March 29, 2024 • 28 mins
Yves joins us to crack open the pages of the life of Frances Anne Rollin Whipper, a Black author and diarist with a couple of firsts under her belt.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Steff.
I never told you a protection of iHeartRadio. And it
is time once again for another edition of a Female First,
which means we are once again thrilled to be joined
(00:25):
by the fantastic, the fabulous Eves.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome Eaves.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hello, thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
We're so happy to have you as always. Happy belated birthday.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Happy belated birthday.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I like to do anything of note.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Of note.
Speaker 5 (00:43):
I don't know if I would say it was of note,
but all I did was I read a lot that
day and then I, yeah, so I just worked, if
that's interesting. And then I lifted. I weightlifted that day,
and I went out to eat. So it was chill.
I really had no plans. Kept asking myself before the day,
like what do I want to do, and I was like,
I don't really know, So I guess it's fine for
(01:04):
me to not think so hard about it.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
If you know, I don't know. I have a trip
plan for later.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
But it's technically for my birthday, but it's not happening
all my birthday, so hey, I was just like, I'll
just chill.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I love that. Yeah, Sometimes just having a relaxed day
is the best.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think there's there
could be so much pressure on birthdays and sometimes it's
nice to be like, you know what, I'll just do
whatever it is I want and then I'll do a
trip later and that's fine, Like I don't know, taking
the pressure off.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah I does. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, you're always You're always up to stuffives. I'm always
interested to hear what your your trips you're going on
and everything.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I try. I try to keep things interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
So I think I think you do. I think you do. Yeah,
you much so, yes, I'm always I love checking in
with your cat today and your various travel.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Yeah, and the lifting was new to me. I was like,
what you're just yeah, a pile of secrets.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
A pile of secrets.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
That's the best I could think of at the point.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I think that's all.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
This secret secrets.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
You're a bundle of secrets that yeah, like pile is like, yeah,
this seems like a mistake. That's where like you just
like just go ahead and just throw things into a pile.
We'll put it in a bundle.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Thank you. That's a lot neater.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I love it well, speaking of someone who got up
to a lot in their life.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Can you tell us who we're talking about today, Eves, Yes.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
So we're talking today about Francis and Rolin Whipper, and
she was I talked about her in a recent episode
of On the which is another podcast that I do
is my cost Katie Mitchell, and that one's about black storytelling,
and we did an episode on diaries that black women
wrote in history, and Francis and Rollin Whipper was one
(03:13):
of the people who wrote diaries.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
She had a diary.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
That is one of the earliest known diaries written by
a black Southern woman that she wrote in eighteen sixty eight.
It's like a year's worth of her recordings from that year,
and it's a pretty interesting year in her life.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So I enjoyed reading it.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
And I think y'all know from other episodes of Female
First that, like I really enjoy letters and journals that
people have from their travels.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Like I think we talked about Mary Sekol.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
People's autobiographies when they have just kind of a daily
log of the things that they did, is super fascinating
to me, even though it's like the most mundane things.
You know, we'll talk about people who have all these
big accomplishments and traveled.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
All over the world or like.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
What seeing with different dignitaries and all that stuff is cool.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
But I also like the.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Everyday musings of getting to know people's internal processes and
how they choose to express those. So I was fascinated
by Francis and Rolin Whipper's diary. And she also had
a first and she wrote the first full ath biography
by black American about a free born black person, so
(04:33):
that is part of her story as well. And she's
just like a super interesting person. So that's what we'll
be talking about today.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I agree with you. I love diaries. I love like
just random notes you can find. I love these like instances.
I think they paint such a good picture of what
was going on at the time, even if it can
seem kind of mundane, I'm fascinated by it, like this
is what people were worried about, or this was what
was going on on, or I think it's such a
(05:02):
great snapshot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So I agree with you, Eve, Well, shall we get
into the history.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Francis and Rowlin was born free in November of eighteen
forty five in Charleston, South Carolina, and her parents were
Margarette or Margarette, not sure which way to pronounce that,
but Margaret and William Rolin, and they were also free,
not much more beyond her being free as known about
her mother, but her father was like from this wealthy
(05:43):
quote unquote.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Mulatto side, and they ended.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Up on their family ended up on a plantation near
Charleston and started getting into the lumber trade. So he
was kind of doing some merchant stuff, buying property. And
they had their family had enslaved three people I've seen.
I'm not sure if that's like how many people they
had enslaved over, you know, over time, if they had
(06:08):
even more than that. But they also had trading connections
with other cities. So they were these free people of
color who had high status in society and basically gained
a lot of privilege and access to things by virtue
of their proximity to whiteness. So that's part of their history.
(06:31):
But Francis, she had four sisters. They were Charlotte, Catherine, Luisa,
and Florence. And Francis was the oldest of all of them.
And they all got good educations. Like I was just saying,
she you know, they all they have money. So even
though it was illegal for black folks at the time.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Black schooling was still.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
They were able to be educated, and Francis went to
private schools and she had tutors in Charleston and she
learned French, and.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
She, you know, had access to.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Education because of her parents, and all her other sisters
did as well.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But at the same time, the Civil.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
War was about to pop off and things were looking
dicey for free black people in the South.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
You know, all of this.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
At the end of the day, if you're perceived as black,
you're perceived as black. So you know, even free people
of color face difficulties at the time. And in eighteen
fifty nine, Francis ended up going to Philadelphia and she
began attending the Institute for Colored Youth, which was founded
(07:42):
by Quakers, and she lived there with musician Morris Brown's family,
and her sisters followed her up there not long afterwards.
So for the next six years she stayed in Philadelphia.
I saw that she wasn't really in communication with her
parents during that time that we know of, and she
seemingly didn't graduate from the institute, so she may have
(08:03):
had to work at the time. But either way, after
the Civil War she went back to Charleston to teach
black people who had recently been emancipated. She taught at
a Freedman's Bureau school, and then she taught at an
American Missionary Society school.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
And when there is a notable case.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
In her history, and that's when she was traveling on
a steamer to Beaufort, South Carolina, the captain, whose name
was W. T.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Mcnelty, denied her access to a first class cabin.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
She said that he had violated a military order, and
so at that point he was tried before a military
court and he was found guilty and he got fined
two hundred and fifty dollars in eighteen sixty seven, which
I don't know how much that is in today's dollars,
but it's a lot more So around this time she
(08:54):
met Martin R. Delaney, and at this point he was
major in the army and he worked for the Freedman's
Bureau and he supported her. He was during her case process,
and I don't know exactly how this conversation looked, but
(09:15):
I'm very curious about it because she told him that
she wanted a literary career, and he encouraged her to
write his biography, and she agreed, and there's just there's
something about this interaction that really fascinates me, Like as
a writer, it just I just want to know how
that conversation went, because she hadn't written any biographies up
(09:36):
to this point, so one to ask somebody to write
your biography, I feel like you have.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
To feel you you have to feel a.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
Way about yourself before you're like, Okay, you know, I've
done some things and I want somebody to write my biography.
And at this point they had just met, like they didn't.
I'm not sure how long they knew each other up
until this point, but I don't think they have been
there were deep in the trenches of friendship. And she
also wasn't known for writing full length works, if barely
(10:10):
anything at this point because she was doing I believe
more teaching up until this point. But anyway, I'm very
curious about this conversation. I don't think there are any
records of this, because it seems like there's a lot
of vagueness around this.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
But when I'm looking at.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Her biography, I just like, this is a this is
a flashpoint for her. This is the first that we're
talking about today. And to not know exactly why he
asked her what he thought her merits were of being
able to do this is very interesting to me. So anyway,
that's that's by a side. But she hoped that, you know,
(10:49):
this biography would launch her literary career. And he gave
her all these materials, all these papers, and he told her, hey,
I will support you financially while you work on this book.
And she went to Boston to write the book and
she stayed there for eight months. So this is in
eighteen sixty eight, and that's the year that we have
(11:11):
where she writes in her diary, and so all her
surviving diary entries are from that year. I'm not sure
if she had diary, if she was doing diary entries
before then or after then, she very well could have been.
But this is these are the this is the extant
diary that we have of hers, and in it, she
(11:32):
is very she's very kind of like before I was
want to say that she was she's uppitty. At first
I kind of felt like, hey, I want to be
her friend. But then I realized that she kind of
had like her class consciousness was not completely there, Like
(11:53):
she was a little too bougie for my taste. But
if you read her diary, there are parts of it
that I kind of like, oh, I want to be
her friend, because she's kind of like she's going to
lectures for people like Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldell Emerson
and abolition sheets got to know people like the abolitionists
William Lord Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and William Nell, as well
(12:14):
as the scholar name Richard Greener, and she talks about
the difficulties that she had during that year.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
In her diary, she talks.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
About Martin Delaney and the troubles that she was going
through with him in that relationship, because apparently there was
some infidelity later on, and she talks about how he
wrote her a love letter, and then there are also
these other moments where she's in her very intellectual flow
(12:42):
where she's talking about how she.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Went to these lectures and she read this person's.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
Work and she thought he needed to do better. So
and she talks about how she had friends who she
would talk to about some of the literary works that
she had read and how their opinions on them could
be improved. But yeah, so you can read her diary online.
It is digitized online, so it's free. Everybody can go
(13:10):
check it out and read all her entries. There have
been people volunteers who worked on transcribing everything and her diary,
So if you're interested in diary entries like we are
here on Sminthea, then you can check those out.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
But the thing about.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
It is Delaney didn't keep sending her money, so she
had to sew and be a copyist, I think, to
support herself.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Which is sad because.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
I'm just trying to step in her shoes and think
like I want this thing to launch my career, and
she's already getting a taste of how this whole writing
life is.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
You don't get paid when you're supposed to, so.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
She had to support herself, but she did it, and
clearly she was dedicated to that work because she continued
it and she wrote the book that ended up being
called Life in Public Services of Major Martin R. Delaney
That was published in eighteen sixty eight, and later on
years later in eighteen eighty three, it was reissued, but
the publisher LEA. Shepherd, they published the biography under a
(14:14):
pseudonym that was Frank A. Rolin, and that was seemingly
the publisher's decision because they thought people weren't ready to
have a book by a black woman. But her family
also did call her Frank, so it seems like it
was a fine compromise for her, I guess, because she
was like, well, I guess they already called me frank anyway,
(14:36):
so it's cool.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
But yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
By July eighteen sixty eight, she had left Boston and
she went to Columbia, South Carolina, which is my birthplace,
which is not a thing people really need to know,
but it is, so there's a link there. And she
had gotten a job as a copyist, and William J.
Whipper had offered her the job. And he was a
(15:02):
lawyer from the North who had recently moved to South
Carolina and was elected to the state legislature.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
And he had people in his.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
Family already who were writers, editors, an abolitionists. So the
work that he ended up doing in politics and in editing,
you know, that is something that was in his family already.
And he though had his own controversies, so he has
his own history of the work that he did in
(15:36):
what in the Republican Party at the time during reconstruction,
and it said that he was often charged with political corruption,
and he had a reputation for gambling and drinking, and
just it seemed like being kind of like a party
guy who was sometimes up to no good, but like
had did a lot. But he offered Francis the job.
(16:02):
And when he did, he had a wife, but his
wife died before Francis.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Ended up coming to Colombia.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
And when she got to Columbia in August, he proposed
to her in less than two months, so they had
their whole dating period.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
But he proposed pretty quickly. But similarly, she was into it.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
Can't tell you why, if she was just that smitten
with him, or if there were other motivations.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
I have no idea, but she because that's quick.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
But you know, she went to talk to her parents
about it, and her father said the same thing, He said,
it's too soon. But her sister Charlotte said, like it
might have been some class stuff going on. Because there
is a quote from a publication in which Charlotte says,
in fact, our family never condescended to notice such small
(16:59):
people as Elliott and Whipper. Although Whipper married our sister Francis,
they are both Negroes, and our family is French, so
you know they were she was recognizing their status as
Mulato's and you can see from that sentiment that she
and her sisters as well distanced themselves from other black
(17:21):
people and kind of looked down on lower class folks.
They cared a lot about appearances and politeness and respectability politics,
and it is.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Clear that they did.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
They gained favor from this, Like there's a lot in
sources about them of talk about how elegant they were,
how refined they were, how polite they were, how they
were able to move through these political spaces kind of
like they're not like the other darkies situation with them
and ad around their complexion, all of that kind of
(17:56):
stuff going on. So they were clearly that up and
it worked in their favor. They already had wealth, so
they already had access to that kind of status and
all the traffics that came along with it. But the
way that they clearly carry themselves in like socialite society
also helped them. So they were viewed pretty positively by
(18:19):
the elite essentially. And it's interesting though because at this
while it's an interplay of like lack of consciousness, but
also some they did also pay attention to racial issues
and issues of gender, because they still advocated for equal
rights for black people, and they still all of the sisters,
(18:41):
including france Is, still advocated for equal rights for women.
But you know, I guess we contain multitudes, and they
definitely did. And we also like have to consider the
the the way that people of color moved in the
reconstruction era when they got a little taste of, you know,
(19:05):
a post slavery South, and how I'm sure all.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Of that glory and.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
Respectability looked like, you know, a shiny object at the
end of a tunnel, and they clearly got wrapped up
into that.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
But anyway, even you know, even with the.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
Disavowal of her father, her father's disavowal about her soon
to be husband, she still got married in September of
eighteen sixty eight, and she edited the Beaufort Tribune, and
she wrote some pieces for other newspapers under a pen name,
and she and her sisters advocated for rights during this time.
(19:50):
And Francis ended up having four children who lived beyond infancy,
although I think one of her other children also die
a little bit later on, but still young. But either way,
she and her sisters were moving through these fears in Colombia,
and her father died in eighteen eighty and she began
(20:14):
to administer the estate, but her mother challenged her administration.
I'm not sure the suit didn't go to trial, and
I'm not sure exactly why she challenged it, but that happened,
and by that year, Francis was also living in Washington, DC.
That was with her kids, but without her husband. So
(20:34):
her husband was in South Carolina. He was still doing
his political thing and apparently had a mistress at this time,
I believe, and Francis was in DC and she was
still publishing articles and essays and eventually landed a job
as a copyist with the US Department of Lance. She
(20:56):
did lose that job in eighteen eighty five the Democrats
gained control of the White House. But after that year,
between eighteen eighty five and eighteen eighty nine is unclear
exactly what she did from work, but she still got
All of her children were going to school, they graduated
(21:17):
from Howard University, and she kept writing, though it seems
like there are some she wrote under pseudonyms that are
some of which are unknown. But she kept writing, and
sometime after the mid eighteen ninety she had to go
(21:37):
back to South Carolina. Her health wasn't in the best shape,
and she ended up dying in Beaufort, South Carolina, on
October seventeenth, nineteen oh one, of tuberculosis. And she's today,
she's buried in Beaufort, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yeah, I mean, once again, it's quite a story. It's
hard to imagine having your diary digitized. I mean, it
sounds like she would be cool with it, right, but.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I mean I would to mine mine. I would do.
But it's just it's kind of odd to think everyone. Right.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
But it's interesting because the that you read from the sister,
I was like, this kind of reminds me of like
a Jane Austen novel, Like this feels like it's like
a dialogue straight out of except for is from the
black community perspective or the you know, like freight black community.
I'm like, huh, this feels very like enriched in like
society and our place in life and then who is
(22:49):
beneath us? And I was like, maybe it's because we
just did Bride prejudice, but I'm like, this feels familiar.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Yeah, there's I can't read a quote from her diary
if you want to hear one. Yeah, actually really because yeah, So,
like we talked about at the beginning of the episode,
the diaries that people wrote, they allowed people to have
a lot of insight into what daily life was like
(23:16):
for different kinds of people. So not only did she
talk about her social life life, she was also talking
about things that happened in society that you know, we
can we have other records of, but you know, we
get more of this personal insight of. So this is
one journal entry that she had in eighteen sixty eight.
(23:38):
This was on August second, so I think that was
she reached Columbia this day. So she says in this
diary entry, reached Columbia about six o'clock. Mister Hipper met
me at the depot with his buggy and took me
to my boarding place, where an elegant and spacious room
awaited me. Breakfast was tempting. My dear friend, mister Adams
was in to see me very soon after. My Charlotte
(24:01):
came to see me in the morning, but Kate did not.
Went to church in the morning with Harry Maxwell and
mister Adams. The governor and all the members were there
quite an excitement created on account of the disappearance of
Joe Howard after the visit of the Ku Klux Klan
at night. So that's the end of that journal entry.
(24:23):
And uh, it's a pretty shock. It's a cliffhanger, right,
It's kind of like you buried the lead in that one.
You're talking about your elegance spacis room. But I do
think it's interesting now that I think about the journal entry,
the contrast between its beginning and it's end, because she's
talking about this fancy situation where she's being catered to,
(24:43):
but at the same time she's saying racial the reckoning
of racial violence happening around her, and it's like those
things are right next to each other. She's in Columbia,
South Carolina, you know. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a
lot going on around her.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Interesting to see some of her talk about some of
those things. She talked about some of the anti slavery
meetings that she goes to. Yeah, so she was she
had her hands in all these.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Parts of.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Society and wrote about it in her diary. And I too,
I don't want my diary published.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I don't, you know, now that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
This is one of the interesting things about diaries is that,
at least in my understanding of them, you're writing it
for yourself with the idea no one else will ever
read it. Plus the thought, which is such a fascinating
I've never really considered it before, but that is interesting
that you're essentially just writing this thing to help you
(25:50):
process or think about things, but it is not for
anyone else to read. And you know, I like when
I travel, I always keep a diary, and it's mostly
so I can go back and remember things like oh yeah,
I remember that, but it's never with the idea I
will publish it. So this is this is fascinating. Her
diary got published. Yeah, well, I also don't put in
(26:15):
like I feel like she had some pretty good language
in hers mine, Like I just need to write it
down before I forget what happened.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Yeah, it's gonna be incoherent sometimes, right.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
I think mine was just like a lot of exclamation
points and astisks going. But why.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
I'm just here to process.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Or just be sad. Yeah. Again, Like it's interesting though,
the way she does build it up into like her
day and then just like the last comment of like
the glukluks Lam. They're here. Cool, You're like, oh god,
what is what's happening?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, once again a very good snapshot of what was
going on. I have to check it out. Yeah, I
don't want to look into what.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Well.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Thank you so much as always Eve's for being here,
for braving the technical difficulties that the Sminty team has
had over the past few days. It just keeps happening.
And yes, once again delated Happy birthday.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Where can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
You can find me on many other episodes of Sminty
doing female First talking about other women in history, and
you can also find me on Instagram at not Apologizing,
or you can just go to my website, which is
Eve's jeffcoat dot com.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
That's Eve spelled with why ves Jeffcoat just like it
sounds basically, and you can check me out on On Theme,
that is the podcast that I mentioned at the top
of the episode that I co host with Katie Mitchell.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
That is a.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
Podcast about black storytelling in all of its forms. And
if you're interested in hearing about other diaries, we have
a recent episode on that call it Diary Dialogues, So
you can go check that out and all the other episodes.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
Yeah, that's a good title. Yeah for the episode I
love you. Love it well, listeners, go do that. If
you haven't done it already. If you would like to
contact us, you can. You can email u Atephania mom
Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. Can find us on Twitter
at mostaff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok that Stuff
will Never told you. We have a tea public store,
and we have a book you can get wherever you
(28:34):
get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer
Christina or executive producer Maya and.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Your contributor Joey.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Thank you and thanks to you for.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Listening Stuff I Never told you the inspection of my
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Steff.
I never told you a protection of iHeartRadio. And it
is time once again for another edition of a Female First,
which means we are once again thrilled to be joined
(00:25):
by the fantastic, the fabulous Eves.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome Eaves.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hello, thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
We're so happy to have you as always. Happy belated birthday.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Happy belated birthday.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I like to do anything of note.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Of note.
Speaker 5 (00:43):
I don't know if I would say it was of note,
but all I did was I read a lot that
day and then I, yeah, so I just worked, if
that's interesting. And then I lifted. I weightlifted that day,
and I went out to eat. So it was chill.
I really had no plans. Kept asking myself before the day,
like what do I want to do, and I was like,
I don't really know, So I guess it's fine for
(01:04):
me to not think so hard about it.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
If you know, I don't know. I have a trip
plan for later.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
But it's technically for my birthday, but it's not happening
all my birthday, so hey, I was just like, I'll
just chill.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I love that. Yeah, Sometimes just having a relaxed day
is the best.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think there's there
could be so much pressure on birthdays and sometimes it's
nice to be like, you know what, I'll just do
whatever it is I want and then I'll do a
trip later and that's fine, Like I don't know, taking
the pressure off.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah I does. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, you're always You're always up to stuffives. I'm always
interested to hear what your your trips you're going on
and everything.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I try. I try to keep things interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
So I think I think you do. I think you do. Yeah,
you much so, yes, I'm always I love checking in
with your cat today and your various travel.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Yeah, and the lifting was new to me. I was like,
what you're just yeah, a pile of secrets.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
A pile of secrets.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
That's the best I could think of at the point.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I think that's all.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
This secret secrets.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
You're a bundle of secrets that yeah, like pile is like, yeah,
this seems like a mistake. That's where like you just
like just go ahead and just throw things into a pile.
We'll put it in a bundle.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Thank you. That's a lot neater.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I love it well, speaking of someone who got up
to a lot in their life.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Can you tell us who we're talking about today, Eves, Yes.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
So we're talking today about Francis and Rolin Whipper, and
she was I talked about her in a recent episode
of On the which is another podcast that I do
is my cost Katie Mitchell, and that one's about black storytelling,
and we did an episode on diaries that black women
wrote in history, and Francis and Rollin Whipper was one
(03:13):
of the people who wrote diaries.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
She had a diary.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
That is one of the earliest known diaries written by
a black Southern woman that she wrote in eighteen sixty eight.
It's like a year's worth of her recordings from that year,
and it's a pretty interesting year in her life.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So I enjoyed reading it.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
And I think y'all know from other episodes of Female
First that, like I really enjoy letters and journals that
people have from their travels.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Like I think we talked about Mary Sekol.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
People's autobiographies when they have just kind of a daily
log of the things that they did, is super fascinating
to me, even though it's like the most mundane things.
You know, we'll talk about people who have all these
big accomplishments and traveled.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
All over the world or like.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
What seeing with different dignitaries and all that stuff is cool.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
But I also like the.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Everyday musings of getting to know people's internal processes and
how they choose to express those. So I was fascinated
by Francis and Rolin Whipper's diary. And she also had
a first and she wrote the first full ath biography
by black American about a free born black person, so
(04:33):
that is part of her story as well. And she's
just like a super interesting person. So that's what we'll
be talking about today.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I agree with you. I love diaries. I love like
just random notes you can find. I love these like instances.
I think they paint such a good picture of what
was going on at the time, even if it can
seem kind of mundane, I'm fascinated by it, like this
is what people were worried about, or this was what
was going on on, or I think it's such a
(05:02):
great snapshot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So I agree with you, Eve, Well, shall we get
into the history.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Francis and Rowlin was born free in November of eighteen
forty five in Charleston, South Carolina, and her parents were
Margarette or Margarette, not sure which way to pronounce that,
but Margaret and William Rolin, and they were also free,
not much more beyond her being free as known about
her mother, but her father was like from this wealthy
(05:43):
quote unquote.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Mulatto side, and they ended.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Up on their family ended up on a plantation near
Charleston and started getting into the lumber trade. So he
was kind of doing some merchant stuff, buying property. And
they had their family had enslaved three people I've seen.
I'm not sure if that's like how many people they
had enslaved over, you know, over time, if they had
(06:08):
even more than that. But they also had trading connections
with other cities. So they were these free people of
color who had high status in society and basically gained
a lot of privilege and access to things by virtue
of their proximity to whiteness. So that's part of their history.
(06:31):
But Francis, she had four sisters. They were Charlotte, Catherine, Luisa,
and Florence. And Francis was the oldest of all of them.
And they all got good educations. Like I was just saying,
she you know, they all they have money. So even
though it was illegal for black folks at the time.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Black schooling was still.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
They were able to be educated, and Francis went to
private schools and she had tutors in Charleston and she
learned French, and.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
She, you know, had access to.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Education because of her parents, and all her other sisters
did as well.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But at the same time, the Civil.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
War was about to pop off and things were looking
dicey for free black people in the South.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
You know, all of this.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
At the end of the day, if you're perceived as black,
you're perceived as black. So you know, even free people
of color face difficulties at the time. And in eighteen
fifty nine, Francis ended up going to Philadelphia and she
began attending the Institute for Colored Youth, which was founded
(07:42):
by Quakers, and she lived there with musician Morris Brown's family,
and her sisters followed her up there not long afterwards.
So for the next six years she stayed in Philadelphia.
I saw that she wasn't really in communication with her
parents during that time that we know of, and she
seemingly didn't graduate from the institute, so she may have
(08:03):
had to work at the time. But either way, after
the Civil War she went back to Charleston to teach
black people who had recently been emancipated. She taught at
a Freedman's Bureau school, and then she taught at an
American Missionary Society school.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
And when there is a notable case.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
In her history, and that's when she was traveling on
a steamer to Beaufort, South Carolina, the captain, whose name
was W. T.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Mcnelty, denied her access to a first class cabin.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
She said that he had violated a military order, and
so at that point he was tried before a military
court and he was found guilty and he got fined
two hundred and fifty dollars in eighteen sixty seven, which
I don't know how much that is in today's dollars,
but it's a lot more So around this time she
(08:54):
met Martin R. Delaney, and at this point he was
major in the army and he worked for the Freedman's
Bureau and he supported her. He was during her case process,
and I don't know exactly how this conversation looked, but
(09:15):
I'm very curious about it because she told him that
she wanted a literary career, and he encouraged her to
write his biography, and she agreed, and there's just there's
something about this interaction that really fascinates me, Like as
a writer, it just I just want to know how
that conversation went, because she hadn't written any biographies up
(09:36):
to this point, so one to ask somebody to write
your biography, I feel like you have.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
To feel you you have to feel a.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
Way about yourself before you're like, Okay, you know, I've
done some things and I want somebody to write my biography.
And at this point they had just met, like they didn't.
I'm not sure how long they knew each other up
until this point, but I don't think they have been
there were deep in the trenches of friendship. And she
also wasn't known for writing full length works, if barely
(10:10):
anything at this point because she was doing I believe
more teaching up until this point. But anyway, I'm very
curious about this conversation. I don't think there are any
records of this, because it seems like there's a lot
of vagueness around this.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
But when I'm looking at.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Her biography, I just like, this is a this is
a flashpoint for her. This is the first that we're
talking about today. And to not know exactly why he
asked her what he thought her merits were of being
able to do this is very interesting to me. So anyway,
that's that's by a side. But she hoped that, you know,
(10:49):
this biography would launch her literary career. And he gave
her all these materials, all these papers, and he told her, hey,
I will support you financially while you work on this book.
And she went to Boston to write the book and
she stayed there for eight months. So this is in
eighteen sixty eight, and that's the year that we have
(11:11):
where she writes in her diary, and so all her
surviving diary entries are from that year. I'm not sure
if she had diary, if she was doing diary entries
before then or after then, she very well could have been.
But this is these are the this is the extant
diary that we have of hers, and in it, she
(11:32):
is very she's very kind of like before I was
want to say that she was she's uppitty. At first
I kind of felt like, hey, I want to be
her friend. But then I realized that she kind of
had like her class consciousness was not completely there, Like
(11:53):
she was a little too bougie for my taste. But
if you read her diary, there are parts of it
that I kind of like, oh, I want to be
her friend, because she's kind of like she's going to
lectures for people like Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldell Emerson
and abolition sheets got to know people like the abolitionists
William Lord Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and William Nell, as well
(12:14):
as the scholar name Richard Greener, and she talks about
the difficulties that she had during that year.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
In her diary, she talks.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
About Martin Delaney and the troubles that she was going
through with him in that relationship, because apparently there was
some infidelity later on, and she talks about how he
wrote her a love letter, and then there are also
these other moments where she's in her very intellectual flow
(12:42):
where she's talking about how she.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Went to these lectures and she read this person's.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
Work and she thought he needed to do better. So
and she talks about how she had friends who she
would talk to about some of the literary works that
she had read and how their opinions on them could
be improved. But yeah, so you can read her diary online.
It is digitized online, so it's free. Everybody can go
(13:10):
check it out and read all her entries. There have
been people volunteers who worked on transcribing everything and her diary,
So if you're interested in diary entries like we are
here on Sminthea, then you can check those out.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
But the thing about.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
It is Delaney didn't keep sending her money, so she
had to sew and be a copyist, I think, to
support herself.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Which is sad because.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
I'm just trying to step in her shoes and think
like I want this thing to launch my career, and
she's already getting a taste of how this whole writing
life is.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
You don't get paid when you're supposed to, so.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
She had to support herself, but she did it, and
clearly she was dedicated to that work because she continued
it and she wrote the book that ended up being
called Life in Public Services of Major Martin R. Delaney
That was published in eighteen sixty eight, and later on
years later in eighteen eighty three, it was reissued, but
the publisher LEA. Shepherd, they published the biography under a
(14:14):
pseudonym that was Frank A. Rolin, and that was seemingly
the publisher's decision because they thought people weren't ready to
have a book by a black woman. But her family
also did call her Frank, so it seems like it
was a fine compromise for her, I guess, because she
was like, well, I guess they already called me frank anyway,
(14:36):
so it's cool.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
But yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
By July eighteen sixty eight, she had left Boston and
she went to Columbia, South Carolina, which is my birthplace,
which is not a thing people really need to know,
but it is, so there's a link there. And she
had gotten a job as a copyist, and William J.
Whipper had offered her the job. And he was a
(15:02):
lawyer from the North who had recently moved to South
Carolina and was elected to the state legislature.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
And he had people in his.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
Family already who were writers, editors, an abolitionists. So the
work that he ended up doing in politics and in editing,
you know, that is something that was in his family already.
And he though had his own controversies, so he has
his own history of the work that he did in
(15:36):
what in the Republican Party at the time during reconstruction,
and it said that he was often charged with political corruption,
and he had a reputation for gambling and drinking, and
just it seemed like being kind of like a party
guy who was sometimes up to no good, but like
had did a lot. But he offered Francis the job.
(16:02):
And when he did, he had a wife, but his
wife died before Francis.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Ended up coming to Colombia.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
And when she got to Columbia in August, he proposed
to her in less than two months, so they had
their whole dating period.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
But he proposed pretty quickly. But similarly, she was into it.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
Can't tell you why, if she was just that smitten
with him, or if there were other motivations.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
I have no idea, but she because that's quick.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
But you know, she went to talk to her parents
about it, and her father said the same thing, He said,
it's too soon. But her sister Charlotte said, like it
might have been some class stuff going on. Because there
is a quote from a publication in which Charlotte says,
in fact, our family never condescended to notice such small
(16:59):
people as Elliott and Whipper. Although Whipper married our sister Francis,
they are both Negroes, and our family is French, so
you know they were she was recognizing their status as
Mulato's and you can see from that sentiment that she
and her sisters as well distanced themselves from other black
(17:21):
people and kind of looked down on lower class folks.
They cared a lot about appearances and politeness and respectability politics,
and it is.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Clear that they did.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
They gained favor from this, Like there's a lot in
sources about them of talk about how elegant they were,
how refined they were, how polite they were, how they
were able to move through these political spaces kind of
like they're not like the other darkies situation with them
and ad around their complexion, all of that kind of
(17:56):
stuff going on. So they were clearly that up and
it worked in their favor. They already had wealth, so
they already had access to that kind of status and
all the traffics that came along with it. But the
way that they clearly carry themselves in like socialite society
also helped them. So they were viewed pretty positively by
(18:19):
the elite essentially. And it's interesting though because at this
while it's an interplay of like lack of consciousness, but
also some they did also pay attention to racial issues
and issues of gender, because they still advocated for equal
rights for black people, and they still all of the sisters,
(18:41):
including france Is, still advocated for equal rights for women.
But you know, I guess we contain multitudes, and they
definitely did. And we also like have to consider the
the the way that people of color moved in the
reconstruction era when they got a little taste of, you know,
(19:05):
a post slavery South, and how I'm sure all.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Of that glory and.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
Respectability looked like, you know, a shiny object at the
end of a tunnel, and they clearly got wrapped up
into that.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
But anyway, even you know, even with the.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
Disavowal of her father, her father's disavowal about her soon
to be husband, she still got married in September of
eighteen sixty eight, and she edited the Beaufort Tribune, and
she wrote some pieces for other newspapers under a pen name,
and she and her sisters advocated for rights during this time.
(19:50):
And Francis ended up having four children who lived beyond infancy,
although I think one of her other children also die
a little bit later on, but still young. But either way,
she and her sisters were moving through these fears in Colombia,
and her father died in eighteen eighty and she began
(20:14):
to administer the estate, but her mother challenged her administration.
I'm not sure the suit didn't go to trial, and
I'm not sure exactly why she challenged it, but that happened,
and by that year, Francis was also living in Washington, DC.
That was with her kids, but without her husband. So
(20:34):
her husband was in South Carolina. He was still doing
his political thing and apparently had a mistress at this time,
I believe, and Francis was in DC and she was
still publishing articles and essays and eventually landed a job
as a copyist with the US Department of Lance. She
(20:56):
did lose that job in eighteen eighty five the Democrats
gained control of the White House. But after that year,
between eighteen eighty five and eighteen eighty nine is unclear
exactly what she did from work, but she still got
All of her children were going to school, they graduated
(21:17):
from Howard University, and she kept writing, though it seems
like there are some she wrote under pseudonyms that are
some of which are unknown. But she kept writing, and
sometime after the mid eighteen ninety she had to go
(21:37):
back to South Carolina. Her health wasn't in the best shape,
and she ended up dying in Beaufort, South Carolina, on
October seventeenth, nineteen oh one, of tuberculosis. And she's today,
she's buried in Beaufort, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yeah, I mean, once again, it's quite a story. It's
hard to imagine having your diary digitized. I mean, it
sounds like she would be cool with it, right, but.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I mean I would to mine mine. I would do.
But it's just it's kind of odd to think everyone. Right.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
But it's interesting because the that you read from the sister,
I was like, this kind of reminds me of like
a Jane Austen novel, Like this feels like it's like
a dialogue straight out of except for is from the
black community perspective or the you know, like freight black community.
I'm like, huh, this feels very like enriched in like
society and our place in life and then who is
(22:49):
beneath us? And I was like, maybe it's because we
just did Bride prejudice, but I'm like, this feels familiar.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Yeah, there's I can't read a quote from her diary
if you want to hear one. Yeah, actually really because yeah, So,
like we talked about at the beginning of the episode,
the diaries that people wrote, they allowed people to have
a lot of insight into what daily life was like
(23:16):
for different kinds of people. So not only did she
talk about her social life life, she was also talking
about things that happened in society that you know, we
can we have other records of, but you know, we
get more of this personal insight of. So this is
one journal entry that she had in eighteen sixty eight.
(23:38):
This was on August second, so I think that was
she reached Columbia this day. So she says in this
diary entry, reached Columbia about six o'clock. Mister Hipper met
me at the depot with his buggy and took me
to my boarding place, where an elegant and spacious room
awaited me. Breakfast was tempting. My dear friend, mister Adams
was in to see me very soon after. My Charlotte
(24:01):
came to see me in the morning, but Kate did not.
Went to church in the morning with Harry Maxwell and
mister Adams. The governor and all the members were there
quite an excitement created on account of the disappearance of
Joe Howard after the visit of the Ku Klux Klan
at night. So that's the end of that journal entry.
(24:23):
And uh, it's a pretty shock. It's a cliffhanger, right,
It's kind of like you buried the lead in that one.
You're talking about your elegance spacis room. But I do
think it's interesting now that I think about the journal entry,
the contrast between its beginning and it's end, because she's
talking about this fancy situation where she's being catered to,
(24:43):
but at the same time she's saying racial the reckoning
of racial violence happening around her, and it's like those
things are right next to each other. She's in Columbia,
South Carolina, you know. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a
lot going on around her.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Interesting to see some of her talk about some of
those things. She talked about some of the anti slavery
meetings that she goes to. Yeah, so she was she
had her hands in all these.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Parts of.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Society and wrote about it in her diary. And I too,
I don't want my diary published.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I don't, you know, now that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
This is one of the interesting things about diaries is that,
at least in my understanding of them, you're writing it
for yourself with the idea no one else will ever
read it. Plus the thought, which is such a fascinating
I've never really considered it before, but that is interesting
that you're essentially just writing this thing to help you
(25:50):
process or think about things, but it is not for
anyone else to read. And you know, I like when
I travel, I always keep a diary, and it's mostly
so I can go back and remember things like oh yeah,
I remember that, but it's never with the idea I
will publish it. So this is this is fascinating. Her
diary got published. Yeah, well, I also don't put in
(26:15):
like I feel like she had some pretty good language
in hers mine, Like I just need to write it
down before I forget what happened.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Yeah, it's gonna be incoherent sometimes, right.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
I think mine was just like a lot of exclamation
points and astisks going. But why.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
I'm just here to process.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Or just be sad. Yeah. Again, Like it's interesting though,
the way she does build it up into like her
day and then just like the last comment of like
the glukluks Lam. They're here. Cool, You're like, oh god,
what is what's happening?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, once again a very good snapshot of what was
going on. I have to check it out. Yeah, I
don't want to look into what.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Well.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Thank you so much as always Eve's for being here,
for braving the technical difficulties that the Sminty team has
had over the past few days. It just keeps happening.
And yes, once again delated Happy birthday.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Where can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
You can find me on many other episodes of Sminty
doing female First talking about other women in history, and
you can also find me on Instagram at not Apologizing,
or you can just go to my website, which is
Eve's jeffcoat dot com.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
That's Eve spelled with why ves Jeffcoat just like it
sounds basically, and you can check me out on On Theme,
that is the podcast that I mentioned at the top
of the episode that I co host with Katie Mitchell.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
That is a.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
Podcast about black storytelling in all of its forms. And
if you're interested in hearing about other diaries, we have
a recent episode on that call it Diary Dialogues, So
you can go check that out and all the other episodes.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
Yeah, that's a good title. Yeah for the episode I
love you. Love it well, listeners, go do that. If
you haven't done it already. If you would like to
contact us, you can. You can email u Atephania mom
Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. Can find us on Twitter
at mostaff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok that Stuff
will Never told you. We have a tea public store,
and we have a book you can get wherever you
(28:34):
get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer
Christina or executive producer Maya and.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Your contributor Joey.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Thank you and thanks to you for.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Listening Stuff I Never told you the inspection of my
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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