injustices that confront us every time we check news headlines, remembering is as crucial as forgiving. </p>
<p>That was Frederick Douglass’ point as well. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=cxmDBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA197&lpg=PA197&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false">He said of his enslaved compatriots</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, ‘may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!’” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Remembering their history is what many Jews worldwide will do when they observe <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/144575/jewish/The-9th-of-Av-Tisha-BAv.htm">Tisha B’av</a>. And that is the message of Psalm 137 as well. It captures succinctly the ways people come to grips with trauma: turning inward and venting their rage. </p>
<p>There is a reason the psalm continues to resonate with people, even today.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on June 30, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David W. Stowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Psalm 137 – best known for its opening line, ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’ – is a 2,500-year-old Hebrew psalm that deals with the Jewish exile and is remembered each year on Tisha B’av.David W. Stowe, Professor of English and Religious Studies, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/720482017-02-07T03:40:29Z2017-02-07T03:40:29ZBefore sanctuary cities, here’s how black Americans protected fugitive slaves<p>Over the past year, public debate over the issue of “sanctuary” cities has become increasingly commonplace but no less urgent. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/01/19/us/ap-us-sanctuary-cities-chicago-the-latest.html">Local communities</a> and institutions such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/01/25/580577182/albanian-immigrant-holed-up-in-detroit-church-to-avoid-deportation">churches</a> have been shielding undocumented children and adults from federal efforts to deport them. And many lawmakers and judges <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/politics/justice-department-sanctuary-cities-criminal-charges-elected-offiicals.html">continue to challenge</a> the Trump administration’s efforts to criminalize state and local officials who endorse the “sanctuary” movement.</p>
<p>This standoff between federal authorities and local communities is hardly new. As a scholar of slavery and emancipation, I have studied the long history of African-American communities and how they offered sanctuary or protection to the most vulnerable among them. </p>
<p>In particular, I have looked at how in the 19th century, before the abolition of slavery in the United States, free black people openly defied the <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/fugitive.asp">Fugitive Slave Law of 1850</a>. </p>
<h2>The law that supported rights to slaves</h2>
<p>The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 built on <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#articleIV2">provisions in the Constitution</a> and a <a href="https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/slaves-court/history.html">1793 law</a> that barred slaves from escaping from a state where slavery was legal to one where it had been banned.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fugitive Slaves Recaptured: 1850.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/washington_area_spark/19337155846/in/photolist-vsKYJJ-kZ6wG1-kZ5BjZ-j4V46N-kZ6wtA-g1gbtS-kZ6wVs-kZ53kK-5xuE89-bfYvag-kZ5eoB-axmZDq-A65Fb-kZ5AQc-kZ6wmw-gbpGL6-kZ5B98-boTEEV-9wUYKZ-a6uxGP-95w2ym-kZ5Bhz-kZ53L4-kZ5M4Z-r1nmEW-kZ53C8-fTJQes-5xqgpV-fTJMCX-fTJU5p-5xuEm7-aFuW3M-kZ6wwS-5xuE3L-ambDA2-fTHNKz-a9DD9J-f7EzS-fTHTJd-fTJNkh-acMev-kZ5Bei-8rUaHr-8rXbtw-fTK8TV-8rU3UR-5Sgder-5mbQzQ-8rTYvr-A65Ax">Washington Area Spark</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the Constitution mainly called for the return of runaway slaves, the 1850 law <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#toc-article-iv-">vastly expanded</a> the authority of federal law enforcement officials. The law criminalized helping or harboring a runaway slave and denied the accused person the right to offer testimony in her or his own defense.</p>
<p>The 1850 law confirmed what generations of enslaved African-Americans knew too well: They existed as property, not persons, in the eyes of the law. </p>
<p>Enslaved women and men could not enter legal marriages because slaveholders claimed their bodies, time, movement and even reproductive capacity. <a href="https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/slavery.html">Law</a> and custom dictated that <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14030.html">enslaved women gave birth to enslaved children</a>.</p>
<h2>Constant threat of enslavement</h2>
<p>Freedom was always precarious for black Americans who stood on the legal margins of society. Blackness and enslavement were so firmly connected in antebellum America that to be free and black was to exist as a civic anomaly.</p>
<p>Free black people were recognized as citizens, though with limited rights, in the states in which they lived. Their standing as citizens of the nation <a href="http://thepenguinpress.com/book/more-than-freedom-fighting-for-black-citizenship-in-a-white-republic/">remained ambiguous</a> until after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States.</p>
<p>The threat of enslavement stalked many free black people. <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northup.html">Solomon Northup</a>, for example, was a free man who lived in upstate New York; in 1841 he was abducted and sold into slavery in Louisiana. The 1850 law made it worse. Those who had seized their freedom by running away became more vulnerable to kidnapping and enslavement. </p>
<p>Slaveholders advertised widely for the return of their property – the runaway slaves – and often hired men to track and capture fugitives. Newspaper reports and broadsides announced the arrival of slave catchers, warning free black people to remain vigilant especially in their interactions with the police.</p>
<p>On Nov. 1, 1850, <a href="http://www.accessible-archives.com/collections/the-liberator/">The Liberator</a>, the Boston anti-slavery newspaper published by <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1561.html">William Lloyd Garrison</a>, a radical white abolitionist, alerted local residents to the presence of “two prowling villains.” It said that the two slave catchers had come to Boston from Macon, Georgia, with the aim of capturing <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/craft/craft.html">William and Ellen Craft</a>, a runaway slave couple, “under the infernal Fugitive Slave Bill, and carrying them back to the hell of Slavery.”</p>
<p>Prompted to action by the Crafts’ plight, Boston’s black community gathered to plan their opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. They adopted a set of resolutions, including a pledge “to resist oppression” and any attacks on their freedom. </p>
<h2>Escaping bondage</h2>
<p>Many prominent black activists gained their freedom by running away. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are among the best-known fugitive slaves. After liberating themselves, they continued to challenge the laws and customs that stripped black people of their freedom.</p>
<p>After the 1850 law was enacted, many black people set their sights on Canada, convinced they could find safety only outside of the United States. <a href="http://www.macmillanlearning.com/Catalog/product/harriettubmanandthefightforfreedom-firstedition-horton">Harriet Tubman</a> was among them. She shepherded runaways from Maryland through New York and Pennsylvania to Canada, where slavery had been abolished in 1834.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statute of Frederick Douglass at West Chester University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wcupa/14410155908/in/photolist-nXnPiW-phCWJZ-phSik3-p1qSKT-pfSktC-8ChGva-8CkPG1-p1qRai-p1piEP-p1qLRQ-p1q3k9-p1pmEC-dCgqH8-p1qSbg-phT7N9-phVdui-p1qbRh-GVFRw-ab4J5a-p1qhv1-p1qCUr-phUEKM-phUxca-phSVuh-phSFQU-phD1dT-p1p6xT-p1qZze-phV8ED-p1qRyA-phCtAR-phSEsU-p1qL9g-p1qsy6-p1pRR2-8ChGd6-pfSLX3-phCLxB-p1psAq-p1pqJu-p1qBLe-phSsK5-phUwDr-p1qdAQ-phUxJn-p1pQ7k-phCNz2-p1qK1L-phUWvV-p1r2ma">West Chester University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Frederick Douglass, perhaps the most widely known self-liberated slave, also left the United States to safeguard his freedom. <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469628578/colored-travelers/">Douglass had escaped</a> from bondage in Maryland in 1838 and then traveled to England and Ireland. </p>
<p>The 1845 publication of his <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html">“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself</a>” placed him in danger of being captured. Douglass returned to the U.S. in 1847 only after his English supporters negotiated with his owner to purchase his freedom. </p>
<p>Experiences of escape and exile prompted free black women and men to lament America’s denial of their humanity but also invigorated their determination to bring slavery to an end.</p>
<h2>Fighting for freedom</h2>
<p>In the wake of the 1850 law, many black people openly engaged in physical confrontations with law enforcement. Tubman, for example, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674908505">fought the arrest</a> and detainment of accused fugitives. </p>
<p>Almost immediately after the 1850 law was enacted, Frederick Douglass quickly organized a <a href="http://coloredconventions.org">mass gathering</a> in protest. In September 1850, hundreds of black and white <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2253_reg.html">opponents of slavery gathered in Cazenovia, New York</a> to hear Douglass and other prominent abolitionists, some of them former slaves, speak out against the law.</p>
<p>In his <a href="http://www.accessible-archives.com/collections/african-american-newspapers/the-north-star/">published summary of the Cazenovia meeting</a>, Douglass charged, “slave laws should be held in perfect contempt.” He also maintained that enslaved people should defy the laws of slavery and liberate themselves by escaping from their owners whenever they could. </p>
<p>In short, Douglass called on free people, black and white, as well as enslaved people to defy state and federal laws that protected slavery.</p>
<p>African-American history is American history. Black people’s lives, their words and actions, including their commitment to defying the laws of slavery, helped define the meanings of freedom and citizenship in the United States. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on Feb. 6, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barbara Krauthamer received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2003; 2001).</span></em></p>In the 19th century, slaveholders advertised widely for runaway slaves and often hired men to track and capture fugitives. African-American communities offered sanctuary space to the runaways.Barbara Krauthamer, Professor of History, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/710642017-02-07T03:40:02Z2017-02-07T03:40:02ZThe story of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, America’s first black pop star<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155706/original/image-20170206-23515-cpxxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maud_Cuney-Hare-222-Elizabeth_Taylor_Greenfield.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1851, a concert soprano named <a href="http://jams.ucpress.edu/content/67/1/125">Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield</a> embarked on a national tour that upended America’s music scene. </p>
<p>In antebellum America, operatic and concert songs were very popular forms of entertainment. European concert sopranos, such as <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/foster/peopleevents/p_lind.html">Jenny Lind</a> and <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/catherine-hayes-the-irish-nightingale-1.1099691">Catherine Hayes</a>, drew huge crowds and rave reviews during their U.S. tours. Lind was so popular that <a href="http://www.davincibaby.com/jenny-lind/">baby cribs still bear her name</a>, and you can now visit an unincorporated community called Jenny Lind, California. </p>
<p>Greenfield, however, was different. She was a former slave. And she was performing songs that a burgeoning field of American music criticism, led by John Sullivan Dwight, considered reserved for white artists. African-American artists, most 19th-century critics argued, lacked the refined cultivation of white, Eurocentric genius, and could create only simple music that lacked artistic depth. It was a prejudice that stretched as far back as Thomas Jefferson in his “<a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffvir.asp">Notes on the State of Virginia</a>” and was later reinforced by minstrel shows. </p>
<p>But when Greenfield appeared on the scene, she shattered preexisting beliefs about artistry and race. </p>
<h2>‘The Black Swan’</h2>
<p>Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield was born into slavery in Natchez, Mississippi, around 1820. As a girl, she was taken to Philadelphia and raised by an abolitionist. </p>
<p>Largely self-taught as a singer, she began her concert career in New York with the support of the <a href="http://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/archive/buffalo-newspapers-on-elizabeth">Buffalo Musical Association</a>. In Buffalo, she was saddled with the nickname “the Black Swan,” a crude attempt to play off the popularity of Jenny Lind – known as “the Swedish Nightingale” – who was wrapping up one of the most popular concert tours in American history. </p>
<p>In 1851, <a href="http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1892/10/22/page/8/article/death-of-col-joseph-h-wood">Colonel Joseph H. Wood</a> became Greenfield’s promoter. Wood, however, was an overt racist and inhumane promoter known for creating wonderment museums in Cincinnati and Chicago that featured exhibits like the “Lilliputian King,” a boy who stood 16 inches tall. With Greenfield, he sought to replicate the success that another promoter, P.T. Barnum, had with Jenny Lind. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155487/original/image-20170203-14009-p494pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155487/original/image-20170203-14009-p494pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155487/original/image-20170203-14009-p494pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155487/original/image-20170203-14009-p494pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155487/original/image-20170203-14009-p494pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155487/original/image-20170203-14009-p494pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155487/original/image-20170203-14009-p494pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph H. Wood’s museum in Chicago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Encyclopedia of Chicago</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a letter to Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, a physician, newspaper editor and Civil War hero, wrote that Wood was a fervent supporter of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and would not admit black patrons into his museums or at Greenfield’s concerts. </p>
<p>For Greenfield’s African-American supporters, it was a point of huge contention throughout her career.</p>
<h2>Critics reconcile their ears with their racism</h2>
<p>In antebellum America, the minstrel show was one of the most popular forms of musical entertainment. White actors in blackface exploited common stereotypes of African-Americans, grossly exaggerating their dialect, fashion, dancing and singing.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155563/original/image-20170205-18286-1k3qoiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155563/original/image-20170205-18286-1k3qoiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155563/original/image-20170205-18286-1k3qoiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155563/original/image-20170205-18286-1k3qoiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155563/original/image-20170205-18286-1k3qoiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155563/original/image-20170205-18286-1k3qoiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155563/original/image-20170205-18286-1k3qoiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155563/original/image-20170205-18286-1k3qoiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of Zip Coon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, the popular song “Zip Coon” portrayed African-Americans as clumsily striving for the refinement of white culture. The cover of the sheet music for “Zip Coon” shows an African-American attempting to mimic refined fashions of the day and failing. The song goes on to mock its subject, Zip Coon, as a “learned scholar,” while putting him in situations where his apparent lack of intelligence shows.</p>
<p>Greenfield’s performances, however, forced her critics to rethink this stereotype. The Cleveland Plain Dealer described the confusion that Greenfield caused for her audiences: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was amusing to behold the utter surprise and intense pleasure which were depicted on the faces of her listeners; they seemed to express – ‘Why, we see the face of a black woman, but hear the voice of an angel, what does it mean?’”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Critics agreed that Greenfield was a major talent. But they found it difficult to reconcile their ears with their racism. One solution was to describe her as a talented, but unpolished, singer. </p>
<p>For example, the New-York Daily Tribune reported that “it is hardly necessary to say that we did not expect to find an artist on the occasion. She has a fine voice but does not know how to use it.” (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZHVC66/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">We see a similar phenomenon today in sports coverage</a>, in which black athletes are often praised for their raw physical athleticism, while white athletes are praised for their game intelligence.)</p>
<p>By performing repertoire thought too complex for black artists – and by doing it well – Greenfield forced her white critics and audiences to reexamine their assumptions about the abilities of African-American singers. </p>
<h2>A star is born</h2>
<p>On Thursday, March 31, 1853, Greenfield made her New York City premiere at Metropolitan Hall. </p>
<p>Originally built for Jenny Lind, it was one of the largest performance halls in the world. The day before the concert, the New-York Daily Tribune carried an ad that read, “Particular Notice – No colored persons can be admitted, as there has been no part of the house appropriated for them.” The ban resulted in a citywide uproar that prompted New York City’s first police commissioner, George W. Matsell, to send a large police unit to Metropolitan Hall.</p>
<p>Greenfield was met with laughter when she took to the stage. Several critics blamed the uncouth crowd in attendance; others wrote it off as lighthearted amusement. One report described the awkwardness of the show’s opening moments:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“She was timidly led forward to the front of the stage by a little white representative of the genus homo, who seemed afraid to touch her even with the tips of his white kids [gloves], and kept the ‘Swan’ at a respectful distance, as if she were a sort of biped hippopotamus.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the inauspicious beginning, critics agreed that her range and power were astonishing. After her American tour, a successful European tour ensued, where she was accompanied by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe. </p>
<h2>A singer’s legacy</h2>
<p>Greenfield paved the way for a host of black female concert singers, from Sissieretta Jones to Audra McDonald. In 1921, the musician and music publisher <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/pace-harry-1884-1943">Harry Pace</a> named the first successful black-owned record company, <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/black-swan-records-1921-1923">Black Swan Records</a>, in her honor. </p>
<p>But these achievements are byproducts of a much larger legacy. </p>
<p>In Stowe’s novel “<a href="http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/songs/sohp.html">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a>,” one of the slave children, Topsy, is taken in by a northern abolitionist, Miss Ophelia. Despite her best attempts, Ophelia can’t reform Topsy, who continues to act out and steal. When asked why she continues to behave as she does – despite the intervention of implied white goodness – Topsy replies that she’s can’t be good so long as her skin is black because her white caregivers are incapable of seeing goodness in a black body. Her only solution is to have her skin turned inside out so she can be white. </p>
<p>Stowe’s argument was not that we should begin skinning children. Rather, Topsy is a critique of the act of “<a href="https://newnarratives.wordpress.com/issue-2-the-other/other-and-othering-2/">othering</a>” African-Americans by a dominant culture that refuses to acknowledge their full humanity. </p>
<p>After Greenfield’s New York concert, the New-York Daily Tribune recognized the monumental nature of Greenfield’s heroics. The paper urged her to leave America for Europe – and to stay there – the implication being that Greenfield’s home country wasn’t ready to accept the legitimacy of black artistry. </p>
<p>But Greenfield’s tour did more than prove to white audiences that black performers could sing as well as their European peers. Her tour challenged Americans to begin to recognize the full artistry – and, ultimately, the full humanity – of their fellow citizens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71064/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Gustafson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the 19th century, critics and audiences thought blacks were incapable of singing as well as their white, European counterparts. Greenfield forced them to reconcile their ears with their racism.Adam Gustafson, Instructor in Music, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/568762016-04-19T10:08:08Z2016-04-19T10:08:08ZSyrian refugees: will American hearts and minds change?<p><em>Editor’s note: This article is part of our collaboration with <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/point-taken/">Point Taken</a>, a new program from WGBH that will next air on Tuesday, April 19 on PBS and online at pbs.org. The show features fact-based debate on major issues of the day, without the shouting.</em></p>
<p>How do we change our minds about a person or group we consider a threat?</p>
<p>As the first Syrian families <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/04/07/first-syrian-refugees-arrive-in-america/">arrive</a> in the United States from refugee camps in Jordan, it is important to consider public attitudes about this group.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On April 19 PBS’ Point Taken debates whether the U.S. should take in more or fewer Syrian refugees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/point-taken/">WGBH</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Governors of 31 states have declared their <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/world/paris-attacks-syrian-refugees-backlash/">unwillingness</a> to accept any Syrian refugees despite having no authority to turn them away. The two leading Republican candidates for president have openly asserted their suspicion of and hostility toward these refugees.</p>
<p>Syrians fleeing the devastating war within their country are not the first group to face such a response. </p>
<p>Many groups have been labeled as “the enemy” in the past – including Native Americans, rebellious slaves, people of Japanese descent, communists and, most recently, Arab-Americans and Muslims. </p>
<p>As a literary scholar, I am interested in how we tell stories about unfamiliar persons and, over time, how we open ourselves to their complexity and humanity. <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2118_reg.html">My recent research</a> has looked specifically at the fate of Japanese Americans interned during the Second World War and the lawyers working in defense of detainees at Guantánamo Bay to explore the conditions under which empathy for an unfamiliar “other” emerges. </p>
<p>Let’s examine some of these conditions.</p>
<h2>The ‘magnificent enemy’</h2>
<p>The first perceived threat – from the perspective of the 17th-century European settlers whose vision shaped the American nation we know today – came from the Native Americans these settlers encountered. </p>
<p>Two 19th-century women writers – Lydia Maria Child and Catharine Maria Sedgwick – in their novels “Hobomok” (1824) and “Hope Leslie” (1827), respectively, both set in 17th-century Massachusetts, countered the prevailing hostile view by portraying two unforgettable Native American characters. </p>
<p>Child’s protagonist Hobomok is impressive for his courage and selflessness, which earn him the love of the daughter of an early Puritan settler. </p>
<p>In Sedgwick’s novel, the Native American woman Magawisca is equally impressive. She speaks about the dignity of her people and defends their attacks against the white settlers. With the force of her personality, she secures the admiration of the white male and female protagonists. </p>
<p>These novels contributed an empathetic perspective to the national conversation about Native Americans. In the end, however, they had little impact on the aggressive policy of Native American removals, and may have even unwittingly <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-134910558/land-and-the-narrative-site-in-sedgwick-s-hope-leslie">advocated</a> it. </p>
<p>By contrast, within abolitionist circles at least, Frederick Douglass’ 1853 novella <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass1853/douglass1853.html">“The Heroic Slave”</a> had a strong impact. </p>
<p>A white traveler from the North overhears the eloquent monologue of the nobly named runaway slave Madison Washington:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This living under the constant dread and apprehension of being sold and transferred, like a mere brute, is too much for me. I will stand it no longer… These trusty legs, or these sinewy arms shall place me among the free.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frederick Douglass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Douglass_portrait.jpg">George Kendall Warren, National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The traveler is so impressed by Washington’s “triumphant” demeanor that he determines that he will not turn him in as a fugitive, despite the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts">law</a> of the time requiring him to capture and return runaway slaves. </p>
<p>Douglass’ book, coming soon after the publication of the influential anti-slavery novel Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” helped present the slave as a person of strength and complexity and not an abject human being. </p>
<p>These all are examples of how a magnificent enemy, a near-perfect specimen of humanity, jolts us out of our assumptions about the threatening “other.” </p>
<p>Literature provides us a space in which to encounter the “ideal” other and “practice” our ability to shed our fears.</p>
<p>In the real world of laws and social rules, however, the perceived enemy rarely comes in such a noble cast. </p>
<p>The laws and structures that organize our societies are crafted to serve the most ordinary and least remarkable individuals, not just those with celebrated qualities. </p>
<h2>What makes a just society?</h2>
<p>People who come to the defense of groups and individuals considered to be threats do so not because they are swayed by a particular remarkable individual. What motivates them is commitment to an ideal.</p>
<p>Members of the organization <a href="http://forms.nomoredeaths.org/about-no-more-deaths/">No More Deaths</a>, for instance, aid undocumented border crosses in Arizona by setting up water stations in the severely inhospitable desert through which the migrants travel.</p>
<p>Though the volunteers break no immigration law, they profess loyalty to a higher law, a <a href="http://reflections.yale.edu/article/who-my-neighbor-facing-immigration/no-more-deaths-interview-john-rife">Christian</a> law that enjoins them to treat their fellow human beings as their neighbor.</p>
<p>Likewise, it is fierce allegiance to the values enshrined in the United States Constitution – such as <a href="http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/amendments/14/essays/170/due-process-clause">due process</a> – that has motivated many lawyers to defend the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.</p>
<p>The seven lawyers I interviewed may have come to empathize with their clients over time, but initially it was their faith in the Constitution and their refusal to see it tarnished that took them to Guantánamo Bay. </p>
<p>A just society, philosopher John Rawls argued, is one that formulates its laws and policies through a “veil of ignorance,” that is, with no knowledge of the “<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/">original position</a>” in which anyone is placed (i.e., race, sex, socioeconomic class or other attribute affecting life prospects). </p>
<p>Political scientist <a href="http://openborders.info/rawlsian/">Joseph Carens</a> takes this veil of ignorance condition and applies it to the global stage. </p>
<p>We likely, he concludes, would organize global society and its institutions so that regardless of where we are born, we would all have the same freedoms, and the least advantaged would be able to improve their conditions. </p>
<p>My question, therefore, is this: What laws do you wished existed if you were in the position of Syrian refugees? </p>
<h2>Empathy is hard work</h2>
<p>At an April 11, 2016 panel held at UMass Boston on what the U.S. response to the Syrian refugee crisis should be, a Syrian woman, displaced by the war and now living in the Greater Boston area, spoke about the need to make connections to those whom we don’t understand.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How many of you know a Muslim person? How many of you have asked us to tell you the story of what we have been through? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her reprimand and plea exhort us to make the effort to break free from our own emotional barriers. </p>
<p>Literature is one vehicle through which to make this outward journey. It allows us to prepare for the actual connections we must seek to forge with the perceived enemy. </p>
<p>But this outward journey toward empathy requires labor and commitment. </p>
<p>It was only in 1988, 40 years after the closing of the camps and 10 years after the Japanese American community started its <a href="https://jacl.org/redress/">redress effort</a> – that the U.S. government officially apologized for the internment and promised compensation. </p>
<p>At the time, Japanese Americans represented only <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/asianamericans-graphics/japanese/">0.7</a> percent of the total population. Their campaign could not have succeeded without the support of the wider national community. </p>
<p>That the country was not at war with Japan certainly helped. But there is no doubt that the admission by several individuals, including one of the architects of the internment policy, Supreme Court Chief Justice <a href="http://www.vqronline.org/essay/unacknowledged-lesson-earl-warren-and-japanese-relocation-controversy">Earl Warren</a>, that the internment had been morally and constitutionally flawed was crucial in changing public sentiment. </p>
<p>By contrast, the U.S. is still actively engaged in the global “war on terror.” And, arguably, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Arabs-Muslims-Media-Representation-Communication/dp/0814707327/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460737330&sr=1-1&keywords=Evelyn+Alsultany">media</a> coverage of terrorism and Muslims continues to be sensationalized. </p>
<p>At least two of the Guantánamo lawyers I interviewed explicitly attributed the public’s indifference or hostility to the detainees as a key reason for Congress’ unwillingness to close the prison facility at Guantánamo Bay. </p>
<p>In this political and social context, it requires commitment at the individual and governmental level to hold to constitutional and ethical ideals.</p>
<p>What would happen, for example, if leaders at the neighborhood, state and national levels initiated town hall conversations about the fears that keep us from empathizing with the dire predicament of Syrian refugees? </p>
<p>Would this affect our willingness to create spaces of refuge for them within our towns? </p>
<p>As a human rights scholar, I believe that people have a
responsibility to remind their leaders of what we value as a society. For their part, leaders have a responsibility to evoke in the public the best attributes of our collective humanity.</p>
<p>This is not an easy process. Nor is it quick. But we owe it to ourselves not to succumb to exaggerated fears that make enemies of those who, in reality, share our dreams and hopes. </p>
<p>Nobel laureate <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/books/nadine-gordimer-novelist-and-apartheid-foe-dies-at-90.html?_r=0">Nadine Gordimer</a>’s powerful short story <a href="http://www.napavalley.edu/people/LYanover/Documents/English%20123/Nadine_Gordimer_Once_Upon_a_Time.pdf">“Once Upon a Time”</a> is a cautionary tale about the siege mentality of white South Africans during the racist <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/apartheid">apartheid</a> era. </p>
<p>Focused on one family that surrounds itself with a foolproof security system against the threat of black South Africans, the story shows how the family is itself destroyed by the security apparatus. </p>
<p>We would do well to heed that warning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rajini Srikanth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many groups have been labeled ‘enemy’ in the American past. A literary scholar looks at the role literature and philosophy have played in dispelling fears and shifting public attitudes.Rajini Srikanth, Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts Dean, Honors College, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/379822015-02-26T11:03:35Z2015-02-26T11:03:35Z22 million reasons black America doesn’t trust banks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73149/original/image-20150226-1774-j506if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emancipation is about financial security too </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation#mediaviewer/File:EMANCI4.jpg">Harper's Weekly 1865</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“This bank is just what the freedmen need,” <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/freedmens-savings-bank-a-chapter-in-the-economic-history-of-the-negro-race/oclc/326817">remarked</a> President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1865, as he signed the Freedman’s Bank Act, authorizing the organization of a national bank for recently emancipated black Americans. </p>
<p>A little more than a month later he was killed, making the Freedman’s Bank Lincoln’s last act of emancipation. </p>
<p>His assassination, however, did not impede its rapid growth. By January 1874, less than ten years after the establishment of the Freedman’s Bank, deposits at its 34 branches across the United States <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/black-citymakers-9780199948130?cc=us&lang=en&">totaled</a> US$3,299,201 ($65,200,000 in <a href="http://measuringworth.com/uscompare">current dollars</a>). </p>
<p>Despite such successful expansion, the Freedman’s Bank closed on June 28, 1874 under a shroud of suspicion and accusation. </p>
<p>The story of the rise and collapse of the Freedman’s Bank is an important and little known episode in black and American history in the years following Emancipation. </p>
<p>While it is widely known that there are severe disparities in wealth and income between black and white Americans, the origins of this are less appreciated. Indeed, before there was a Great Recession or a Great Depression, recently emancipated black Americans had their first monies as freed persons mishandled and never returned in full. </p>
<h2>The genesis</h2>
<p>Several issues led to the creation of the Freedman’s Bank: the emancipation of slaves, increased pay of black soldiers, and migration of black Americans throughout the North and South. </p>
<p>Cases of black soldiers being swindled, for instance, were <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/black-citymakers-9780199948130?cc=us&lang=en&">quite common</a>, highlighting the need to establish a formal and central banking institution for newly freed blacks. </p>
<p>Following a meeting of key political and business leaders on January 27 1865, plans proposing the Freedman’s Bank were sent to the United States Congress, which swiftly approved the banking institution. </p>
<p>The subsequent outreach efforts by the bank’s initial president (and inspector and superintendent of schools for the Freedmen’s Bureau - the organization authorized by President Lincoln on March 3, 1865 to support and assist freedmen and freedwomen during Reconstruction) was a white northerner named John W. Alvord. </p>
<p>Alvord, a former minister and attaché to General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War, traveled throughout the South recruiting blacks using endorsements from General OO Howard (the commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau): “as an order from Howard … Negro soldiers should deposit their bounty money with him.” </p>
<p>To assure possible depositors, Alvord also carried a handwritten letter from General Howard which <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/freedmens-savings-bank-a-chapter-in-the-economic-history-of-the-negro-race/oclc/326817">read</a>: “I consider the [Freedman’s Bank] to be greatly needed by the colored people, and have welcomed it as an auxiliary to the Freedmen’s Bureau.” </p>
<h2>Success</h2>
<p>Due to such recruiting efforts, the bank’s list of black depositors grew quickly, and soon 34 branches were established in locations across the country including New York City, Atlanta, Memphis, Philadelphia and Washington DC which also served as the headquarters. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Go in any forenoon and the office is found full of Negroes depositing little sums of money, drawing little sums, or remitting to a distant part of the country where they have relatives to support or debts to discharge” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>remarked a <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3113649?sid=21105458578531&uid=3739520&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256">reporter</a> in 1870 in Charleston, South Carolina amazed by the bank’s popularity. </p>
<h2>Problems</h2>
<p>By 1871, Congress had authorized the bank to provide mortgages and business loans. </p>
<p>Such mortgages and loans, however, were usually given to whites, creating a financial paradox -— a bank using the savings and income of black depositors to advance the economic fortunes of whites who had at their disposal mainstream banks that excluded blacks. </p>
<p>Soon reports and rumors of corruption within the bank’s white management threatened the bank’s existence. In response, the bank’s management was replaced with a variety of black elites, most notably Frederick Douglass, who was appointed to head the bank in March of 1874. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72972/original/image-20150224-25686-1v1ec4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72972/original/image-20150224-25686-1v1ec4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72972/original/image-20150224-25686-1v1ec4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72972/original/image-20150224-25686-1v1ec4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72972/original/image-20150224-25686-1v1ec4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72972/original/image-20150224-25686-1v1ec4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72972/original/image-20150224-25686-1v1ec4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Freedman’s Savings Bank last president.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Douglass_portrait.jpg">National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These changes did not prevent the bank’s closing, with Douglass later describing the experience as being unwittingly “married to a corpse.” </p>
<p>Despite their usual disagreements, both WEB DuBois and Booker T Washington did agree that the bank’s collapse was a major blow to the confidence and livelihood of scores of black depositors who trusted the bank with their savings. </p>
<p>DuBois would remark:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Then in one sad day came the crash —- all the hard-earned dollars of the freedmen disappeared; but that was the least of the loss —- all the faith in saving went too, and much of the faith in men; and that was a loss that a Nation which to-day sneers at Negro shiftlessness has never yet made good.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Booker T. Washington noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When they found out that they had lost, or been swindled out of all their savings, they lost faith in savings banks, and it was a long time after this before it was possible to mention a savings bank for Negroes without some reference being made to the disaster of [the Freedmen’s Bank].”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By 1900 only $1,638,259.49 ($43,900,000 in current dollars), or 62%, of the total amount of deposits prior to the bank’s failure had been paid. Deposits worth some $22 million in today’s dollars were largely lost.</p>
<p>In the end, most black depositors lost their savings, receiving little to no money back from the bank or the federal government.</p>
<h2>Echoes today</h2>
<p>As we mark the 151th anniversary of the Civil War, the lessons of that era remain potent. </p>
<p>For its part, the story of the Freedman’s Bank reveals the important foresight Lincoln had in seeing a connection between the political freedom of black Americans and their financial security. </p>
<p>It also reminds us that to understand black banking and wealth today, we need to know some history. </p>
<p>Black wealth issues are not new problems. Rather, they are historically rooted in a persistent pattern of loss and mistreatment beginning with the mishandling of freedmen and freedwomen’s money during Reconstruction. </p>
<p>This is part of the promise of Black History Month, as it provides an opportunity to shine a light on not only the successes of black Americans but also on the roots of persistent patterns of unequal and unfair treatment endured. </p>
<p>Indeed, as we continue to carve a path through the aftermath of the Great Recession, the mortgage crisis and growing racial disparities in wealth, the history of the Freedman’s Bank can serve as an important reminder of the connection between financial and political freedom and mobility. </p>
<p>Damage was done to black wealth and confidence long before banks were too-big-to-fail.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marcus Anthony Hunter receives funding from the National Science Foundation (Grant ID #0902399).</span></em></p>The dramatic story of the rise and fall of the Freedman’s Bank 1865-1874Marcus Anthony Hunter, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.