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Marching
to a Different Drummer
Unrecognized Heroes of American History
By Robin Kadison Berson
Elizabeth Freeman
(1744-1829)
A slave in the household of Pieter
Hogeboom in Claverack, New York (and at his death), Elizabeth Freeman
(1744-1829),
along with her sister Lizzie, was inherited in 1758 by
Pieter's daughter, Hannah Ashley, the wife of John
Ashley in western Massachusetts (Berkshire County).
Months before Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at
Yorktown in October 1781, Elizabeth, known commonly as
Bett or MumBet, began her own social revolution in the
household of her mistress, Hannah Ashley, and the state
of Massachusetts.
Hannah Ashley attempted to strike Lizzie with a heated
kitchen shovel; Elizabeth "interposed her arm, and received
the blow; and she bore the honorable scar it left to the day of
her death" (Berson, 109). Disturbed by her mistress
outrageous behavior, Elizabeth consulted the lawyer Theodore
Sedgwick and cited the revolutionary doctrine of equality.
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Theodore Sedgwick agreed to take the
case. he obtained a writ of replevin--an action
taken for the recovery of property, from the Berkshire
County Court of Common Pleas, in behalf of Bett and
another Ashley slave, a man named Brom . . . The
property of which Bett and Brom had been deprived,
according to the writ, was their own persons. Colonel
Ashley refused to relinquish what he considered his
valid title to his slaves, and the case went to court on
August 21, 1781. The plaintiffs declared that they were
being detained in illegal bondage; Colonel Ashley
insisted that they were
indeed his "servants for life." The jury found
that Bett and Brom were not Ashley's servants;
they ordered him to pay thirty shillings in damages to
the plaintiffs and over five five pounds in court costs
as well. . . .
After the trial Mum Bett renamed
herself. The last name she chose, fittingly enough, was
freeman. She rejected Colonel Ashley's request that she
return to his household; instead she became a loving and
much-loved nurse to Theodore Sedgwick's growing family.
the widow of a Revolutionary War soldier, she never
remarried; she had one daughter and, eventually, a
number of grandchildren.
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Her gravestone reads:
"ELIZABETH FREEMAN
known by the name of
MUMBET
Died Dec. 28, 1829
Her supposed age was 85 Years. She was born a slave and remained a slave for
nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she
had no superior nor equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never
violated a trust, nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic
trial, she was the most efficient helper, and the tenderest friend. Good Mother,
farewell."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The White Masters
of the World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest / Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The
Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding
of Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 18 January 2012
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