#abolitonists

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“My mother was sold at Richmond, Virginia, and a gentleman bought her who lived in Georgia, and we did not know that she was sold until she was gone; and the saddest thought was to me to know which way she had gone, and I used to go outside and look up to see if there was anything that would direct me, and I saw a clear place in the sky, and it seemed to me the way she had gone, and I watched it three and a half years, not knowing what that meant, and it was there the whole time that mother was gone from her little ones.”

--Kate Drumgoold, “A Slave Girl’s Story”, 1898

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Caroline Anderson-First African-American Physician

Caroline Still Anderson was one of the first African-American women to become a physician. She was born on November 1, 1848 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents were Letitia and William Still, two leaders in the abolitionist movement. William Still played an important role in the Underground Railroad of Philadelphia.

Caroline attended several prominent schools in Pennsylvania, as her father believed in a good education for women, and his business in the coal industry provided well for the family.

At the age of 19, Caroline was the only black student in her class at Oberlin College to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. She was also the first black woman to be elected as president of the college.

On December 28, 1869, Caroline married Edward Wiley, a former slave and graduate of Oberlin College, at the age of 21. The couple had five children, but only three survived to adulthood. Edward died in 1873 from a sudden illness  In 1880, Caroline remarried Matthew Anderson, a minister and fellow alumni of Oberlin College, as well as Yale University and Princeton University.

After working as a teacher of music and elocution, Caroline went on to complete an internship in medicine at New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. After some opposition because of her race, Caroline was eventually appointed to a position at the hospital based on her work and talent as a physician. She went on to practice medicine at Quakers Institution in Philadelphia.

In her later years, Caroline became an activist working for organizations in Philadelphia that supported women’s rights and racial equality. She was instrumental in establishing the first black Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Philadelphia. Caroline continued to work tirelessly to help the black community in Philadelphia, until her death in 1919. She was also recognized for her efforts by W.E.B. Du Bois.

She died at the age of of 71 from stroke complications, and was buried in Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania.

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Juneteenth 2021

“My mother was sold at Richmond, Virginia, and a gentleman bought her who lived in Georgia, and we did not know that she was sold until she was gone; and the saddest thought was to me to know which way she had gone, and I used to go outside and look up to see if there was anything that would direct me, and I saw a clear place in the sky, and it seemed to me the way she had gone, and I watched it three and a half years, not knowing what that meant, and it was there the whole time that mother was gone from her little ones.”

--Kate Drumgoold, “A Slave Girl’s Story”, 1898

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Frederick Douglass-”The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”

“My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day, 1833.  The days between Christmas and New Year’s day are allowed as holidays, and, accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor, more than to feed and take care of the stock.  This time we regarded as our own, by the grace of our masters; and we therefore used or abused it nearly as we pleased. Those of us who had families at a distance, were generally allowed to spend the whole six days in their society. 

This time, however, was spent in various ways. The staid, sober, thinking and industrious ones of our number would employ themselves in making corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another class of us would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons.  But by far the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball, wrestling, running footraces, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky; and this latter mode of spending the time was by the far the most agreeable to the feelings of our masters.

A slave who would work during the holidays was considered by our masters as scarcely deserving them. He was regarded as one who rejected the favor of his master. It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarding as lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the necessary means, during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through Christmas.”

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The Edmonson Sisters-Abolitionists

Mary and Emily Edmonson were African-American sisters who lived in Montgomery County, Maryland. Their father, Paul Edmonson, was a freed black man who was able to purchase his own farm. Paul and his wife, Amelia, a slave, had 13 children who were all born into slavery.

Mary and Emily were more fortunate than most young slave girls of the time, as they were hired to work in wealthy households in Washington D.C,. as servants, and not in the cotton fields. They were also well treated, unlike the majority of other slaves. Still, they had no freedom to go as they pleased and even though they earned a decent wage, it was not theirs to keep. Their pay was given to their master.

In 1848, the slave master of the Edmonson family allowed four of the elder Edmonson daughters to pay for their freedom. After that he no longer allowed this practice for Mary and Emily, along with six of their brothers, and continued to hire them out for his own financial benefit.

On a rainy night on April 15, 1848, Mary and Emily decided to fight for their freedom, alongside 77 other slaves, and boarded the “Pearl” which was set to sail down the Potomac River with a destination to the free state of Philadelphia.

Before it reached its Chesapeake destination, the ship was captured by slaveholders and all slaves aboard the ship were sent to New Orleans to be sold on the prosperous New Orleans slave market. Mary and Emily were placed at the price of $1200 each, and the girls were subjected for days on the open street waiting for a buyer.

A yellow fever epidemic occurred in New Orleans and the sisters were sent back to Virginia by their new slave owner, who was trying to protect his investment from illness. Paul Edmonson was able to enlist the help of Henry Ward Beecher, a minister and abolitionist, who bought the girls’ their freedom. Their brothers received their in 1859 as well.

The Edmonson sisters became abolitionists who spoke out against the illegal institution of slavery and were in attendance at the Fugitive Slave Law Convention in New York, in 1850.

In 2010, a bronze statue of the two sisters was erected in Alexandria, Virginia.

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“Slavery has existed in this country too long and has stamped its character too deeply and indelibly, to be blotted out in a day or a year, or even in a generation. The slave will yet remain in some sense a slave, long after the chains are taken from his limbs, and the master will yet retain much of the pride, the arrogance, imperiousness and conscious superiority, and love of power, acquired by his former relation of master. Time, necessity, education, will be required to bring all classes into harmonious and natural relations...

Law and the sword can and will, in the end abolish slavery. But law and the sword cannot abolish the malignant slaveholding sentiment which has kept the slave system alive in this country during two centuries. Pride of race, prejudice against color, will raise this hateful clamor for oppression of the negro as heretofore. The slave having ceased to be the abject slave of a single master, his enemies will endeavor to make him the slave of society at large.”

-Frederick Douglass, December 28, 1862, Rochester, New York, Speech at the Spring Street AME Zion Church

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400th Anniversary of Slavery-From the Slave Narrative of Charles Ball

“The system of slavery, as practiced in the United States, has been, and is now, but little understood by the people who live north of the Potomac and the Ohio; for, although individual cases of extreme cruelty and oppression occasionally occur in Maryland, yet the general treatment of the black people, is far more lenient and mild in that state, than it is further south.

This, I presume, is mainly to be attributed to the vicinity of the population of the cities of Baltimore and Washington, over the families of the planters of the surrounding counties.  For experience has taught me, that both masters and mistresses, who, if not observed by strangers, would treat their slaves with the utmost rigour, are so far operated upon, by a sense of shame or pride, as to provide them tolerably with both food and clothing, when they know their conduct is subject to the observation of persons, whose good opinion they wish to preserve.

A large number of respectable and wealthy people in both Washington and Baltimore, being altogether opposed to the practice of slavery, hold a constant control over the actions of their friends, the farmers, and thus prevent much misery; but in the south, the case is widely different. There, every man, and every woman too, except prevented by poverty, is a slave-holder; and the entire white population is leagued together by a common bond of the most sordid interest, in the torture and oppression of the poor descendants of Africa.  If the negro is wronged, there is no one to whom he can complain---if suffering for want of the coarsest food, he dare not steal--if flogged till the flesh falls from his bones, he must not murmur--and if compelled to perform his daily toil in an iron collar, no expression of resentment must escape his lips.”

--Charles Ball, “Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man”-Lewiston, PA, 1836

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African-American soldier, Union Army, Civil War