April 26, 2023 • 40 mins
Carol sits down with author and historian Rita Roberts to talk about the importance of preserving African-American history and passing it on to future generations. Rita shares insights from her latest book, "I Can't Wait to Call You My Wife: African-American Letters of Love and Family in the Civil War Era", which tells the stories of Black men and women through letters written in the mid-1800’s. She details the courage and resilience of enslaved Black people as they defied unjust laws to create families and stay close to loved ones. Rita and Carol focus on the critical role parents, teachers, and adults play in teaching children about their heritage, and provide advice on how we all can work to ensure that a full and accurate account of African-American history is preserved and passed on for generations to come. Follow us at @GroundControlParenting and on groundcontrolparenting.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast created for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I'll be talking with some really interesting
people about the job and the joy of parenting. Today,
I am welcoming Professor Rita Roberts to the podcast. Rita
is a writer and historian, a scholar of nineteenth century
(00:27):
United States with a specialty in African American history. She
is a Nathaniel Wright Stephenson Chair in History and Biography
at Scripts College and a professor of History and of
Africana Studies at the Claremont Colleges. She is the author
of I Can't Wait to Call You My Wife, African
American Letters of Love and Family in the Civil War Era,
published in the fall of twenty twenty two. This book
(00:49):
features letters of African Americans from the mid to late
eighteen hundreds and enables readers to directly engage with a
black historical experience. Reader is a graduate of Southern Illinois
University and receive her master's and PhD from the University
of California at Berkeley. She's married to Terence J. Roberts,
and they have two adult daughters and two grandchildren. Welcome
to Ground Control Parenting.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Riata, thank you so much. I really appreciate being here.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I am so happy to have you here today to
talk about a subject gether so near and dear to me,
and what I'm always talking about on the podcast, and
that is the importance of knowing our history, our Black history,
and your book. This collection of amazing letters from the
Civil War era truly makes the history come alive and
I want to listener to hear all about it. So
let's get started. I will start by asking you the
(01:36):
first question which came to me when I started reading
the book. How did enslaved people come to write letters?
How did they learn to read and write?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That's the obvious question, right because we know that there
were states that did not allow enslaved people to learn
to read. It was against the law, but enslaved people
learn to read in spite of the law. We now know,
scholars know that about five to ten percent of enslaved
(02:08):
people throughout the South had skills of literacy. Various degrees
of literacy, some rudimentary and others quite eloquent. So there
is a level of some even went to school surreptitiously
but learned how to read and write.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Wow, that's amazing. And as I read through some of
the letters, I noted that there were some instances where
people couldn't read or write, but they would get other
people to write for them. And so they'd get other
literate black people to write for them. But even sometimes
slaveholders would write letters for their slaves. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Slaveholder's main goal was to have a docile and malleable
labor force, whether they were in the household or the
vast majority who were in the fields. And so when
they separated families, they would for a favored slave write
a letter to at least maintain contact with a husband,
(03:10):
a wife, or a child.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Ah. Yeah, your book is so it informs on so
many different levels. I was reading that slaveholders preferred enslaved
people to live on different plantations because it gave them
a better means of control. I mean, they could punish
slaves without worrying about their wife or their husband sort
of interfering.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Oh. And then just finally just sort of the and
still thinking about the process of it. So, once these
letters were written, how did they get sent exactly?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
That's the other main question. And so it wasn't unusual
for those who were hired out slaves to take a
letter to another plantation. Those who were hired out had
greater mobility, physical mobility, and also there were carriers, even
some whites who were willing friends who were willing to
(04:01):
take a letter to another state or or and then
have it mailed from Ohio, for example, to New York.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Oh. Oh interesting, I guess against once the letter got
to the post office, they couldn't tell whether a slave
had written it or anyone else had written it.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So there was no well, they wouldn't mail it in
the South, certainly the Deep South. They would have to
have someone take it outside of definitely the Deep South
and then mail it.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I see, I see, all right, So I guess when
if a if a black person walked in with a letter,
there was no in the South that So it was
such a pleasure to read through these letters. And we've
talked about this a little bit before, you and I,
but my goal in this podcast is in part to
think about what these letters can teach us, because it
(04:53):
gives you such insight into the world that we've certainly
learned about from the periphery. But but this really gives
you much more of a sense of the people. So
you've mentioned that the importance of family is one of
the things that these letters can teach us. Can you
talk a little about how that is well?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
That I think is the theme of the book, and
that what it tells us is about the resilience and
the role of family in any society. And so enslaved
people were really legally kinless. They were without kin under
the law. There was no legal marriage. No slave society
(05:33):
or slave state allowed for enslaved people to marry legally.
But in spite of the law, they do so because
they don't You've mentioned this before. They don't want to
have to have a contract in giving a husband rights
(05:54):
or a wife rights or rights over their children. Enslave
people are essentially powerless in this regard, but enslaved people,
in spite of that, have marriage. There it's not legal,
but they marry, and they imagine that their marriages will
be monogamous and permanent. Of course, this is a very
(06:17):
precarious relationship because they can be sold at any moment,
and the threat of sale is over the heads of
every enslaved person, child or adult, but they marry and
they create family, and they create community. And that tells
me the resilience of African American people in slavery, and
(06:41):
so it teaches us how important family is and how
important communication is to maintain these family relationships.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Oh. Absolutely, some of these letters really bring that home
in terms of showing the agony that some of the
enslaved people had trying to reconnect with their families. I mean,
first she had to find your family member who had
been sold off, and then you had to figure out
how to get them back and things I've learned. I mean,
I certainly have learned this conceptually before. But to read
(07:13):
about writing to relatives to try to get them to
purchase them, I mean that there's a tragic story in
one of the letters that you have of this poor
woman Emily, who was writing her mother about hoping that
she would purchase her. Can you tell that story? Emily's
mother was free, is that right? Yes?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yes, she probably lived in the north in New York.
She lived in New York, and she was probably a
worsher woman, a laundry woman or something. And Emily is
in Virginia, in the Alexandria, Virginia slave Celle, and I
have pictures. I have lots of photographs in this book.
(07:53):
And there's an example of where Emily was probably kept.
And well we know where she was kept. And she's
writing her mother and to say, I expect to go
away very shortly. She expects to be taken to the
New Orleans fancy girl market. It's a brothel. She is
(08:13):
evidently more European than African. And we know this because
that's what they required of these brothels. These young women
were called fancy girls, and white and slaveholders frequented these brothels.
And for Emily, she's saying, come now and see your
(08:35):
distressed and heartbroken daughter once more. Mother, my dear mother,
do not forsake me, for I feel desolate. Please come now.
She's in desperation. She knows she's going to be sold.
The amount of money that slave traders get for these
young girls is astronomical in that day and age. Over
(08:55):
two thousand dollars would not be unusual. And so she says, basically,
please come buy me, get me out of here.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Oh and unfortunately in that instance it couldn't happen.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I mean, no, she is taken away, but she i
guess we could say for her benefit, she does die
on the route to New Orleans, right, yeah, so sad.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
You know another thing that really impacted me in reading
this was the economics of it. Yes, I mean you're
not kidding with astronomical I mean I whipped out my
calculator and tried to do got on my phone to
see what. For example, if it was eighteen hundred dollars
for Emily in eighteen fifty, what is that now? And
(09:43):
it's like seventy thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And her mother was not a barely able to support herself.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I know, I mean, how is somebody at a raise
seventy one thousand dollars or seventy to fifty. I mean,
it's just in today's terms, But it's just hard. It's
always been hard to imagine, but these letters really drive
home how difficult it is now. There are some happier stories.
There was a woman in Ohio who was able, with
the help of abolitionists, to raise the nine hundred dollars
(10:14):
to buy her mother, which is just I mean to
your point about family and resilience. I mean, for her
to raise what was equivalent now to thirty five thousand
dollars to buy her mother and to have that family reunited.
It's just it's heartwarming and that that actually, you know,
(10:35):
there is a I keep I'm going to quote the
book a lot because I really love reading the stories.
I was just thinking, if you could imagine the joy
in a mother's heart to read her son writing I
am now a free man, living by the sweat of
my own brow, not serving another man. I mean, from
a parent's perspective. In slavery, it doesn't get any better
(10:57):
than that. And beyond the family and will continue to
circle back to that, they just show the realities of
living as an enslaved person. I mean the story that
I'd love for you to tell us the tragedy of
Dangerfield Nubi. There was one thousand dollar price tag on
his wife and one child, and he got so close, yes,
(11:23):
I forget what number, but he raised close to.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
One hundred and fifty, but it wasn't enough for the
whole family because he has several children. So Dangerfield is
the child of a slaveholder and the slaveholder's slave ah,
And so the father decides in the eighteen fifties to
(11:47):
take his slave woman and the mother of Dangerfield Nuby
and other slaves and moved to Ohio. He takes Dangerfield
with him. Dangerfield's gone and he must have told Harriet,
his wife, I'm going to raise the money and get
you out of there. Well, Harriet is living on that
(12:09):
hope and Dangerfield is also, but he finds it much
harder than he thought to be able to raise the money.
He raises about seven hundred and fifty and it's still
not enough. So the horrible thing is is that he
joins John Brown in John Brown's Insurrection, Our hopeful Insurrection
(12:30):
in Harper's Ferry, and he hopes to enslavery violently, which
finally it does. Slavery does in through the Civil War,
but he is killed and Harriet's letters are found on him.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yes, yeah, yeah, so sad. You mentioned resilience in an
earlier conversation. You said enslaved people were not mentally enslaved. No,
people were not the human The system was dehumanizing, and
you see that come through so many times and so
(13:07):
many of these letters. It's hardening even as we hear
the really sad stories. And I mean, it comes to
no surprise that the tragedy and the trauma of slavery.
But what you see consistently in these letters is people
convinced that they are willing to die for freedom, yes,
and bearing up under some of the most and writing
(13:28):
about some of the most unimaginable circumstances, holding out hope.
Harriet's letters to her husband just holding out hope. Understand
that was what was keeping them going.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
So and I should say that I stress that so
much because so many of my students, especially first year students,
somehow have the notion that enslaved people were dehumanized. The
system certainly was dehumanizing, but they were not dehumanized. In fact,
the letters, the notion of family reveals the extent to
(14:03):
which they are claiming their humanity. They are asserting their humanity,
and so they are enslaved bodily, but not mentally. And
I had to stress that with my students because they
must read it in some textbooks somewhere. I don't know why,
but many students have this idea.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, it's it is a commonly held idea, and I
think the further we get away from it from a
time standpoint, I think it's harder for children and students
to really appreciate because they put themselves in the shoes,
or if they try to put themselves in shoes, they say, oh,
I would never take this. I you know, I wouldn't.
(14:47):
Here's what I would do if How could that have
gone on for so long? When you see these letters,
you understand everyone was fighting as best they could. I mean,
it was good. No one was sort of accepting or
thinking that they deserved it. And as they were fighting,
they were keeping the humanity alive by creating these unions,
(15:08):
creating these bonds, encouraging each other, teaching each other to
read secretly when no one was looking. The other interesting
thing is the prevalence of religion in some of the letters,
that there's a lot, particularly between the parents and the children,
asking for God's protection. In fact, there was one man
named John Copeland who wrote to his parents on the
(15:31):
eve of his joining that Harper's fairy raid that you mentioned.
I mean, but he wrote knowing that there was a
good chance he wasn't going to come out on the
other side. And he's warning his parents about it. He's
preparing them right, right, But he assures them that he's
sought the Bible and he's found everlasting life. I mean,
(15:53):
I can't imagine from as a parent getting that letter,
particularly since by the time you get it, yes, the
Harper's very has happened, and you know your son didn't survive,
or you'll find out they didn't survive. But the son
talks about being willing to die and trying to liberate
a few of my poor and oppressed people. And I mean,
(16:14):
I love for the opportunity for students and for everyone
now to just to understand that, to know that there
was fight. I mean, everyone had a fight in them,
even though it might not have It wasn't successful a
lot of times.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
But it was exhibited in various ways. Family. Of course,
the formation of family is clearly a means of resistance.
And you know, slowing, burkedown, not working hard, there were
just many ways to exhibit the unwillingness to be this
compliant labor that the system wanted. But I think John
(16:48):
Copeland and the whole John Brown's incident also reveals the
extent to which slavery is controlled by the local and
state and federal government. It is not a system that
you can easily escape, and so the majority who were
(17:08):
able to escape lived close to the North Virginia and Maryland.
Those in the Deep South had almost an impossible task
to escape. Very few runaways, very few fugitives from the
Deep South.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Will be right back after these messages, welcome back to
the show.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
One of the other many things that struck me is
and I mentioned before, understanding the economics the business of slavery.
I was amazed by one person's letter. The slaveholders or
the enslavers were writing to slaves that had run away
to try to bargain to get them back.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yes, that's Jermaine Logan, Sarah, Look, there are other examples.
This is just one I had to include because it's
so arrogant.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Absolutely absolutely, this to me was I want you to
read from this and this letter to me both talked
about the business of slavery and the degree to which
parents fervently protected their children or spoke up for their children. So,
but this letter kind of encapsulates it all. It's the
arrogance of the slaveholder and the fortitude and the resilience
(18:18):
of the enslaved person. So tell us the story of so,
Reverend Lord.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
So, Jermaine Logan is now a minister. He has not
just self educated as Frederick Douglass does, but he actually
goes to school. When he escapes to the north, he
first goes to Canada, and then he goes to New York,
and he ends up living in Syracuse, and he becomes
a minister and has a pastorate. He has a congregation,
(18:44):
and so, not knowing that the words about to begin
and that slavery's going to end in five years, his
slaveholder writes to him. Her name is Sarah Log and
she says, I'll just read a bit. I write you
these lines to let you know the situation we are
in partly in consequence of your running away in Stilling
(19:05):
Old Rock. Are fine Mayor. Though we got the mayor back,
she was never worth much after you took her. And
as I now stand in need of some funds, I
have determined to sell you, and I've had an offer
for you, but did not see fit to take it.
If you will send me one thousand dollars in pay
for the old Mayor, I will give up all claim
(19:26):
I have to you. Write to me as soon as
you get these lines and let me know if you
will accept my proposition. In consequence of your running away,
we had to sell abe and n and twelve acres
of land, and I want you to send me the
money that I may be able to redeem the land
that you was the cause of our selling, And on
receipt of the above name some of money, I will
(19:48):
send you your bill of sale. Arrogance beyond arrogance.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
It's incredible. But what I love is his response to
her letter. Basically, she said, we sold off your brother
and your sister because you left. Now I'm going to
sell you in absentia because he's escaped. You're gone. But
I can stop all this if you send me one
(20:14):
thousand dollars for the horse and the land.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
A thousand dollars for him. And also she's adding, then
you have to okay for the horse. She doesn't tell
him how much it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
The horse that is back, but the horse that she
has already is over very much, she says. So tell
us how he responds, And it's.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
A very lengthy letter, but I will just provide an excerpt.
He says, you are a woman that had you a
woman's heart, you could never have insulted a brother by
telling him you sold his only remaining brother and sister
because he put himself beyond your power to convert him
into money. He is so eloquent. He's amazing.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Oh my goodness. There's another section where he tells her
he is indign beyond the power of words to express
at her cruelty. And he says she says in her
letter that she reared him as she reared her own
children's yes, and he says in response, women, did you
(21:16):
raise your own children for the market? Did you raise
them for the whipping post? Did you raise them to
be drove off in chained? I mean I was cheering
for him. Oh yeah, you could tell me yes, yes,
And and I love that. I mean again, back to
that resilience and that sort of that the people were
not not downtrodden. It was just their circumstance. Because he
(21:39):
goes on to say, you threatened me, and if you
send anybody for me, if I don't get them, all
the people around me are going to get them. I mean,
I just as painful as that exchange was, it was
just so revealing about how, first of all, how inhumane
people were, but also how that that resilience of course
(22:00):
strength was evident. And you know, I wanted to just
as I think about this, and one of the things
I really wanted to talk with you about is how,
since it's a parenting podcast and we're talking to parents,
how we can use these letters to help our children
understand our history. As a professor, I mean, you're helping
your students do this absolutely all the time. What kinds
(22:21):
of things have you have your students take away? I mean,
do you have you experienced a lot of surprise and
how the students react when they hear these stories.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
So I've always had students in my African American survey
history class, or I've taught courses on enslaved women in
the Antebellum era, but I often have them read the documents.
And this is how I went about collecting the documents.
These are letters I've had my students reading class and
to read Jermaine Logan. I would of course select a
male student and have them read with the booming voice
(22:55):
as Bessa, and then I would ask them what they
got out of it, and what I want them to
get out of it, of course, is not only the resilience,
but the degree to which Jermaine Logan's mother had to
have taught him his worth, his self worth, and that's
what enslaved parents are, those who are aunties, those who
(23:18):
adopted the children we call fictive kin on plantations or
in the urban areas. They help children realize that they
were of value. And not only do I want students
to understand that in their parenting skills if they become parents,
but that we need as individuals to affirm one another.
(23:42):
And that's I think one of the important skills that
we see coming out of these letters. The ability to
say I love you in just multiple ways and that
you are important.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Absolutely, I mean the confidence that not only that you
see in these letters people who were against the law,
against the law in some instances for them to be
able to read and write, they are defying the law.
They are speaking of how they feel. They are tapping
into emotions that are not welcomed in any other part
(24:18):
of their world, as they have not viewed to even
have these emotions. And I can see so clearly how
just reading this is, and I hope this would be
for all of our children, just confidence boosting. I mean
to know that these are our ancestors, to understand that
they have endured so much, they persevered, and that we
stand on their shoulders. Really, we can imbue all of
(24:39):
our children with this sense of you come from such
a legacy, which is such a great legacy, such a
strong stock. Now, speaking of legacy, I do have to
ask you about your own children, because I know they
were raised. I have asked you before about how, as
a professor of African American history, armed with all this information,
how did you impart it to your children? And you've
(24:59):
said that you certainly did, but your husband did as well.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yes, yes, Well, our daughters were fortunate in that their
father is one of the Little Rock nine who integrated
Central High School in Little Rock in nineteen fifty seven.
And so they grew up with their father being interviewed.
He's written a couple of books and talking to them
about his own experience and what it meant and why
(25:24):
he went to Central. So from a very very young
age they had been exposed to We lived in California,
but they've been exposed to what happened to their dad,
and in various ways they learned how to navigate racial
system that told them that they were not worth as
(25:45):
much as a person of European ancestry. And we continue
to help them to navigate that. And I was talking
to my daughter, my older daughter, not too long ago,
and she was saying I was telling her that I
was going to be on this podcast and saying, one
of the questions has to do with how you navigated race.
And she said, don't you remember, Mom, I came home
(26:07):
and someone had written the in word on my book
and she said, and I took it to you, and
you pulled out crayons and said, look at the crayons.
And we looked at the crayons. And she was only
about six or so, and she said, and you talked
about how beautiful all the colors were and how beautiful
(26:29):
we all are, and that how we're all worth far more.
And people who want to select one color and say
one color is superior are really very ignorant and they
have a different agenda than God does.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
That's great, great on so many fronts. Great that your daughter,
who is an adult, now remember that I know, and
great to give her that message. And I mean, I
talk about this all the time. But the extent to
which we let our children know about history, generally about
our history. And you find heroes in history everywhere. It's
(27:05):
not they don't have to be the sort of the
famous people that you hear about, but just people who
have overcome in whatever their lives are, and certainly it's
such a gift to be able to give our children
the tools that that creates. Now, I love quoting you
because you had in a previous conversation, you had this
great line that's going to stay with me forever, and
(27:27):
this pertains to the teaching of history and the understanding
of history, and you said history does not comfort any
of us. And I love that line because one of
the other things that came clear to me in this
book was that even all that I knew about slavery,
there was some in addition to the ugly underbelly of
(27:49):
the practice itself, within the black community, there was some
terrible revelations, and one of them was that black people
own slaves and the caste system of the color cast
So can you talk a little bit about the mulatto elite,
the sort of existence of black people that owned slaves
(28:10):
and were sort of in a different category.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
So the malatto elite existed throughout the South and of
course in the North as well, and they were individuals
who were often more European than African, especially in Louisiana.
And these individuals, some of them, owned slaves. The vast
majority of those who owned slaves and who are identified
(28:35):
as black by the system, not by themselves, on their
own relatives, on their children. They purchased their children out
of slavery. But in the Antebellum period, all most of
the state, I think all of the states passed laws
against manumission. You could not manumit your slave, you couldn't
(28:55):
free them. So they purchased them and they owned them.
Purchased a white I feel better about that. Yeah, So
those are the majority. But then there is this tiny
minority who actually owned slaves on plantations and I include
a family, the Ellison family in South Carolina, and they
go about operating the system just as a European would.
(29:19):
There seems to be no difference between the treatment that
they give their slaves as opposed to a European. And
they don't identify as black. They identify as mulatto, and
they marry individuals who will complement that color so that
they are lightened and enlightened, and the hair is straighter
(29:40):
and straighter and so on as a means to protect
them from being enslaved. They don't have the same rights
as a person who is considered white. But if they
continue to marry white they eventually become white.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
So I mean what I appreciated in reading about this
is that we all need to know these things as well.
I mean, we need to know. The other thing that
really struck me that I haven't thought about is that freedom,
in some instances, while it in one sense was absolute
and all you wanted, it wasn't all that great.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
I mean for many people that were not free, people
of African ancestry. So some scholars call it quasi free,
half free. Because in almost all the states in the
North that have eliminated slavery for the most part, they
still do not allow black men to vote. Only men
(30:41):
could vote. They don't allow individuals to have right of
court testimony. So that means that if someone comes into
your business, say you own a store and this happened,
and a white person comes in and stills your boots
this happened in California, way of taking that person to
(31:02):
court unless a white person is willing to testify for you.
So if you have no right of court testimony, it's
very hard to own a business. If you cannot serve
on a jury, which none could, you cannot represent the
interest of everyone in the community. And if you can't vote.
(31:22):
You can't you're not involved in politics. You're not really
considered part of what we call the body politic.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right, right, So freedom, while much preferred to enslavement, wasn't
the freedom that we think of.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
As one enslaved man said after the Civil War, he
was trying to figure out, so what is it that
I can do? And he just basically said, how free
is free?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Right? Right? Right? And in some instances you had post
Civil War, I was reading in your book that people
were being offered to come back to work for the
slave former slaveholders because I mean, again the economics of it,
they didn't have anybody to work, right, And so there
was one funny letter where the person was writing back
(32:14):
to the slaveholder saying, I worked for you for X
number of years as a slave, My family and I
will come back and will work for you for a
wage if you give us all of the money that
we were be owed, if we had paid us all along.
And I thought, well, and he adds with.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Interests, and he also says, this is Jordan Anderson on
page two twenty of my book. And he also says,
by the way in Ohio, which is where he's living,
my wife is called missus Anderson, So he is actually
not only talking about a financial arrangement, but he is
(32:52):
expecting respect from this slaveholder. And of course none of
that is going to happen, but he's letting him know,
and he's willing to subtract the amount it costs to
have two threepaired. I love this letter. It's just one
of my favorite letters.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, we talked about, you know,
your line history doesn't comfort any of us has really
struck home with me, particularly now because we're in a
world where people are trying to limit the teaching of
history because it's potential to make people uncomfortable. And I
certainly that is it is tragic and wrong. What's interesting
(33:36):
is that we all, you know, we talked about, as
I said, the revelation in your book to me, to
the extent that black's own slaves. We all need to
be more educated about all of slavery. I mean that,
you know, there's the fact that there was an African
queen who sold black people into slavery. I mean said differently,
there's going to be things about our own African American
(33:59):
history which will be uncomfortable for African Americans to learn, yes,
but because that exists, that does not mean that we
should not learn it. I mean, if we could move
beyond the shame that's associated with it to just understand
the lessons of history and transparency. I mean, this current
climate in arguing for ignorance makes no sense to me whatsoever,
(34:20):
and I imagine as a professor.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Of history, it's frustrating. We have conversations among ourselves, and
I think that the real agenda is not to have
a critical thinking public, because then they might think about
their own circumstances a little bit more. They might begin
thinking critically about their economic circumstances. So if you think simplistically,
(34:44):
autocrats love simplistic answers. If you have a public that
only thinks in terms of black and white, then you
can control them. You can manipulate their behavior and their thinking.
And I think that's what we see among some of
those who are advocating for a comfortable history. They are
(35:08):
not telling young Irish Americans not to learn about what
happened in Ireland. That's not the issue. They do not
want young people of any color to learn what happened
in this country, and so they want a very simplistic
view of the past, and the past is very complex,
(35:32):
just as we've been saying, history is complex, and that's
what helps us to begin thinking. But if you don't
want a thinking public, then you know, you give them pablum,
You give them something that doesn't challenge them.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Well, to create a thinking public, a great prescription is
for them to read your book because and I urge
everyone listening to read it, because it is eye opening.
Certainly it's a great historical lesson, but it also is
really engaging and it's lovely to read, to imagine lives,
(36:11):
moments of happiness in lives that you wouldn't have imagined
to be filled with many of them. And so I
thank you so much for presenting these letters to us
in such a welcome way, and your analysis through it
is really great. So I'm hopeful that everybody will take
advantage of this and use the content of your book
as a weapon to well two things. One as fuel
(36:33):
to provide your children with really interesting history. I mean,
be great to sort of read them with your kids
so you can sort of imagine what it's like. But
so it's fuel, and then it's a weapon against this
concept that when you do learn about slavery, that you
only learn about it as this dehumanizing the people, and
that the slaves themselves had no hope and had no
(36:57):
courage except for the few that you are, the few
slave heroines and heroes know about Yes, that we all
know about it. So, Frida Roberts, I'm gonna wrap it
up here. I thank you so much, so much for
joining me on this podcast, and I know that everyone
listening really appreciates it, and I know they're going to
run out and find your book, buy it and read it.
(37:20):
But there's one more thing before we go, sure, and
that I want you to play the GCP Lightning Round.
I'll give you. This is a two question lightning round
for you, and the first one is what is your
favorite poem or saying?
Speaker 2 (37:33):
So my favorite saying has lately become WB du Boys
in nineteen oh five wrote and said that the United
States will either destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the
United States.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
That is a good one. Powerful, I mean powerful, and
talk about history repeating itself, I mean d nineteen oh five. Yes, yeah,
as relevant today. Yes. And tell me your two favorite
children's books and they can be books that you grew
up with, or that you read to your daughters, or
that you read with your grandchildren.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
So the favorite book I think I was talking to
my girls Matthew, Mark Luke, and John by pearl s Buck.
I read this to our daughters when they were quite young.
And it's a book about Eurasian children, children who were
rejected in Vietnam and in China, who were both European
(38:35):
and Asian and lived really on their own, little young
children living out of garbage cans, homeless. And I read
that to them, written in a children's for a children's understanding,
and I think it really helped shape their sense of
who they are and the importance of caring for other
(38:57):
human beings.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Wow, I don't know that book. I mean, I certainly
know pearl as Buck, but.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
I will spend a long time ago. I don't know
if it's still in print. And then you know, I
have fun memories of my mother gathering as girls, not
not my brother, but as girls in the evening and
reading Little Women.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Oh, Little Women.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
So I learned how sore I loved sort of historical
novels even as kid, and I think that was partly why.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
You know. So I'm so glad you said that I
grew up with a copy of Little Women, and I
would read Oh Joe and Meg haaning. Oh man, I
love that book. I haven't thought about that a long time.
That was a great one. So those are great answers.
And again, thank you so much, Rita Roberts for joining
us today.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
I enjoyed it. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
I hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation and that you'll
come back for more. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever
you listen to podcasts and tell your friends. For more
parenting info and advice, please check out the Ground Control
Parenting blog at Groundcontrolparenting dot com. You can also find
us on Instagram and Facebook at ground Control Parenting and
(40:08):
on LinkedIn under Carol Sutton Lewis. The Ground Control Parenting
with Carol Sutton Lewis podcast is a part of the
Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartMedia. Until the
next time, take care and thanks for listening.
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast created for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I'll be talking with some really interesting
people about the job and the joy of parenting. Today,
I am welcoming Professor Rita Roberts to the podcast. Rita
is a writer and historian, a scholar of nineteenth century
(00:27):
United States with a specialty in African American history. She
is a Nathaniel Wright Stephenson Chair in History and Biography
at Scripts College and a professor of History and of
Africana Studies at the Claremont Colleges. She is the author
of I Can't Wait to Call You My Wife, African
American Letters of Love and Family in the Civil War Era,
published in the fall of twenty twenty two. This book
(00:49):
features letters of African Americans from the mid to late
eighteen hundreds and enables readers to directly engage with a
black historical experience. Reader is a graduate of Southern Illinois
University and receive her master's and PhD from the University
of California at Berkeley. She's married to Terence J. Roberts,
and they have two adult daughters and two grandchildren. Welcome
to Ground Control Parenting.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Riata, thank you so much. I really appreciate being here.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I am so happy to have you here today to
talk about a subject gether so near and dear to me,
and what I'm always talking about on the podcast, and
that is the importance of knowing our history, our Black history,
and your book. This collection of amazing letters from the
Civil War era truly makes the history come alive and
I want to listener to hear all about it. So
let's get started. I will start by asking you the
(01:36):
first question which came to me when I started reading
the book. How did enslaved people come to write letters?
How did they learn to read and write?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That's the obvious question, right because we know that there
were states that did not allow enslaved people to learn
to read. It was against the law, but enslaved people
learn to read in spite of the law. We now know,
scholars know that about five to ten percent of enslaved
(02:08):
people throughout the South had skills of literacy. Various degrees
of literacy, some rudimentary and others quite eloquent. So there
is a level of some even went to school surreptitiously
but learned how to read and write.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Wow, that's amazing. And as I read through some of
the letters, I noted that there were some instances where
people couldn't read or write, but they would get other
people to write for them. And so they'd get other
literate black people to write for them. But even sometimes
slaveholders would write letters for their slaves. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Slaveholder's main goal was to have a docile and malleable
labor force, whether they were in the household or the
vast majority who were in the fields. And so when
they separated families, they would for a favored slave write
a letter to at least maintain contact with a husband,
(03:10):
a wife, or a child.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Ah. Yeah, your book is so it informs on so
many different levels. I was reading that slaveholders preferred enslaved
people to live on different plantations because it gave them
a better means of control. I mean, they could punish
slaves without worrying about their wife or their husband sort
of interfering.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Oh. And then just finally just sort of the and
still thinking about the process of it. So, once these
letters were written, how did they get sent exactly?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
That's the other main question. And so it wasn't unusual
for those who were hired out slaves to take a
letter to another plantation. Those who were hired out had
greater mobility, physical mobility, and also there were carriers, even
some whites who were willing friends who were willing to
(04:01):
take a letter to another state or or and then
have it mailed from Ohio, for example, to New York.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Oh. Oh interesting, I guess against once the letter got
to the post office, they couldn't tell whether a slave
had written it or anyone else had written it.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So there was no well, they wouldn't mail it in
the South, certainly the Deep South. They would have to
have someone take it outside of definitely the Deep South
and then mail it.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I see, I see, all right, So I guess when
if a if a black person walked in with a letter,
there was no in the South that So it was
such a pleasure to read through these letters. And we've
talked about this a little bit before, you and I,
but my goal in this podcast is in part to
think about what these letters can teach us, because it
(04:53):
gives you such insight into the world that we've certainly
learned about from the periphery. But but this really gives
you much more of a sense of the people. So
you've mentioned that the importance of family is one of
the things that these letters can teach us. Can you
talk a little about how that is well?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
That I think is the theme of the book, and
that what it tells us is about the resilience and
the role of family in any society. And so enslaved
people were really legally kinless. They were without kin under
the law. There was no legal marriage. No slave society
(05:33):
or slave state allowed for enslaved people to marry legally.
But in spite of the law, they do so because
they don't You've mentioned this before. They don't want to
have to have a contract in giving a husband rights
(05:54):
or a wife rights or rights over their children. Enslave
people are essentially powerless in this regard, but enslaved people,
in spite of that, have marriage. There it's not legal,
but they marry, and they imagine that their marriages will
be monogamous and permanent. Of course, this is a very
(06:17):
precarious relationship because they can be sold at any moment,
and the threat of sale is over the heads of
every enslaved person, child or adult, but they marry and
they create family, and they create community. And that tells
me the resilience of African American people in slavery, and
(06:41):
so it teaches us how important family is and how
important communication is to maintain these family relationships.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Oh. Absolutely, some of these letters really bring that home
in terms of showing the agony that some of the
enslaved people had trying to reconnect with their families. I mean,
first she had to find your family member who had
been sold off, and then you had to figure out
how to get them back and things I've learned. I mean,
I certainly have learned this conceptually before. But to read
(07:13):
about writing to relatives to try to get them to
purchase them, I mean that there's a tragic story in
one of the letters that you have of this poor
woman Emily, who was writing her mother about hoping that
she would purchase her. Can you tell that story? Emily's
mother was free, is that right? Yes?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yes, she probably lived in the north in New York.
She lived in New York, and she was probably a
worsher woman, a laundry woman or something. And Emily is
in Virginia, in the Alexandria, Virginia slave Celle, and I
have pictures. I have lots of photographs in this book.
(07:53):
And there's an example of where Emily was probably kept.
And well we know where she was kept. And she's
writing her mother and to say, I expect to go
away very shortly. She expects to be taken to the
New Orleans fancy girl market. It's a brothel. She is
(08:13):
evidently more European than African. And we know this because
that's what they required of these brothels. These young women
were called fancy girls, and white and slaveholders frequented these brothels.
And for Emily, she's saying, come now and see your
(08:35):
distressed and heartbroken daughter once more. Mother, my dear mother,
do not forsake me, for I feel desolate. Please come now.
She's in desperation. She knows she's going to be sold.
The amount of money that slave traders get for these
young girls is astronomical in that day and age. Over
(08:55):
two thousand dollars would not be unusual. And so she says, basically,
please come buy me, get me out of here.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Oh and unfortunately in that instance it couldn't happen.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I mean, no, she is taken away, but she i
guess we could say for her benefit, she does die
on the route to New Orleans, right, yeah, so sad.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
You know another thing that really impacted me in reading
this was the economics of it. Yes, I mean you're
not kidding with astronomical I mean I whipped out my
calculator and tried to do got on my phone to
see what. For example, if it was eighteen hundred dollars
for Emily in eighteen fifty, what is that now? And
(09:43):
it's like seventy thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And her mother was not a barely able to support herself.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I know, I mean, how is somebody at a raise
seventy one thousand dollars or seventy to fifty. I mean,
it's just in today's terms, But it's just hard. It's
always been hard to imagine, but these letters really drive
home how difficult it is now. There are some happier stories.
There was a woman in Ohio who was able, with
the help of abolitionists, to raise the nine hundred dollars
(10:14):
to buy her mother, which is just I mean to
your point about family and resilience. I mean, for her
to raise what was equivalent now to thirty five thousand
dollars to buy her mother and to have that family reunited.
It's just it's heartwarming and that that actually, you know,
(10:35):
there is a I keep I'm going to quote the
book a lot because I really love reading the stories.
I was just thinking, if you could imagine the joy
in a mother's heart to read her son writing I
am now a free man, living by the sweat of
my own brow, not serving another man. I mean, from
a parent's perspective. In slavery, it doesn't get any better
(10:57):
than that. And beyond the family and will continue to
circle back to that, they just show the realities of
living as an enslaved person. I mean the story that
I'd love for you to tell us the tragedy of
Dangerfield Nubi. There was one thousand dollar price tag on
his wife and one child, and he got so close, yes,
(11:23):
I forget what number, but he raised close to.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
One hundred and fifty, but it wasn't enough for the
whole family because he has several children. So Dangerfield is
the child of a slaveholder and the slaveholder's slave ah,
And so the father decides in the eighteen fifties to
(11:47):
take his slave woman and the mother of Dangerfield Nuby
and other slaves and moved to Ohio. He takes Dangerfield
with him. Dangerfield's gone and he must have told Harriet,
his wife, I'm going to raise the money and get
you out of there. Well, Harriet is living on that
(12:09):
hope and Dangerfield is also, but he finds it much
harder than he thought to be able to raise the money.
He raises about seven hundred and fifty and it's still
not enough. So the horrible thing is is that he
joins John Brown in John Brown's Insurrection, Our hopeful Insurrection
(12:30):
in Harper's Ferry, and he hopes to enslavery violently, which
finally it does. Slavery does in through the Civil War,
but he is killed and Harriet's letters are found on him.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yes, yeah, yeah, so sad. You mentioned resilience in an
earlier conversation. You said enslaved people were not mentally enslaved. No,
people were not the human The system was dehumanizing, and
you see that come through so many times and so
(13:07):
many of these letters. It's hardening even as we hear
the really sad stories. And I mean, it comes to
no surprise that the tragedy and the trauma of slavery.
But what you see consistently in these letters is people
convinced that they are willing to die for freedom, yes,
and bearing up under some of the most and writing
(13:28):
about some of the most unimaginable circumstances, holding out hope.
Harriet's letters to her husband just holding out hope. Understand
that was what was keeping them going.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
So and I should say that I stress that so
much because so many of my students, especially first year students,
somehow have the notion that enslaved people were dehumanized. The
system certainly was dehumanizing, but they were not dehumanized. In fact,
the letters, the notion of family reveals the extent to
(14:03):
which they are claiming their humanity. They are asserting their humanity,
and so they are enslaved bodily, but not mentally. And
I had to stress that with my students because they
must read it in some textbooks somewhere. I don't know why,
but many students have this idea.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, it's it is a commonly held idea, and I
think the further we get away from it from a
time standpoint, I think it's harder for children and students
to really appreciate because they put themselves in the shoes,
or if they try to put themselves in shoes, they say, oh,
I would never take this. I you know, I wouldn't.
(14:47):
Here's what I would do if How could that have
gone on for so long? When you see these letters,
you understand everyone was fighting as best they could. I mean,
it was good. No one was sort of accepting or
thinking that they deserved it. And as they were fighting,
they were keeping the humanity alive by creating these unions,
(15:08):
creating these bonds, encouraging each other, teaching each other to
read secretly when no one was looking. The other interesting
thing is the prevalence of religion in some of the letters,
that there's a lot, particularly between the parents and the children,
asking for God's protection. In fact, there was one man
named John Copeland who wrote to his parents on the
(15:31):
eve of his joining that Harper's fairy raid that you mentioned.
I mean, but he wrote knowing that there was a
good chance he wasn't going to come out on the
other side. And he's warning his parents about it. He's
preparing them right, right, But he assures them that he's
sought the Bible and he's found everlasting life. I mean,
(15:53):
I can't imagine from as a parent getting that letter,
particularly since by the time you get it, yes, the
Harper's very has happened, and you know your son didn't survive,
or you'll find out they didn't survive. But the son
talks about being willing to die and trying to liberate
a few of my poor and oppressed people. And I mean,
(16:14):
I love for the opportunity for students and for everyone
now to just to understand that, to know that there
was fight. I mean, everyone had a fight in them,
even though it might not have It wasn't successful a
lot of times.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
But it was exhibited in various ways. Family. Of course,
the formation of family is clearly a means of resistance.
And you know, slowing, burkedown, not working hard, there were
just many ways to exhibit the unwillingness to be this
compliant labor that the system wanted. But I think John
(16:48):
Copeland and the whole John Brown's incident also reveals the
extent to which slavery is controlled by the local and
state and federal government. It is not a system that
you can easily escape, and so the majority who were
(17:08):
able to escape lived close to the North Virginia and Maryland.
Those in the Deep South had almost an impossible task
to escape. Very few runaways, very few fugitives from the
Deep South.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Will be right back after these messages, welcome back to
the show.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
One of the other many things that struck me is
and I mentioned before, understanding the economics the business of slavery.
I was amazed by one person's letter. The slaveholders or
the enslavers were writing to slaves that had run away
to try to bargain to get them back.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yes, that's Jermaine Logan, Sarah, Look, there are other examples.
This is just one I had to include because it's
so arrogant.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Absolutely absolutely, this to me was I want you to
read from this and this letter to me both talked
about the business of slavery and the degree to which
parents fervently protected their children or spoke up for their children. So,
but this letter kind of encapsulates it all. It's the
arrogance of the slaveholder and the fortitude and the resilience
(18:18):
of the enslaved person. So tell us the story of so,
Reverend Lord.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
So, Jermaine Logan is now a minister. He has not
just self educated as Frederick Douglass does, but he actually
goes to school. When he escapes to the north, he
first goes to Canada, and then he goes to New York,
and he ends up living in Syracuse, and he becomes
a minister and has a pastorate. He has a congregation,
(18:44):
and so, not knowing that the words about to begin
and that slavery's going to end in five years, his
slaveholder writes to him. Her name is Sarah Log and
she says, I'll just read a bit. I write you
these lines to let you know the situation we are
in partly in consequence of your running away in Stilling
(19:05):
Old Rock. Are fine Mayor. Though we got the mayor back,
she was never worth much after you took her. And
as I now stand in need of some funds, I
have determined to sell you, and I've had an offer
for you, but did not see fit to take it.
If you will send me one thousand dollars in pay
for the old Mayor, I will give up all claim
(19:26):
I have to you. Write to me as soon as
you get these lines and let me know if you
will accept my proposition. In consequence of your running away,
we had to sell abe and n and twelve acres
of land, and I want you to send me the
money that I may be able to redeem the land
that you was the cause of our selling, And on
receipt of the above name some of money, I will
(19:48):
send you your bill of sale. Arrogance beyond arrogance.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
It's incredible. But what I love is his response to
her letter. Basically, she said, we sold off your brother
and your sister because you left. Now I'm going to
sell you in absentia because he's escaped. You're gone. But
I can stop all this if you send me one
(20:14):
thousand dollars for the horse and the land.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
A thousand dollars for him. And also she's adding, then
you have to okay for the horse. She doesn't tell
him how much it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
The horse that is back, but the horse that she
has already is over very much, she says. So tell
us how he responds, And it's.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
A very lengthy letter, but I will just provide an excerpt.
He says, you are a woman that had you a
woman's heart, you could never have insulted a brother by
telling him you sold his only remaining brother and sister
because he put himself beyond your power to convert him
into money. He is so eloquent. He's amazing.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Oh my goodness. There's another section where he tells her
he is indign beyond the power of words to express
at her cruelty. And he says she says in her
letter that she reared him as she reared her own
children's yes, and he says in response, women, did you
(21:16):
raise your own children for the market? Did you raise
them for the whipping post? Did you raise them to
be drove off in chained? I mean I was cheering
for him. Oh yeah, you could tell me yes, yes,
And and I love that. I mean again, back to
that resilience and that sort of that the people were
not not downtrodden. It was just their circumstance. Because he
(21:39):
goes on to say, you threatened me, and if you
send anybody for me, if I don't get them, all
the people around me are going to get them. I mean,
I just as painful as that exchange was, it was
just so revealing about how, first of all, how inhumane
people were, but also how that that resilience of course
(22:00):
strength was evident. And you know, I wanted to just
as I think about this, and one of the things
I really wanted to talk with you about is how,
since it's a parenting podcast and we're talking to parents,
how we can use these letters to help our children
understand our history. As a professor, I mean, you're helping
your students do this absolutely all the time. What kinds
(22:21):
of things have you have your students take away? I mean,
do you have you experienced a lot of surprise and
how the students react when they hear these stories.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
So I've always had students in my African American survey
history class, or I've taught courses on enslaved women in
the Antebellum era, but I often have them read the documents.
And this is how I went about collecting the documents.
These are letters I've had my students reading class and
to read Jermaine Logan. I would of course select a
male student and have them read with the booming voice
(22:55):
as Bessa, and then I would ask them what they
got out of it, and what I want them to
get out of it, of course, is not only the resilience,
but the degree to which Jermaine Logan's mother had to
have taught him his worth, his self worth, and that's
what enslaved parents are, those who are aunties, those who
(23:18):
adopted the children we call fictive kin on plantations or
in the urban areas. They help children realize that they
were of value. And not only do I want students
to understand that in their parenting skills if they become parents,
but that we need as individuals to affirm one another.
(23:42):
And that's I think one of the important skills that
we see coming out of these letters. The ability to
say I love you in just multiple ways and that
you are important.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Absolutely, I mean the confidence that not only that you
see in these letters people who were against the law,
against the law in some instances for them to be
able to read and write, they are defying the law.
They are speaking of how they feel. They are tapping
into emotions that are not welcomed in any other part
(24:18):
of their world, as they have not viewed to even
have these emotions. And I can see so clearly how
just reading this is, and I hope this would be
for all of our children, just confidence boosting. I mean
to know that these are our ancestors, to understand that
they have endured so much, they persevered, and that we
stand on their shoulders. Really, we can imbue all of
(24:39):
our children with this sense of you come from such
a legacy, which is such a great legacy, such a
strong stock. Now, speaking of legacy, I do have to
ask you about your own children, because I know they
were raised. I have asked you before about how, as
a professor of African American history, armed with all this information,
how did you impart it to your children? And you've
(24:59):
said that you certainly did, but your husband did as well.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yes, yes, Well, our daughters were fortunate in that their
father is one of the Little Rock nine who integrated
Central High School in Little Rock in nineteen fifty seven.
And so they grew up with their father being interviewed.
He's written a couple of books and talking to them
about his own experience and what it meant and why
(25:24):
he went to Central. So from a very very young
age they had been exposed to We lived in California,
but they've been exposed to what happened to their dad,
and in various ways they learned how to navigate racial
system that told them that they were not worth as
(25:45):
much as a person of European ancestry. And we continue
to help them to navigate that. And I was talking
to my daughter, my older daughter, not too long ago,
and she was saying I was telling her that I
was going to be on this podcast and saying, one
of the questions has to do with how you navigated race.
And she said, don't you remember, Mom, I came home
(26:07):
and someone had written the in word on my book
and she said, and I took it to you, and
you pulled out crayons and said, look at the crayons.
And we looked at the crayons. And she was only
about six or so, and she said, and you talked
about how beautiful all the colors were and how beautiful
(26:29):
we all are, and that how we're all worth far more.
And people who want to select one color and say
one color is superior are really very ignorant and they
have a different agenda than God does.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
That's great, great on so many fronts. Great that your daughter,
who is an adult, now remember that I know, and
great to give her that message. And I mean, I
talk about this all the time. But the extent to
which we let our children know about history, generally about
our history. And you find heroes in history everywhere. It's
(27:05):
not they don't have to be the sort of the
famous people that you hear about, but just people who
have overcome in whatever their lives are, and certainly it's
such a gift to be able to give our children
the tools that that creates. Now, I love quoting you
because you had in a previous conversation, you had this
great line that's going to stay with me forever, and
(27:27):
this pertains to the teaching of history and the understanding
of history, and you said history does not comfort any
of us. And I love that line because one of
the other things that came clear to me in this
book was that even all that I knew about slavery,
there was some in addition to the ugly underbelly of
(27:49):
the practice itself, within the black community, there was some
terrible revelations, and one of them was that black people
own slaves and the caste system of the color cast
So can you talk a little bit about the mulatto elite,
the sort of existence of black people that owned slaves
(28:10):
and were sort of in a different category.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
So the malatto elite existed throughout the South and of
course in the North as well, and they were individuals
who were often more European than African, especially in Louisiana.
And these individuals, some of them, owned slaves. The vast
majority of those who owned slaves and who are identified
(28:35):
as black by the system, not by themselves, on their
own relatives, on their children. They purchased their children out
of slavery. But in the Antebellum period, all most of
the state, I think all of the states passed laws
against manumission. You could not manumit your slave, you couldn't
(28:55):
free them. So they purchased them and they owned them.
Purchased a white I feel better about that. Yeah, So
those are the majority. But then there is this tiny
minority who actually owned slaves on plantations and I include
a family, the Ellison family in South Carolina, and they
go about operating the system just as a European would.
(29:19):
There seems to be no difference between the treatment that
they give their slaves as opposed to a European. And
they don't identify as black. They identify as mulatto, and
they marry individuals who will complement that color so that
they are lightened and enlightened, and the hair is straighter
(29:40):
and straighter and so on as a means to protect
them from being enslaved. They don't have the same rights
as a person who is considered white. But if they
continue to marry white they eventually become white.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
So I mean what I appreciated in reading about this
is that we all need to know these things as well.
I mean, we need to know. The other thing that
really struck me that I haven't thought about is that freedom,
in some instances, while it in one sense was absolute
and all you wanted, it wasn't all that great.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
I mean for many people that were not free, people
of African ancestry. So some scholars call it quasi free,
half free. Because in almost all the states in the
North that have eliminated slavery for the most part, they
still do not allow black men to vote. Only men
(30:41):
could vote. They don't allow individuals to have right of
court testimony. So that means that if someone comes into
your business, say you own a store and this happened,
and a white person comes in and stills your boots
this happened in California, way of taking that person to
(31:02):
court unless a white person is willing to testify for you.
So if you have no right of court testimony, it's
very hard to own a business. If you cannot serve
on a jury, which none could, you cannot represent the
interest of everyone in the community. And if you can't vote.
(31:22):
You can't you're not involved in politics. You're not really
considered part of what we call the body politic.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right, right, So freedom, while much preferred to enslavement, wasn't
the freedom that we think of.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
As one enslaved man said after the Civil War, he
was trying to figure out, so what is it that
I can do? And he just basically said, how free
is free?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Right? Right? Right? And in some instances you had post
Civil War, I was reading in your book that people
were being offered to come back to work for the
slave former slaveholders because I mean, again the economics of it,
they didn't have anybody to work, right, And so there
was one funny letter where the person was writing back
(32:14):
to the slaveholder saying, I worked for you for X
number of years as a slave, My family and I
will come back and will work for you for a
wage if you give us all of the money that
we were be owed, if we had paid us all along.
And I thought, well, and he adds with.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Interests, and he also says, this is Jordan Anderson on
page two twenty of my book. And he also says,
by the way in Ohio, which is where he's living,
my wife is called missus Anderson, So he is actually
not only talking about a financial arrangement, but he is
(32:52):
expecting respect from this slaveholder. And of course none of
that is going to happen, but he's letting him know,
and he's willing to subtract the amount it costs to
have two threepaired. I love this letter. It's just one
of my favorite letters.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, we talked about, you know,
your line history doesn't comfort any of us has really
struck home with me, particularly now because we're in a
world where people are trying to limit the teaching of
history because it's potential to make people uncomfortable. And I
certainly that is it is tragic and wrong. What's interesting
(33:36):
is that we all, you know, we talked about, as
I said, the revelation in your book to me, to
the extent that black's own slaves. We all need to
be more educated about all of slavery. I mean that,
you know, there's the fact that there was an African
queen who sold black people into slavery. I mean said differently,
there's going to be things about our own African American
(33:59):
history which will be uncomfortable for African Americans to learn, yes,
but because that exists, that does not mean that we
should not learn it. I mean, if we could move
beyond the shame that's associated with it to just understand
the lessons of history and transparency. I mean, this current
climate in arguing for ignorance makes no sense to me whatsoever,
(34:20):
and I imagine as a professor.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Of history, it's frustrating. We have conversations among ourselves, and
I think that the real agenda is not to have
a critical thinking public, because then they might think about
their own circumstances a little bit more. They might begin
thinking critically about their economic circumstances. So if you think simplistically,
(34:44):
autocrats love simplistic answers. If you have a public that
only thinks in terms of black and white, then you
can control them. You can manipulate their behavior and their thinking.
And I think that's what we see among some of
those who are advocating for a comfortable history. They are
(35:08):
not telling young Irish Americans not to learn about what
happened in Ireland. That's not the issue. They do not
want young people of any color to learn what happened
in this country, and so they want a very simplistic
view of the past, and the past is very complex,
(35:32):
just as we've been saying, history is complex, and that's
what helps us to begin thinking. But if you don't
want a thinking public, then you know, you give them pablum,
You give them something that doesn't challenge them.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Well, to create a thinking public, a great prescription is
for them to read your book because and I urge
everyone listening to read it, because it is eye opening.
Certainly it's a great historical lesson, but it also is
really engaging and it's lovely to read, to imagine lives,
(36:11):
moments of happiness in lives that you wouldn't have imagined
to be filled with many of them. And so I
thank you so much for presenting these letters to us
in such a welcome way, and your analysis through it
is really great. So I'm hopeful that everybody will take
advantage of this and use the content of your book
as a weapon to well two things. One as fuel
(36:33):
to provide your children with really interesting history. I mean,
be great to sort of read them with your kids
so you can sort of imagine what it's like. But
so it's fuel, and then it's a weapon against this
concept that when you do learn about slavery, that you
only learn about it as this dehumanizing the people, and
that the slaves themselves had no hope and had no
(36:57):
courage except for the few that you are, the few
slave heroines and heroes know about Yes, that we all
know about it. So, Frida Roberts, I'm gonna wrap it
up here. I thank you so much, so much for
joining me on this podcast, and I know that everyone
listening really appreciates it, and I know they're going to
run out and find your book, buy it and read it.
(37:20):
But there's one more thing before we go, sure, and
that I want you to play the GCP Lightning Round.
I'll give you. This is a two question lightning round
for you, and the first one is what is your
favorite poem or saying?
Speaker 2 (37:33):
So my favorite saying has lately become WB du Boys
in nineteen oh five wrote and said that the United
States will either destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the
United States.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
That is a good one. Powerful, I mean powerful, and
talk about history repeating itself, I mean d nineteen oh five. Yes, yeah,
as relevant today. Yes. And tell me your two favorite
children's books and they can be books that you grew
up with, or that you read to your daughters, or
that you read with your grandchildren.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
So the favorite book I think I was talking to
my girls Matthew, Mark Luke, and John by pearl s Buck.
I read this to our daughters when they were quite young.
And it's a book about Eurasian children, children who were
rejected in Vietnam and in China, who were both European
(38:35):
and Asian and lived really on their own, little young
children living out of garbage cans, homeless. And I read
that to them, written in a children's for a children's understanding,
and I think it really helped shape their sense of
who they are and the importance of caring for other
(38:57):
human beings.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Wow, I don't know that book. I mean, I certainly
know pearl as Buck, but.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
I will spend a long time ago. I don't know
if it's still in print. And then you know, I
have fun memories of my mother gathering as girls, not
not my brother, but as girls in the evening and
reading Little Women.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Oh, Little Women.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
So I learned how sore I loved sort of historical
novels even as kid, and I think that was partly why.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
You know. So I'm so glad you said that I
grew up with a copy of Little Women, and I
would read Oh Joe and Meg haaning. Oh man, I
love that book. I haven't thought about that a long time.
That was a great one. So those are great answers.
And again, thank you so much, Rita Roberts for joining
us today.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
I enjoyed it. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
I hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation and that you'll
come back for more. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever
you listen to podcasts and tell your friends. For more
parenting info and advice, please check out the Ground Control
Parenting blog at Groundcontrolparenting dot com. You can also find
us on Instagram and Facebook at ground Control Parenting and
(40:08):
on LinkedIn under Carol Sutton Lewis. The Ground Control Parenting
with Carol Sutton Lewis podcast is a part of the
Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartMedia. Until the
next time, take care and thanks for listening.
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