February 12, 2020 • 32 mins
Cuffe protested taxation, built wealth for himself in whaling, became a Quaker and used his fortune for the betterment of others. He was also an advocate creating a colony in Africa that people of African ancestry could immigrate to in search of a new life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Wee Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Today's topic was suggested by a friend of mine who
was raised Quaker and who grew up attending meetings at
(00:23):
the same meeting house that today's subject helped rebuild in
the eighteen teens, and subject as Paul cuffy. Sometimes you
will see his name spelled with two ease at the
end of cuffee, and sometimes with just one. I had
never heard of Paul Cuffey before this conversation, and when
my friends told me about him, I sort of took
a cursory look at things. I was like, oh, yeah,
(00:43):
he does seem pretty interesting. Months later, after finally moving
him up to the top of the list and getting
into actual research, I became so fascinated that I took
a field trip to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where there is
an exhibit on him at the New Bedford Whaling Museum
and the park next to the museum was named in
(01:04):
his honor. It was not that I needed additional information.
I was just so intrigued by the whole thing. I
was like, I want to go see this exhibit. So
let's we got in the car we went. I love it.
Paul Coffee was born on January seventeen, seventeen fifty nine,
on Cutty Hunk Island, which is off the coast of
Massachusetts in Buzzards Bay. This is on the far western
end of the Elizabeth Islands, which are south of New Bedford, Massachusetts,
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on the mainland and northwest of the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Paul was the sixth child of ten and the fourth
son born to Kofee Slocum. He was an African man
from what's now Ghana and Ruth Moses, who was wampanag.
Kofe is a name used in the Chweed dialect, which
is spoken by the Achan people for boys born on
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a Friday, So if that was the name that was
given to him before he was taken from Africa, he
was most likely from one of the many many subgroups
that make up the Akan people. Kofee Slocum was enslaved
and transported to North America when he was about ten
years old, and in the seventeen twenties he was purchased
by Ebenezer Slocum, a Quaker from Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It's not
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completely clear how Kofi was freed about twenty five years later.
Ebenezer sold Kofe to his nephew John in seventeen forty two,
and according to some accounts, John freed Kofe about three
years later as the religious Society of Friends became more
opposed to slavery. But in other versions of the story,
Kofi was given permission to do additional work, and he
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used the money that he earned in that work to
purchase his own freedom, regardless, on July seventeenth of seventeen
forty six, which was a year or so after his
Manu mission, Kofe Slocum married Ruth Moses, and it was
relatively common in this part of New England for African
men to marry Indigenous women Because of the demographics of
slavery in New England, the enslaved and free African population
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usually included more men than women. Conversely, indigenous communities to
have more adult women than men because Indigenous men were
more likely to be enslaved or imprisoned or forced into
indentured servitude. This had been the case for decades by
the time Kofe and Ruth married. For example, after King
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Philip's War in the late sixteen seventies, the British enslaved
roughly a thousand indigenous men to Bermuda and other parts
of the Caribbean, while enslaving indigenous women and children and
keeping them in New England. While the Slocum children had
both African and Wampanog ancestry, among the white community, they
were usually considered to be Black. For their own part,
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Paul and his siblings referred to themselves in a number
of ways over their lifetimes, referencing both their African and
their Indigenous heritage. This included the term musty, which was
a term used for people of multi racial ancestry in
coastal Massachusetts. It was most often used to describe people
who were both African and Indigenous. In seventeen sixty one,
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Kofee Slocum bought a hundred and sixteen eight farm in
Dartmouth and the whole family moved there. Eleven years later,
he died and left the farm to Paul and his
brother John. It was also around this time that most
of Kofey's children changed their last name from Slocum, which
had been the last name of the people who had
enslaved their father to Cuffee, which is an anglicization of
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his first name. Paul Cuffey was only about thirteen when
his father died, and even though he and his brother
had inherited the farm, their father also had left some debts,
so it was not really as though they suddenly had
enough to support the whole family. The children also hadn't
had access to any sort of formal education, either on
Cutty Hunk Island or in Dartmouth, so Paul, with the
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hope of helping to support his family, decided to go
to sea in seventeen seventy three, with his brother staying
in Dartmouth to manage the farm. Aside from jobs that
mostly involved manual labor, there were not a lot of
occupations open to people of color in New England at
this point, but whaling and other seafaring work were some
think of an exception. These were exceptionally dangerous industries, which
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meant that ship owners, captains and others were usually pretty
eager to hire anybody who was willing to do the
work at sea away from society's expectations. Sometimes crews could
be more tolerant. Plus, if members of the crew could
not work together, they put everybody aboard at risk. To
add to that, the Wampanog people had their own maritime
traditions that predated the arrival of European colonists in New England.
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This included drift whaling, which is butchering dead or dying
whales that had washed up on shore, as well as
fishing with harpoons. In the early seventeen hundreds, as English
colonists were establishing a whaling industry in New England, Wampanog
and other indigenous people provided critical knowledge and labor, including
teaching English colonists how to butcher and prepare whales. Indigenous
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people's involvement in the early whaling industry in New England
was often at best under coercion. This included things like
being flour furst into indentured servitude on whaling ships in
order to pay off debts. This could even extend to
the indentured man's children, who were obligated to take on
his indenture if he was killed at sea or if
he incurred fur their debt. So the whaling industry was
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simultaneously exploitive, especially of indigenous and African labor, and also
an incredibly lucrative industry in which it was possible for
indigenous and African men to rise to a higher rank
than they could in any other line of work. And
that is what eventually happened to Paul Cuffey and his
first voyages. He spent his free time at sea teaching
himself to read and write and do arithmetic, and he
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also studied navigation with the more experienced members of the crew.
Shortly after the Revolutionary War started, a ship that Cuffey
was on was captured by the British and he was
imprisoned in New York for three months. Once he got
out of prison, he went back to the family farm
for a while, but soon he built a small open
boat of his own and then started using it to
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run supplies through the British blockade. He ran the blockade
repeatedly between seventeen seventy seven and seventeen three. Both sides
in the Revolutionary War tried to recruit black soldiers, and
by that point Cuffey was about the right age to
join up, but he never took a side in the war,
at least in terms of active fighting. What he did
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do was protest taxation, and we're going to get into
that after we first have a sponsor break. As we've
talked about on the show before, one of the issues
involved in the American Revolution was taxation, including taxes that
British colonists in North America found to be egregious and
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the idea that colonists are being taxed but they didn't
have any representation in parliament. And that second idea had
another application to free black people in Massachusetts. They had
to pay taxes, but they did not have the right
to vote at all. Paul and John Cuffey were of
the opinion that under the Constitution of Massachusetts, taxation and
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the rights of citizenship were inextricably connected. If they couldn't vote,
they were not being treated as citizens, so they also
should not be taxed. Paul Cuffey stopped paying taxes in
seventeen seventy eight. By seventeen eighty he owed more than
one hundred fifty pounds in back taxes. That year, John
and Paul Cuffey filed a petition along with three other
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free black men, and it read, in part quote, we
being chiefly of the African extract and by reason of
long bondage and hard slavery. We have been deprived of
enjoying the profits of our labor or the advantage of
inheriting estates from my parents. As our neighbors, the white
people do we have been and are now taxed, both
in our polls and that small pittance of a state which,
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through much hard labor and industry, we have got together
to sustain ourselves and families withal. The petition went on
to say that without tax relief, these circumstances would reduce
them to begging, and as them to be a burden
on others, before saying quote, we apprehend ourselves to be
aggrieved in that while we are not allowed the privilege
of freemen of the state, having no vote or influence
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in the election of those that tax us, yet many
of our color, as is well known, have cheerfully entered
the field of battle in the defense of the common cause.
Their petition for tax relief was denied, and Paul Cuffey
was briefly jailed. Walter Spooner, who was a member of
a prominent family in Dartmouth, helped arrange the terms of
Cuffey's release and a reduction in the amount of tax
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that he owed, so this petition was not immediately successful,
at least in terms of getting some tax relief for them,
but it is credited with the black men getting the
right to vote in Massachusetts under the same terms as
white men in seventeen eighty three. On February eighty three,
Paul Cuffey married an Indigenous woman named Alice Abele Pequitt
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or Peaquat, who had been previously widowed. They went on
to have several children together. Sources mentioned seven or eight,
including two sons and four daughters who were still living
when their father wrote his will. Alice is normally described
as being Wampanag. Her late husband had been Peaquat. Also
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in seventeen eighty three, Paul Cuffey established a shipping business
with his brother in law, Michael Wayner. Wayner was Wapanag
and was married to Cuffy's sister Mary in seventeen eighty nine.
As their business grew, Wayner bought some riverfront property and
they established a shipyard there. At this point, Cuffey was
wearing a lot of hats, including building ships, trading, and whaling.
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He eventually started captaining his own vessels, and while his
first voyages were beset by hazards like pirates and shipwrecks,
he persevered until he started to turn a profit. He
also bought a farm in Westport, Massachusetts, where he and
his family lived, and over time he bought other homes
and farms elsewhere in New England. Over the next decade
or so, Paul Cuffey became one of the wealthiest people
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in west He may have been the wealthiest person of
color anywhere in the United States while he was living,
and he consistently used his wealth to help other people,
especially other people of color. The captains and crews of
his ships were always black and indigenous men, and that
was actually something that made their work even more dangerous
because they were trading with parts of the world where
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slavery was still being practiced, including the American South. In
seventeen ninety seven, Cuffey proposed the establishment of an integrated
school in Westport. When the town leadership couldn't come to
a consensus about it, something that was probably influenced by racism.
Cuffey built the school on his own property with his
own money, and that school opened in seventeen nine, with
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its students including about fifteen children who were part of
Cuffey's immediate and extended family, as well as any other
child who wanted to attend, regardless of their race. Coffey
also supported a smallpox hospital in Westport, and in eighteen
hundred he bought a gristmill. In eighteen o eight, Cuffey
formally joined the religious Society of Friends by becoming a
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member of the Westport Monthly Meeting. His family had been
connected to Quakers ever since he was a child. The
Quakers had enslaved his father like that that's complicated, but
like they had been part of the Quaker community in
a lot of ways. This was the first time that
he was documented as actually becoming a member of a meeting.
To be clear, the Quaker meetings had not been integrated
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when he was a child. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was
the first to formally allow black members in seventeen nineties six.
A few years later after joining the meeting, Paul became
part of the committee that planned and oversaw the construction
of the new meeting house. Eventually, he also became the
first black person to attend the New England Yearly Meeting.
Throughout all of this, Cuffey was still working as a
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Sea captain, traveling all around the Atlantic. Along the way,
he made extensive connections among the black, white, and indigenous
communities of New England, as well as with British abolitionists,
and in all of his work he was focused on
providing jobs, support and opportunities for other people of color,
along with overall philanthropy. He also had a reputation for
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being incredibly scrupulous in all of this. In the words
of the Reverend Peter Williams Jr. And a tribute to
Cuffey that he wrote after his death, quote, he was
so conscientious that he would sooner sacrifice his private interests
than engage in any enterprise, however lawful or profitable, that
might have a tendency, either directly or indirectly, to injure
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his fellow men. For instance, he would not deal in
ardent spirits nor enslaves, though he might have done either
without violating the laws of his country, and with great
prospects of pecuniary gain. By eighteen o six, Cuffey's property
was valued at about twenty thousand dollars, which made him
the wealthiest person in Westport. By eighteen o nine, when
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he turned fifty, he owned multiple sailing vessels, including a
ship and two brigs, as well as multiple houses, farms,
land in the mill, and he turned of that wealth
to an even more ambitious focus, making it possible for
people of African descent to immigrate to Africa. We'll have
more on that. After another quick sponsor break in the
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early eight hundreds, Paul Cuppies started thinking about the idea
of making it possible for Africans and people of African
descent and the United States to resettle in Africa, specifically
in what was then the British colony of Sierra Leone.
As a super quick recap, which means we got to
back up a little bit, there were free and enslaved
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black soldiers on both sides of the American Revolutionary War.
People chose sides for a variety of reasons, but when
it came to enslaved people, it often involved a promise
of freedom in exchange for their military service. For the
most part, though this did not work out as planned.
On the patriot side, many enslaved people were not given
their promised freedom after the war ended, and on the
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loyalist side, people were free, but they were also regarded
as traders to the United States. They could not stay
in the US and were forced to leave. Many of
them wound up in Nova Scotia or in British Territory
in the Caribbean. At the end of the war, there
were at least fourteen thousand Black loyalists seeking refuge in
British Territory, and Britain did not really have a plan
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for this. Most black loyalists arrived with nothing. Those who
hadn't been enslaved generally lost all their property due to
confiscation laws. Widespread racism also meant that Britain's white society
was not generally open to the idea of integration. Whether
black loyalists wanted to assimilate with British society is a
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whole other question. Much of this also applied to enslaved
people in Britain who had been freed after Lord Mansfield's
decision in Somerset versus Stewart in seventeen seventy two. So
in seventeen eighties six in Britain, a plan was proposed
to resettle all these people in Africa, under the idea
that it would be removing a burden from the British public.
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This plan was approved by the British government and by
the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor. That
organization had initially been established to provide relief for people
from the Indian subcontinent, but that work had been expanded
to also include people of African descent. The first attempt
to establish a colony in Sierra Leone failed for many reasons,
including illnesses and death sturing transport, bad weather once they
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arrived in West Africa, a lack of preparation and supplies,
and the fact that the British hadn't made any kind
of treaty or other arrangement with the local people of
Sierra Leone regarding this colony. Yeah, they really were kind
of like, we want to remove all of you from
our society. We're dropping you off in Africa. Like that
was nearly the extent of it was not planned well.
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Even so, though in the Sierra Leone company was established
to try again. This time around, able fishnists did travel
to see ear Leone to try to establish good relationships
with the local people and then also to mediate between
the locals and the colony. But the British government was
really viewing this as a chance to make money, basically
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to start a plantation that used free Africans and people
of African ancestry as labor, with the Sierra Leone company
in charge of it. More than one thousand free people
were transported to see ear Leone the following year, and
Britain had to offer a lot of incentives to convince
most people to go. Overall, the people that were being
resettled had never been to Africa before, and many had
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justifiable concerns about the possibility of being captured and sold
back into slavery in Africa. At the same time, there were,
for sure, some people who either genuinely wanted to go
to Africa or who thought that it was their best option.
This included some people who had been born somewhere in
Africa and wanted the chance to go back home. It
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also included people who thought that racism and white supremacy
were so entrenched where they were that they might have
a better chance at a good life somewhere else in
the US. One of the people of color interested in
this idea was Paul Cuffey. In eighteen ten, he discussed
it with the Westport Friends Meeting, saying that he had
been thinking about it for a few years at that point.
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In eighteen eleven, at the encouragement of British abolitionists, he
visited the colony of Sierra Leone for himself to see
what conditions were like and to make recommendations for how
to improve it. By the time Cuffey got to Sierra Leone,
the Sierra Leone Company had been dissolved to sum it
up there had been problems. They were removed of that responsibility.
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The colony was under British control. It had a population
of about three thousand people. There were nearly a thousand
Black Loyalists, who were usually referred to as Nova Scotians.
There were more than eight hundred Jamaican Maroons and about
one thousand people who had been taken from captured slave ships,
and there were also about a hundred local Africans living
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in the colony. Although all of these people were African
or of African ancestry, otherwise many of them didn't have
much in common. Black Loyalists and Jamaican Maroons had both
arrived from the America's but they had vastly different backgrounds
and experiences. People who had been on captured slave ships
represented a diversity of African nations and languages, so on
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top of ongoing issues with things like organizations, supplies, weather,
and relationships with the local people. There was also a
big cultural and language barrier issue among the people being
resettled at the colony. Some of the descriptions of Cuffey's
work and Sierra Leone really focus on its missionary angle,
and the idea of spreading Christianity in Africa was a
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factor in all this, but a much bigger part of
it was Cuffey's very consistent focus on trying to elevate
and provide opportunities for other people of color. The Transatlantic
slave trade had devastated the existing social structures and economy
of hundreds of African nations and people's and Cuffey thought
that through things like agriculture, whaling, lumber, and other industries,
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the nations and peoples of Africa could try to undo
that damage, and that all of them collectively could become
a global economic power. And he thought that a colony
made up of people of African ancestry could be an
important part of that economic system, bringing in labor and
resources to help everyone involved lift each other up. He
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spent his time in Sierra Leone talking to people who
were actually affected by immigrating both the colonists themselves and
the local people. He also did practical work like surveying
sites for a sawmill and figuring out how the colony
could harvest their own salt rather than buying it from
white merchants. And he also founded the Friendly Society of
Sierra Leone, which was a mutual aid society headquartered in
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Freetown to assist quote the black settlers of Sierra Leone
and the natives of Africa generally in the cultivation of
or soil by the sale of their produce. He also
worked extensively to build connections among all the different colonists
and the leadership of the local African nations. Although Cuffey
had the support of British abolitionists and all this work,
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British merchants, who effectively had a monopoly on trade with
Sierra Leone, saw it as threatening. They started spreading false
and negative propaganda about him, and when he arrived in
Liverpool from Sierra Leone in August of eighteen eleven, his apprentice,
Aaron Rodgers, was arrested and imprisoned, something that the same
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group of merchants had conspired to have done. As a
side note, before Britain abolished its participation in the slave trade,
Liverpool had been a major slave board. The arrival of
Coffee Ship, which with its captain and crew entirely made
up of freemen of African descent, caused enough comment and
curiosity that it was covered in the newspapers. With the
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help of prominent British quakers, Cuffey eventually got his apprentice
released from prison and he returned to the United States. However,
back in eighteen oh seven, President Thomas Jefferson had signed
the Embargo Act into law. This came out of the
Napoleonic Wars, when both Britain and France had each implemented
punitive trade restrictions, and we're both harassing American ships at sea.
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When Cuffee arrived back in the United States on April
nineteenth of eighteen twelve, carrying a cargo of goods from
Sierra Leone, he was found to be in violation of
that Act, and his ship and goods were seized. Cuffey's
response was to petition President James Madison for its release.
On May second, eighteen twelve, he met with both Madison
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and the Secretary of the Treasury, making him probably the
first African American to meet with a sitting president. His
goods were ultimately released, and he also discussed his ideas
for African colonization with the president while he was there.
Cuffy's plan at this point was to start arranging a
round trip voyage between we New England and Sierra Leone
about once a year. It would carry Africans and their
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descendants to Sierra Leone, and it would return with African
goods to trade with North America and Europe. But the
War of eighteen twelve started not long after that meeting
with the President and interrupted that plan. Apart from the
inherently more dangerous sea travel during the war, there was
no way he could make this three pronged trade route
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work if two of the prongs were at war with
each other. He tried to get exceptions to the various
embargoes that were in place and carry on with this project,
but that was denied, so for a time he turned
his attention more toward advocating for colonization from within the
United States. In eighteen twelve, he visited major cities in
the US, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City to
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establish branches of the African Institution. This was what had
replaced the Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade in
Britain after slavery had been abolished there. He was really
focused on getting a movement for colon zation started led
by Africans and people of African descent for themselves to
allow people who wanted to immigrate to do so. At first,
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his efforts looked pretty promising. Prominent black leaders in the
cities that he visited supported his plan and became involved
with the African Institution. But on December tenth, eighteen fifteen,
he departed for Sierra Leone aboard his brig called the Traveler.
On board the Traveler, we're thirty eight people, including two
families that were headed by people who had been enslaved
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and taken to the United States from what's now Senegal
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cuffey was supposed
to have some funding from the African Institution in London
for this, but that didn't pan out, and only eight
of the people aboard the Traveler were able to pay
their own way, so Coffey paid for the rest himself
at a cost of about five thousand dollars. This is
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believed to be the first time that a group of
African Americans emigrated from North America to Africa through a
venture that was run by and for black people. In
spite of this promising start, though, Cuffy's efforts fell apart
pretty quickly, the American Colonization Society was established in the
United States in eighteen sixteen. On its surface, this organization
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had some of the same goals as what Cuffey was doing.
But while Cuffy was focused on giving people choices and
on empowering both the colonists and the local people of
Sierra Leone, a lot of the people who were involved
with the American Colonization Society were not. Some of the
organization's leaders were of a mindset similar to Cuffy's, but
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others included people like Henry Clay, who thought that the
colonization movement would quote rid our country of a useless
and pernicious, if not dangerous portion of its population. There
had always been supporters of this colonization idea who are
motivated by racism. Even amongst staunch abolitionists, there were people
who thought that free black people could never be part
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of white society, and so removing them to Africa was
the best for everyone concerned. But as the colonization movement grew,
it also drew the attention of slave owners, who found
the free black population to be a threat to the
institution of slavery. Some in the colonization movement, including both
abolitionists and slave owners, started to advocate for the idea
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of freeing people only if they agreed to emigrate. Quaker
abolitionists Levi Coffins some of the situation up this way quote.
Many of us were opposed to making colonization a condition
of freedom, believing it to be an odious plan of
expatriation concocted by slaveholders to open a drain by which
they might get rid of free negroes and thus remain
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in more secure position of their slave property. They considered
free negroes a dangerous element among slaves. We had no
objection to free negroes going to Africa of their own
free will, but to compel them to go as a
condition of freedom was a movement to which we were
conscientiously opposed and against which we strongly contended. When the
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vote was taken, the motion was carried by a small majority.
We feel that the slave power had got the ascendancy
in our society, and we could no longer work with it.
Cuffey really tried to distance his project from the colonization movements,
racist elements, and motivations, but in spite of those efforts,
by eighteen seventeen, he had lost a lot of his
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support in the Black community in the United States. In
January of eighteen seventeen, attendees at a meeting of the
African Institute in Philadelphia were nearly unanimous and their opposition
to the idea of colonization. They issued a resolution that read,
in part quote, whereas our ancestors, not by choice, were
the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we
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their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings
of her luxuriant soil, which their blood and sweat manured,
And that any measure or system of measures having tendency
to banish us from her bosom would not only be cruel,
but in direct violation of those principles which have been
the boast of this republic. Philadelphia businessman James Forton, who
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had supported Cuffey's work earlier on and had been part
of the African Institution, there also withdrew his support. He
co authored a statement in August of eighteen seventeen which said, quote,
the plan of colonizing is not asked for by us,
we renounce and disclaim any connection with it. By this point,
Cuffey had become seriously ill, and he knew that he
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was dying. He gathered his family on August seventeenth of
eighteen seventeen to say goodbye, and he died on September
seven of that year. His funeral was held the following
day at Westport Friends Meeting House and he was buried
in its burial ground. Today there's a monuments to Paul
Cuffey at the Westport Meeting House which reads quote and
Memory of Captain Paul Cuffey, Patriot, navigator, educator, philanthropist, friend,
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a noble character. Although the idea of colonization had fallen
out of favor with most of the black community when
Cuffey died, the American Colonization Society continued on, and Liberia
was established as a colony for Black Americans in eighteen
forty seven. Some of the people who had gone to
see Early One aboard the Traveler eventually moved there. Today,
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Paul Cuffey is often described as a forerunner in the
Pan African movement. This movement is rooted in the idea
that everyone of African descent has some common interests and
is united by their African ancestry, regardless of whether they're
living in Africa or elsewhere. It's not an idea that
can really be credited to one individual, specific person, but
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it's often traced back to people like Henry Sylvester Williams,
who established the Pan African Association at the end of
the nineteenth century, and W. E. B. Du Boys and
his contemporaries who organized the first Pan African Congress in
nineteen hundred, so he was kind of presaging their ideas
by almost a century. Do you have some listener mail?
I sure do, I have listener mail from Lily and
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Lily wrote after our episode on the Elgin Marbles and
are behind the scenes minised on that, and Lily says,
dear Holly and Tracy, I thought you might want to
know that the museum world is aware of and having
conversations about the complicity of academia and the illegal art market.
These conversations are just happening primarily in academic forums like
(30:22):
the Archaeological Institute of America's annual conference. The only popular,
if sensationalized presentation of the issue that I know of
is the book Chasing Aphrodite by Jason Felch and Ralph
frem Alino, which is a good read. By the way,
responsible museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
Art Institute of Chicago, and the Yale University Gallery are
(30:42):
now exceedingly careful to only by artwork that has not
passed through the illegal art market. The real issue moving
forward is not knowing what to do with art of
questionable provenance which was donated by influential benefactors such as alumni,
whose families may be offended if you refuse or attempt
to repatriate their gift. What to do with art excavated
(31:03):
under the auspices of questionable international power dynamics as another
puzzle curators are currently pondering. The general consensus thus far
seems to be to highlight the history is good and
bad of various objects on display via accompanying text panels
or presentations on iPads. I hope this mission of insight
into the museum world is helpful to you. Please keep
the awesome podcast episodes coming even or perhaps especially when
(31:27):
they are controversial. Best Lily, Thank you so much Lily
for that email. Uh We've gotten some other emails on
the same subject as well, so I'm sure it will
make another appearance in listener mail in the future. If
you would like to write to us about this or
any other podcast. Where at History Podcasts that I heart
radio dot com, and then we're all over social media
(31:47):
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a podcast. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a
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(32:07):
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Wee Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Today's topic was suggested by a friend of mine who
was raised Quaker and who grew up attending meetings at
(00:23):
the same meeting house that today's subject helped rebuild in
the eighteen teens, and subject as Paul cuffy. Sometimes you
will see his name spelled with two ease at the
end of cuffee, and sometimes with just one. I had
never heard of Paul Cuffey before this conversation, and when
my friends told me about him, I sort of took
a cursory look at things. I was like, oh, yeah,
(00:43):
he does seem pretty interesting. Months later, after finally moving
him up to the top of the list and getting
into actual research, I became so fascinated that I took
a field trip to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where there is
an exhibit on him at the New Bedford Whaling Museum
and the park next to the museum was named in
(01:04):
his honor. It was not that I needed additional information.
I was just so intrigued by the whole thing. I
was like, I want to go see this exhibit. So
let's we got in the car we went. I love it.
Paul Coffee was born on January seventeen, seventeen fifty nine,
on Cutty Hunk Island, which is off the coast of
Massachusetts in Buzzards Bay. This is on the far western
end of the Elizabeth Islands, which are south of New Bedford, Massachusetts,
(01:27):
on the mainland and northwest of the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Paul was the sixth child of ten and the fourth
son born to Kofee Slocum. He was an African man
from what's now Ghana and Ruth Moses, who was wampanag.
Kofe is a name used in the Chweed dialect, which
is spoken by the Achan people for boys born on
(01:48):
a Friday, So if that was the name that was
given to him before he was taken from Africa, he
was most likely from one of the many many subgroups
that make up the Akan people. Kofee Slocum was enslaved
and transported to North America when he was about ten
years old, and in the seventeen twenties he was purchased
by Ebenezer Slocum, a Quaker from Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It's not
(02:09):
completely clear how Kofi was freed about twenty five years later.
Ebenezer sold Kofe to his nephew John in seventeen forty two,
and according to some accounts, John freed Kofe about three
years later as the religious Society of Friends became more
opposed to slavery. But in other versions of the story,
Kofi was given permission to do additional work, and he
(02:30):
used the money that he earned in that work to
purchase his own freedom, regardless, on July seventeenth of seventeen
forty six, which was a year or so after his
Manu mission, Kofe Slocum married Ruth Moses, and it was
relatively common in this part of New England for African
men to marry Indigenous women Because of the demographics of
slavery in New England, the enslaved and free African population
(02:54):
usually included more men than women. Conversely, indigenous communities to
have more adult women than men because Indigenous men were
more likely to be enslaved or imprisoned or forced into
indentured servitude. This had been the case for decades by
the time Kofe and Ruth married. For example, after King
(03:14):
Philip's War in the late sixteen seventies, the British enslaved
roughly a thousand indigenous men to Bermuda and other parts
of the Caribbean, while enslaving indigenous women and children and
keeping them in New England. While the Slocum children had
both African and Wampanog ancestry, among the white community, they
were usually considered to be Black. For their own part,
(03:36):
Paul and his siblings referred to themselves in a number
of ways over their lifetimes, referencing both their African and
their Indigenous heritage. This included the term musty, which was
a term used for people of multi racial ancestry in
coastal Massachusetts. It was most often used to describe people
who were both African and Indigenous. In seventeen sixty one,
(03:57):
Kofee Slocum bought a hundred and sixteen eight farm in
Dartmouth and the whole family moved there. Eleven years later,
he died and left the farm to Paul and his
brother John. It was also around this time that most
of Kofey's children changed their last name from Slocum, which
had been the last name of the people who had
enslaved their father to Cuffee, which is an anglicization of
(04:19):
his first name. Paul Cuffey was only about thirteen when
his father died, and even though he and his brother
had inherited the farm, their father also had left some debts,
so it was not really as though they suddenly had
enough to support the whole family. The children also hadn't
had access to any sort of formal education, either on
Cutty Hunk Island or in Dartmouth, so Paul, with the
(04:41):
hope of helping to support his family, decided to go
to sea in seventeen seventy three, with his brother staying
in Dartmouth to manage the farm. Aside from jobs that
mostly involved manual labor, there were not a lot of
occupations open to people of color in New England at
this point, but whaling and other seafaring work were some
think of an exception. These were exceptionally dangerous industries, which
(05:04):
meant that ship owners, captains and others were usually pretty
eager to hire anybody who was willing to do the
work at sea away from society's expectations. Sometimes crews could
be more tolerant. Plus, if members of the crew could
not work together, they put everybody aboard at risk. To
add to that, the Wampanog people had their own maritime
traditions that predated the arrival of European colonists in New England.
(05:29):
This included drift whaling, which is butchering dead or dying
whales that had washed up on shore, as well as
fishing with harpoons. In the early seventeen hundreds, as English
colonists were establishing a whaling industry in New England, Wampanog
and other indigenous people provided critical knowledge and labor, including
teaching English colonists how to butcher and prepare whales. Indigenous
(05:52):
people's involvement in the early whaling industry in New England
was often at best under coercion. This included things like
being flour furst into indentured servitude on whaling ships in
order to pay off debts. This could even extend to
the indentured man's children, who were obligated to take on
his indenture if he was killed at sea or if
he incurred fur their debt. So the whaling industry was
(06:15):
simultaneously exploitive, especially of indigenous and African labor, and also
an incredibly lucrative industry in which it was possible for
indigenous and African men to rise to a higher rank
than they could in any other line of work. And
that is what eventually happened to Paul Cuffey and his
first voyages. He spent his free time at sea teaching
himself to read and write and do arithmetic, and he
(06:38):
also studied navigation with the more experienced members of the crew.
Shortly after the Revolutionary War started, a ship that Cuffey
was on was captured by the British and he was
imprisoned in New York for three months. Once he got
out of prison, he went back to the family farm
for a while, but soon he built a small open
boat of his own and then started using it to
(07:00):
run supplies through the British blockade. He ran the blockade
repeatedly between seventeen seventy seven and seventeen three. Both sides
in the Revolutionary War tried to recruit black soldiers, and
by that point Cuffey was about the right age to
join up, but he never took a side in the war,
at least in terms of active fighting. What he did
(07:20):
do was protest taxation, and we're going to get into
that after we first have a sponsor break. As we've
talked about on the show before, one of the issues
involved in the American Revolution was taxation, including taxes that
British colonists in North America found to be egregious and
(07:43):
the idea that colonists are being taxed but they didn't
have any representation in parliament. And that second idea had
another application to free black people in Massachusetts. They had
to pay taxes, but they did not have the right
to vote at all. Paul and John Cuffey were of
the opinion that under the Constitution of Massachusetts, taxation and
(08:03):
the rights of citizenship were inextricably connected. If they couldn't vote,
they were not being treated as citizens, so they also
should not be taxed. Paul Cuffey stopped paying taxes in
seventeen seventy eight. By seventeen eighty he owed more than
one hundred fifty pounds in back taxes. That year, John
and Paul Cuffey filed a petition along with three other
(08:25):
free black men, and it read, in part quote, we
being chiefly of the African extract and by reason of
long bondage and hard slavery. We have been deprived of
enjoying the profits of our labor or the advantage of
inheriting estates from my parents. As our neighbors, the white
people do we have been and are now taxed, both
in our polls and that small pittance of a state which,
(08:48):
through much hard labor and industry, we have got together
to sustain ourselves and families withal. The petition went on
to say that without tax relief, these circumstances would reduce
them to begging, and as them to be a burden
on others, before saying quote, we apprehend ourselves to be
aggrieved in that while we are not allowed the privilege
of freemen of the state, having no vote or influence
(09:11):
in the election of those that tax us, yet many
of our color, as is well known, have cheerfully entered
the field of battle in the defense of the common cause.
Their petition for tax relief was denied, and Paul Cuffey
was briefly jailed. Walter Spooner, who was a member of
a prominent family in Dartmouth, helped arrange the terms of
Cuffey's release and a reduction in the amount of tax
(09:34):
that he owed, so this petition was not immediately successful,
at least in terms of getting some tax relief for them,
but it is credited with the black men getting the
right to vote in Massachusetts under the same terms as
white men in seventeen eighty three. On February eighty three,
Paul Cuffey married an Indigenous woman named Alice Abele Pequitt
(09:54):
or Peaquat, who had been previously widowed. They went on
to have several children together. Sources mentioned seven or eight,
including two sons and four daughters who were still living
when their father wrote his will. Alice is normally described
as being Wampanag. Her late husband had been Peaquat. Also
(10:14):
in seventeen eighty three, Paul Cuffey established a shipping business
with his brother in law, Michael Wayner. Wayner was Wapanag
and was married to Cuffy's sister Mary in seventeen eighty nine.
As their business grew, Wayner bought some riverfront property and
they established a shipyard there. At this point, Cuffey was
wearing a lot of hats, including building ships, trading, and whaling.
(10:37):
He eventually started captaining his own vessels, and while his
first voyages were beset by hazards like pirates and shipwrecks,
he persevered until he started to turn a profit. He
also bought a farm in Westport, Massachusetts, where he and
his family lived, and over time he bought other homes
and farms elsewhere in New England. Over the next decade
or so, Paul Cuffey became one of the wealthiest people
(10:59):
in west He may have been the wealthiest person of
color anywhere in the United States while he was living,
and he consistently used his wealth to help other people,
especially other people of color. The captains and crews of
his ships were always black and indigenous men, and that
was actually something that made their work even more dangerous
because they were trading with parts of the world where
(11:21):
slavery was still being practiced, including the American South. In
seventeen ninety seven, Cuffey proposed the establishment of an integrated
school in Westport. When the town leadership couldn't come to
a consensus about it, something that was probably influenced by racism.
Cuffey built the school on his own property with his
own money, and that school opened in seventeen nine, with
(11:43):
its students including about fifteen children who were part of
Cuffey's immediate and extended family, as well as any other
child who wanted to attend, regardless of their race. Coffey
also supported a smallpox hospital in Westport, and in eighteen
hundred he bought a gristmill. In eighteen o eight, Cuffey
formally joined the religious Society of Friends by becoming a
(12:04):
member of the Westport Monthly Meeting. His family had been
connected to Quakers ever since he was a child. The
Quakers had enslaved his father like that that's complicated, but
like they had been part of the Quaker community in
a lot of ways. This was the first time that
he was documented as actually becoming a member of a meeting.
To be clear, the Quaker meetings had not been integrated
(12:26):
when he was a child. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was
the first to formally allow black members in seventeen nineties six.
A few years later after joining the meeting, Paul became
part of the committee that planned and oversaw the construction
of the new meeting house. Eventually, he also became the
first black person to attend the New England Yearly Meeting.
Throughout all of this, Cuffey was still working as a
(12:48):
Sea captain, traveling all around the Atlantic. Along the way,
he made extensive connections among the black, white, and indigenous
communities of New England, as well as with British abolitionists,
and in all of his work he was focused on
providing jobs, support and opportunities for other people of color,
along with overall philanthropy. He also had a reputation for
(13:10):
being incredibly scrupulous in all of this. In the words
of the Reverend Peter Williams Jr. And a tribute to
Cuffey that he wrote after his death, quote, he was
so conscientious that he would sooner sacrifice his private interests
than engage in any enterprise, however lawful or profitable, that
might have a tendency, either directly or indirectly, to injure
(13:30):
his fellow men. For instance, he would not deal in
ardent spirits nor enslaves, though he might have done either
without violating the laws of his country, and with great
prospects of pecuniary gain. By eighteen o six, Cuffey's property
was valued at about twenty thousand dollars, which made him
the wealthiest person in Westport. By eighteen o nine, when
(13:51):
he turned fifty, he owned multiple sailing vessels, including a
ship and two brigs, as well as multiple houses, farms,
land in the mill, and he turned of that wealth
to an even more ambitious focus, making it possible for
people of African descent to immigrate to Africa. We'll have
more on that. After another quick sponsor break in the
(14:18):
early eight hundreds, Paul Cuppies started thinking about the idea
of making it possible for Africans and people of African
descent and the United States to resettle in Africa, specifically
in what was then the British colony of Sierra Leone.
As a super quick recap, which means we got to
back up a little bit, there were free and enslaved
(14:38):
black soldiers on both sides of the American Revolutionary War.
People chose sides for a variety of reasons, but when
it came to enslaved people, it often involved a promise
of freedom in exchange for their military service. For the
most part, though this did not work out as planned.
On the patriot side, many enslaved people were not given
their promised freedom after the war ended, and on the
(15:01):
loyalist side, people were free, but they were also regarded
as traders to the United States. They could not stay
in the US and were forced to leave. Many of
them wound up in Nova Scotia or in British Territory
in the Caribbean. At the end of the war, there
were at least fourteen thousand Black loyalists seeking refuge in
British Territory, and Britain did not really have a plan
(15:22):
for this. Most black loyalists arrived with nothing. Those who
hadn't been enslaved generally lost all their property due to
confiscation laws. Widespread racism also meant that Britain's white society
was not generally open to the idea of integration. Whether
black loyalists wanted to assimilate with British society is a
(15:43):
whole other question. Much of this also applied to enslaved
people in Britain who had been freed after Lord Mansfield's
decision in Somerset versus Stewart in seventeen seventy two. So
in seventeen eighties six in Britain, a plan was proposed
to resettle all these people in Africa, under the idea
that it would be removing a burden from the British public.
(16:05):
This plan was approved by the British government and by
the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor. That
organization had initially been established to provide relief for people
from the Indian subcontinent, but that work had been expanded
to also include people of African descent. The first attempt
to establish a colony in Sierra Leone failed for many reasons,
including illnesses and death sturing transport, bad weather once they
(16:29):
arrived in West Africa, a lack of preparation and supplies,
and the fact that the British hadn't made any kind
of treaty or other arrangement with the local people of
Sierra Leone regarding this colony. Yeah, they really were kind
of like, we want to remove all of you from
our society. We're dropping you off in Africa. Like that
was nearly the extent of it was not planned well.
(16:53):
Even so, though in the Sierra Leone company was established
to try again. This time around, able fishnists did travel
to see ear Leone to try to establish good relationships
with the local people and then also to mediate between
the locals and the colony. But the British government was
really viewing this as a chance to make money, basically
(17:14):
to start a plantation that used free Africans and people
of African ancestry as labor, with the Sierra Leone company
in charge of it. More than one thousand free people
were transported to see ear Leone the following year, and
Britain had to offer a lot of incentives to convince
most people to go. Overall, the people that were being
resettled had never been to Africa before, and many had
(17:37):
justifiable concerns about the possibility of being captured and sold
back into slavery in Africa. At the same time, there were,
for sure, some people who either genuinely wanted to go
to Africa or who thought that it was their best option.
This included some people who had been born somewhere in
Africa and wanted the chance to go back home. It
(17:57):
also included people who thought that racism and white supremacy
were so entrenched where they were that they might have
a better chance at a good life somewhere else in
the US. One of the people of color interested in
this idea was Paul Cuffey. In eighteen ten, he discussed
it with the Westport Friends Meeting, saying that he had
been thinking about it for a few years at that point.
(18:19):
In eighteen eleven, at the encouragement of British abolitionists, he
visited the colony of Sierra Leone for himself to see
what conditions were like and to make recommendations for how
to improve it. By the time Cuffey got to Sierra Leone,
the Sierra Leone Company had been dissolved to sum it
up there had been problems. They were removed of that responsibility.
(18:39):
The colony was under British control. It had a population
of about three thousand people. There were nearly a thousand
Black Loyalists, who were usually referred to as Nova Scotians.
There were more than eight hundred Jamaican Maroons and about
one thousand people who had been taken from captured slave ships,
and there were also about a hundred local Africans living
(19:00):
in the colony. Although all of these people were African
or of African ancestry, otherwise many of them didn't have
much in common. Black Loyalists and Jamaican Maroons had both
arrived from the America's but they had vastly different backgrounds
and experiences. People who had been on captured slave ships
represented a diversity of African nations and languages, so on
(19:23):
top of ongoing issues with things like organizations, supplies, weather,
and relationships with the local people. There was also a
big cultural and language barrier issue among the people being
resettled at the colony. Some of the descriptions of Cuffey's
work and Sierra Leone really focus on its missionary angle,
and the idea of spreading Christianity in Africa was a
(19:44):
factor in all this, but a much bigger part of
it was Cuffey's very consistent focus on trying to elevate
and provide opportunities for other people of color. The Transatlantic
slave trade had devastated the existing social structures and economy
of hundreds of African nations and people's and Cuffey thought
that through things like agriculture, whaling, lumber, and other industries,
(20:09):
the nations and peoples of Africa could try to undo
that damage, and that all of them collectively could become
a global economic power. And he thought that a colony
made up of people of African ancestry could be an
important part of that economic system, bringing in labor and
resources to help everyone involved lift each other up. He
(20:29):
spent his time in Sierra Leone talking to people who
were actually affected by immigrating both the colonists themselves and
the local people. He also did practical work like surveying
sites for a sawmill and figuring out how the colony
could harvest their own salt rather than buying it from
white merchants. And he also founded the Friendly Society of
Sierra Leone, which was a mutual aid society headquartered in
(20:53):
Freetown to assist quote the black settlers of Sierra Leone
and the natives of Africa generally in the cultivation of
or soil by the sale of their produce. He also
worked extensively to build connections among all the different colonists
and the leadership of the local African nations. Although Cuffey
had the support of British abolitionists and all this work,
(21:14):
British merchants, who effectively had a monopoly on trade with
Sierra Leone, saw it as threatening. They started spreading false
and negative propaganda about him, and when he arrived in
Liverpool from Sierra Leone in August of eighteen eleven, his apprentice,
Aaron Rodgers, was arrested and imprisoned, something that the same
(21:36):
group of merchants had conspired to have done. As a
side note, before Britain abolished its participation in the slave trade,
Liverpool had been a major slave board. The arrival of
Coffee Ship, which with its captain and crew entirely made
up of freemen of African descent, caused enough comment and
curiosity that it was covered in the newspapers. With the
(21:57):
help of prominent British quakers, Cuffey eventually got his apprentice
released from prison and he returned to the United States. However,
back in eighteen oh seven, President Thomas Jefferson had signed
the Embargo Act into law. This came out of the
Napoleonic Wars, when both Britain and France had each implemented
punitive trade restrictions, and we're both harassing American ships at sea.
(22:21):
When Cuffee arrived back in the United States on April
nineteenth of eighteen twelve, carrying a cargo of goods from
Sierra Leone, he was found to be in violation of
that Act, and his ship and goods were seized. Cuffey's
response was to petition President James Madison for its release.
On May second, eighteen twelve, he met with both Madison
(22:41):
and the Secretary of the Treasury, making him probably the
first African American to meet with a sitting president. His
goods were ultimately released, and he also discussed his ideas
for African colonization with the president while he was there.
Cuffy's plan at this point was to start arranging a
round trip voyage between we New England and Sierra Leone
about once a year. It would carry Africans and their
(23:05):
descendants to Sierra Leone, and it would return with African
goods to trade with North America and Europe. But the
War of eighteen twelve started not long after that meeting
with the President and interrupted that plan. Apart from the
inherently more dangerous sea travel during the war, there was
no way he could make this three pronged trade route
(23:25):
work if two of the prongs were at war with
each other. He tried to get exceptions to the various
embargoes that were in place and carry on with this project,
but that was denied, so for a time he turned
his attention more toward advocating for colonization from within the
United States. In eighteen twelve, he visited major cities in
the US, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City to
(23:47):
establish branches of the African Institution. This was what had
replaced the Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade in
Britain after slavery had been abolished there. He was really
focused on getting a movement for colon zation started led
by Africans and people of African descent for themselves to
allow people who wanted to immigrate to do so. At first,
(24:08):
his efforts looked pretty promising. Prominent black leaders in the
cities that he visited supported his plan and became involved
with the African Institution. But on December tenth, eighteen fifteen,
he departed for Sierra Leone aboard his brig called the Traveler.
On board the Traveler, we're thirty eight people, including two
families that were headed by people who had been enslaved
(24:29):
and taken to the United States from what's now Senegal
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cuffey was supposed
to have some funding from the African Institution in London
for this, but that didn't pan out, and only eight
of the people aboard the Traveler were able to pay
their own way, so Coffey paid for the rest himself
at a cost of about five thousand dollars. This is
(24:50):
believed to be the first time that a group of
African Americans emigrated from North America to Africa through a
venture that was run by and for black people. In
spite of this promising start, though, Cuffy's efforts fell apart
pretty quickly, the American Colonization Society was established in the
United States in eighteen sixteen. On its surface, this organization
(25:12):
had some of the same goals as what Cuffey was doing.
But while Cuffy was focused on giving people choices and
on empowering both the colonists and the local people of
Sierra Leone, a lot of the people who were involved
with the American Colonization Society were not. Some of the
organization's leaders were of a mindset similar to Cuffy's, but
(25:32):
others included people like Henry Clay, who thought that the
colonization movement would quote rid our country of a useless
and pernicious, if not dangerous portion of its population. There
had always been supporters of this colonization idea who are
motivated by racism. Even amongst staunch abolitionists, there were people
who thought that free black people could never be part
(25:54):
of white society, and so removing them to Africa was
the best for everyone concerned. But as the colonization movement grew,
it also drew the attention of slave owners, who found
the free black population to be a threat to the
institution of slavery. Some in the colonization movement, including both
abolitionists and slave owners, started to advocate for the idea
(26:17):
of freeing people only if they agreed to emigrate. Quaker
abolitionists Levi Coffins some of the situation up this way quote.
Many of us were opposed to making colonization a condition
of freedom, believing it to be an odious plan of
expatriation concocted by slaveholders to open a drain by which
they might get rid of free negroes and thus remain
(26:39):
in more secure position of their slave property. They considered
free negroes a dangerous element among slaves. We had no
objection to free negroes going to Africa of their own
free will, but to compel them to go as a
condition of freedom was a movement to which we were
conscientiously opposed and against which we strongly contended. When the
(27:01):
vote was taken, the motion was carried by a small majority.
We feel that the slave power had got the ascendancy
in our society, and we could no longer work with it.
Cuffey really tried to distance his project from the colonization movements,
racist elements, and motivations, but in spite of those efforts,
by eighteen seventeen, he had lost a lot of his
(27:22):
support in the Black community in the United States. In
January of eighteen seventeen, attendees at a meeting of the
African Institute in Philadelphia were nearly unanimous and their opposition
to the idea of colonization. They issued a resolution that read,
in part quote, whereas our ancestors, not by choice, were
the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we
(27:45):
their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings
of her luxuriant soil, which their blood and sweat manured,
And that any measure or system of measures having tendency
to banish us from her bosom would not only be cruel,
but in direct violation of those principles which have been
the boast of this republic. Philadelphia businessman James Forton, who
(28:08):
had supported Cuffey's work earlier on and had been part
of the African Institution, there also withdrew his support. He
co authored a statement in August of eighteen seventeen which said, quote,
the plan of colonizing is not asked for by us,
we renounce and disclaim any connection with it. By this point,
Cuffey had become seriously ill, and he knew that he
(28:29):
was dying. He gathered his family on August seventeenth of
eighteen seventeen to say goodbye, and he died on September
seven of that year. His funeral was held the following
day at Westport Friends Meeting House and he was buried
in its burial ground. Today there's a monuments to Paul
Cuffey at the Westport Meeting House which reads quote and
Memory of Captain Paul Cuffey, Patriot, navigator, educator, philanthropist, friend,
(28:53):
a noble character. Although the idea of colonization had fallen
out of favor with most of the black community when
Cuffey died, the American Colonization Society continued on, and Liberia
was established as a colony for Black Americans in eighteen
forty seven. Some of the people who had gone to
see Early One aboard the Traveler eventually moved there. Today,
(29:15):
Paul Cuffey is often described as a forerunner in the
Pan African movement. This movement is rooted in the idea
that everyone of African descent has some common interests and
is united by their African ancestry, regardless of whether they're
living in Africa or elsewhere. It's not an idea that
can really be credited to one individual, specific person, but
(29:36):
it's often traced back to people like Henry Sylvester Williams,
who established the Pan African Association at the end of
the nineteenth century, and W. E. B. Du Boys and
his contemporaries who organized the first Pan African Congress in
nineteen hundred, so he was kind of presaging their ideas
by almost a century. Do you have some listener mail?
I sure do, I have listener mail from Lily and
(29:59):
Lily wrote after our episode on the Elgin Marbles and
are behind the scenes minised on that, and Lily says,
dear Holly and Tracy, I thought you might want to
know that the museum world is aware of and having
conversations about the complicity of academia and the illegal art market.
These conversations are just happening primarily in academic forums like
(30:22):
the Archaeological Institute of America's annual conference. The only popular,
if sensationalized presentation of the issue that I know of
is the book Chasing Aphrodite by Jason Felch and Ralph
frem Alino, which is a good read. By the way,
responsible museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
Art Institute of Chicago, and the Yale University Gallery are
(30:42):
now exceedingly careful to only by artwork that has not
passed through the illegal art market. The real issue moving
forward is not knowing what to do with art of
questionable provenance which was donated by influential benefactors such as alumni,
whose families may be offended if you refuse or attempt
to repatriate their gift. What to do with art excavated
(31:03):
under the auspices of questionable international power dynamics as another
puzzle curators are currently pondering. The general consensus thus far
seems to be to highlight the history is good and
bad of various objects on display via accompanying text panels
or presentations on iPads. I hope this mission of insight
into the museum world is helpful to you. Please keep
the awesome podcast episodes coming even or perhaps especially when
(31:27):
they are controversial. Best Lily, Thank you so much Lily
for that email. Uh We've gotten some other emails on
the same subject as well, so I'm sure it will
make another appearance in listener mail in the future. If
you would like to write to us about this or
any other podcast. Where at History Podcasts that I heart
radio dot com, and then we're all over social media
(31:47):
admiss in History. That's where you can find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter,
and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast,
the I Heart Radio app, and anywhere else you get
a podcast. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a
production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
(32:07):
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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