Storer College

Following the Civil War, the Reverend Dr. Nathan Cook Brackett established a Freewill Baptist primary school in the Lockwood House on Camp Hill. Brackett's tireless efforts to establish freedmen's schools in the area inspired a generous contribution from philanthopist John Storer of Sanford, Maine, who offered $10,000 for the establishment of a school in the South. The donation was offered on the condition that the school be open to all regardless of sex, race or religion.

On October 2, 1867, "Storer Normal School" was opened, and two years later, in December 1869, the federal government formally conveyed the Lockwood House and three other former Armory residences on Camp Hill to the school's trustees. Frederick Douglass served as a trustee of Storer College, and delivered a memorable oration on the subject of John Brown here in 1881.

By the end of the 19th century, the promise of freedom and equality for blacks had been buried by Jim Crow laws and legal segregation. To combat these injustices, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and other leading African-Americans created the Niagara Movement, which held its second conference on the campus of Storer College in 1906. The Niagara Movement was a forerunner of the NAACP.

In 1954, legal segregation was finally ended by the landmark school desegregation decision handed down by the Supreme Court in Brown v. The Board of Education. The decision, however, brought an end to federal and state funding for Storer College, and a year later it closed its doors. Today the National Park Service continues the college's educational mission by using part of the old campus as a training facility. (source: The National Park Service)

The cornerstone of Freedom, part 2 of 4




The cornerstone of Freedom, part 4 of 4

"Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty"

Daron Acemoglu writes in Esquire: We are the rich, the haves, the developed. And most of the rest — in Africa, South Asia, and South America, the Somalias and Bolivias and Bangladeshes of the world — are the nots. It's always been this way, a globe divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine, though the extent of inequality across nations today is unprecedented: The average citizen of the United States is ten times as prosperous as the average Guatemalan, more than twenty times as prosperous as the average North Korean, and more than forty times as prosperous as those living in Mali, Ethiopia, Congo, or Sierra Leone.

The question social scientists have unsuccessfully wrestled with for centuries is, Why? But the question they should have been asking is, How? Because inequality is not predetermined. Nations are not like children — they are not born rich or poor. Their governments make them that way.

Daron Acemoglu

You can chart the search for a theory of inequality to the French political philosopher Montesquieu, who in the mid-eighteenth century came up with a very simple explanation: People in hot places are inherently lazy. Other no less sweeping explanations soon followed: Could it be that Max Weber's Protestant work ethic is the true driver of economic success? Or perhaps the richest countries are those that were former British colonies? Or maybe it's as simple as tracing which nations have the largest populations of European descent? The problem with all of these theories is that while they superficially fit some specific cases, others radically disprove them.

It's the same with the theories put forth today. Economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, attributes the relative success of nations to geography and weather: In the poorest parts of the world, he argues, nutrient-starved tropical soil makes agriculture a challenge, and tropical climates foment disease, particularly malaria. Perhaps if we were to fix these problems, teach the citizens of these nations better farming techniques, eliminate malaria, or at the very least equip them with artemisinin to fight this deadly disease, we could eliminate poverty. Or better yet, perhaps we just move these people and abandon their inhospitable land altogether.

Jared Diamond, the famous ecologist and best-selling author, has a different theory: The origin of world inequality stems from the historical endowment of plant and animal species and the advancement of technology. In Diamond's telling, the cultures that first learned to plant crops were the first to learn how to use a plow, and thus were first to adopt other technologies, the engine of every successful economy. Perhaps then the solution to world inequality rests in technology — wiring the developing world with Internet and cell phones.

And yet while Sachs and Diamond offer good insight into certain aspects of poverty, they share something in common with Montesquieu and others who followed: They ignore incentives. People need incentives to invest and prosper; they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep that money. And the key to ensuring those incentives is sound institutions — the rule of law and security and a governing system that offers opportunities to achieve and innovate. That's what determines the haves from the have-nots — not geography or weather or technology or disease or ethnicity.

Put simply: Fix incentives and you will fix poverty. And if you wish to fix institutions, you have to fix governments. (source: Esquire)

"Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty" -- Daron Acemoglu

Photographer Gordon Parks

In a society segregated by race, Gordon Parks’ identity and experiences as an African-American man indelibly influenced his documentary photography work. As a young man, Parks worked as a waiter on passenger trains and a jazz musician, and he taught himself photography. In 1941 he won a Julius Rosenwald fellowship and chose to apprentice for a year under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration. (The Rosenwald Fund provided grants to promising African-American scholars and artists.) The FSA had never employed an African-American photographer, and Stryker initially resisted taking on Parks, fearing the reaction of FSA staffers. But the Rosenwald Fund, with its close political connections to the Roosevelt administration, prevailed, and Parks arrived in Washington in January 1942.

The young photographer, raised in Kansas City and well-traveled from his railroad days, found a city that, in his later words, “bulged with racism.” In his 1990 autobiography Voices in the Mirror, Parks recalled how he was treated in this “hate-drenched city”: “Eating houses shooed me to the back door; theaters refused me a seat, and the scissoring voices of white clerks at Julius Garfinckel’s prestigious department store riled me with curtness. Some clothing I had hoped to buy went unbought. They just didn’t have my size—no matter what I wanted.”* Furious, he swore to Stryker that he would document this shocking level of bigotry in a city that contained the symbols of American democracy. He soon realized that “photographing bigotry was very difficult,” and so he focused on “the evil of its effect...discernible in the black faces of the oppressed and their blighted neighborhood lying within the shadows of the Capitol.”*

Parks’ work was shaped by own experiences, his conversations with African-American residents of Washington, and his close study of the work of fellow FSA photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein, and Walker Evans. He also cited Richard Wright’s Twelve Million Black Voices, a 1941 exploration of the lives of African Americans during the Great Depression that featured the work of FSA photographers, as “my bible, a big part of my learning, and the inspiration needed to keep my camera moving where it might do the most good.”

Washington, D.C. Mrs. Ella Watson, a government charwoman.

Following Roy Stryker’s advice to talk to African-American residents of Washington about their experiences of the city’s racism, Parks struck up a conversation one night with Ella Watson, a cleaning woman in the government office building that housed the FSA. This image, titled “American Gothic,” became Parks’ most famous photo and an emblem of Jim Crow segregation. Posing Watson holding a broom and mop in front of an American flag, he echoed the pose of Grant Wood’s famous “American Gothic” painting (which depicts a stern looking farm couple holding a pitchfork in a similar pose) and used it to visually dramatize the existence of racial discrimination in a supposedly democratic society.

Washington, D.C. Mrs. Ella Watson, a government charwoman, with three grandchildren and her adopted daughter.

While “American Gothic” became an iconic and widely reproduced photograph, Parks continued to photograph Watson outside of her job. He accompanied her to her home and church and produced a series of intimate photographs like this one. While Parks used Watson’s difficult life to symbolize the burdens of racial oppression, he also presented her life as one filled with love and spirituality.

Washington (southwest section), D.C. Two Negro boys.

This portrait of two young boys captures both their spirited expressions and the physical decay of their material world (their clothing, the buildings in their neighborhood). The combination marked many of Parks’ Washington photos, with which he tried to show the devastating effects of discrimination along with the dignity and humanity of its victims. (source: History Matters)

How the Other Half Lives. Studies Among the Tenements of New York. Jacob A. Riis

From NPR, "Jacob Riis: Shedding Light On NYC's 'Other Half,'" by Robert Siegel, on 30 June 2008:Through photos and writings documenting poverty in New York City in the late 19th century, a Danish immigrant became a famous campaigner against slum housing. Two new books tell the story of Jacob Riis, a social reformer and natural showman.

Imagine it's 1888. New York City. The Lower East Side is the most densely populated place on Earth: Block after block of tenements house the working-poor immigrants of the city, including Italians, Irish, Germans, Jews, Czechs and Chinese.

Imagine the darkness of an unlit corridor in one of those tenements, a corridor that opens onto windowless rooms, 10 feet square, where entire families live and might even work — sewing, or rolling cigars.

Out of the darkness, a door opens. A man with a Danish accent leads a team of amateur photographers, who are accompanied by a policeman. They position their camera on a tripod and ignite a mixture of magnesium and potassium chlorate powder. A flash explodes, illuminating their squalor.

It would take the photographers a few minutes to reload that early ancestor of the flash bulb. And then, on to another tenement scene.

And despite the blackness of a room or an unlit street, a picture is taken, a document of urban poverty.

In the late 1880s, a New York City police reporter named Jacob Riis took pictures that way in lower Manhattan.

'5 Cents A Spot'

One of Riis' most famous photos was taken on Bayard Street. It's called "5 Cents a Spot," which shows a room full of people bedding down for the night. (A "spot" meant a place on the floor.) They must have been shocked. Magnesium flash powder was something new. It was developed in Germany in 1887. Riis' burst of light must have been a stunning surprise, but it made the dim, airless lives of the poor visible to the middle class.

In public slideshows and in his book, How the Other Half Lives, Riis — who was born in Ribe, Denmark — used those images and his descriptions to jar the conscience of prosperous, native-born Americans.

A few days ago, we took a walk with Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom, co-authors of Rediscovering Jacob Riis, through Mulberry Street. The neighborhood is recently gentrified, but this was where Riis campaigned against the housing conditions of the day.

"You can still see the really small size of the building lots," says Czitrom, who is a historian. "The typical building lot in New York for a tenement was 25 feet wide and 100 feet deep going back," and the buildings often took up the entire lot, he says.

No Light Or Air

So-called rear tenements, built behind other tenements, would have no access to light or air, and all the rooms were interior rooms, Czitrom says

A court decision from that era essentially said there is no right to light or air for a renter or an owner, he says. "So the idea that you have a right to a window or the right to some breathing space was not a legal right that anyone recognized until much later," Czitrom says.

Riis thought of himself as a writer, and he was evidently a gripping storyteller in the lectures he gave to accompany his lantern slideshows.

Yochelson, a curator at the Museum of the City of New York, says Riis was a passionate reformer, but he was also very conservative. He believed that Protestant philanthropy and the self-restraint of ethical landlords was the best remedy — not the government. And he was very much a product of his time.

A Slum Tour

"Riis organized his most famous book, which was a best-seller and launched his career as a reformer — How the Other Half Lives — as a kind of a slum tour, going neighborhood by neighborhood, describing ethnic group by ethnic group," Yochelson says. "That was a pre-established literary genre, which he was borrowing. It had a lot of entertainment value. 'Come see the colorful Italians and the mystifying Chinese.'

"And there was the sense of he was playing on the ... entertainment value of these stereotypes," she says. "So on the one hand, there was a certain racial typology that he believed in. But it was also popular culture, and he abandoned that after How the Other Half Lives."

Czitrom adds, "One of the things that makes Riis so fascinating are these contradictions in his work. I see Riis more as a transitional figure. He's somebody that did bring with him those stereotypes and sort of racialized thinking of the day, but he's also somebody that began insisting on the importance of environment. Or, as he put it at one point, it's the squalid houses that make for squalid people."

Rediscovering Jacob Riis, the book that Yochelson and Czitrom collaborated on, is one of two new books about Riis. The Other Half is the title of a new biography by Tom Buk-Swienty, a Danish historian and former newspaper correspondent in the United States.

Poverty Firsthand

Riis was once one of the most famous men in America: a close friend and confidante of President Theodore Roosevelt and the epitome of the immigrant made good — good, in his case, being measured by political and social influence, not by wealth.

But Buk-Swienty says that didn't impress the Danes back in Riis' hometown of Ribe, who viewed anyone who seemed well-off as being so at their expense.

Buk-Swienty tells the story of how young Riis, the underachieving son of a schoolmaster, set off for America when the girl he adored turned down his proposal of marriage.

Riis worked in the U.S. as a carpenter; in the financial panic of 1873, he experienced unemployment firsthand.

"He himself experienced extreme poverty," Buk-Swienty says. "There was a time where he just didn't have a place to sleep. He had no money. He was totally penniless."

The experience led Riis to feel empathy with New York's poor immigrants, Buk-Swienty says.

"He could write about them because he knew what they were going through," he says.

Poverty struck Riis as abnormal — even for the various immigrant groups whom he regarded as exotic. When he lived in New York City, about 40 percent of the population was foreign-born. It's just about the same share today.

A Personal Transformation

Millions of immigrants were in the process of becoming American.

Buk-Swienty studied Riis' diaries and says he found the moment when the Danish carpenter, not yet a reporter, became an American, mentally. He says it happened when Riis learned that the girl back home, the one he had been pining for, had gotten engaged to a Danish military hero.

"He was shocked," Buk-Swienty says. "That came for him as a total surprise, and his world, you could say, went dark for a few days."

Riis wrote about his sorrow in Danish, but a few days later, he began to write his diary in English. "It's very remarkable," Buk-Swienty says. "You can see that something is changing in this man."

Riis was a social reformer who was also, with his slideshows and lectures, a natural showman.

"I do think that Riis is the first muckraker," Czitrom says. "I think he represents the beginning of a sort of progressive sensibility ... Riis believed that it was important, that it was crucial, to try to rouse the conscience of the public, to appeal to the conscience. This belief that if we could simply expose conditions, if people simply knew how bad things were, they would rise up and change them." (source: NPR)

Filthy Cities - Industrial New York

The Arts Desk: Dan Snow's toxic trilogy climaxed in New York, where he crawled voyeuristically through the rotten core of the Big Apple. It was part Discovery Channel documentary, part Gangs of New York dirty realism, as Snow took a frankly indecent relish in regaling us with tales of death, disease and raw capitalism at its baby-eating worst.

In the event, studying the development of America's greatest city from the bottom up, as it were, made perfect sense. In the mid-19th century, New York was a crude frontier settlement that occupied merely the southernmost tip of Manhattan island. Immigrants, for example the 650,000 Irish who were fleeing the potato famine back home, were dumped into stinking tenements run by fat-cat bosses and slum landlords who bullied and robbed them.

Lack of plumbing, sewers or running water meant it was open season for typhus and cholera, and the poor huddled masses played host to an interesting variety of wildlife including bedbugs and disease-carrying lice. The streets were littered with dead cats, rotting horses and excrement, while freely grazing pigs were the nearest thing to a street-cleaning service. Taxpayers' money was being embezzled by bent politicians like William "Boss" Tweed. Of course, some say 21st-century Wall Street isn't much better (New York's Lower East Side, 1910, pictured below).

A larger than average CGI budget allowed Snow to juxtapose himself with tattered wretches from the century before last, and on one occasion three Dan Snows occupied a single tenement room, to illustrate the concept of overcrowding. New York's evolution from satanic swamp, where butchers sold customers rotting meat cured with borax and clothing dye, to thrusting turbo-metropolis was signposted by key technological developments which transformed the city, then rippled out across the industrialized world. Having been poorly lit by noxious coal gas, New York became a sparkling new wonderland thanks to Thomas Edison and his amazing electric light, though Edison's Direct Current was speedily supplanted by Nikola Tesla's longer-range Alternating Current. Despicably, Edison tried to sow doubt about AC by using it to kill Topsy, the Coney Island elephant, preserving the animal's demise on film.

A filthy New York City street in 1893.

Meanwhile, running water was brought to New York by damming the Croton River and building a spectacular aqueduct to carry the water 40 miles to the city, though at first only the uptown rich could afford it. The downtown drones continued to flounder in a sea of merde. All this water needed somewhere to overflow into, so the city found itself equipped, perforce, with a spiffing new sewage system. Meanwhile New York was still surrounded on all sides by water heaving with untreated sewage, which was being pumped nonchalantly into the East and Hudson rivers. Before you could say "bada-bing!", huge sewage treatment plans sprang up, and Richard H Gould introduced the British invention of "activated sludge" which used bacteria to purify the water.

(source: http://www.theartsdesk.com/tv/filthy-cities-bbc-two)

Filthy Cities - Industrial New York

Filthy 18th Century Paris

Be transported back to the streets of Châtelet in the centre of Paris in the infamous steamy summer of 1788. The street is literally an open sewer and rubbish dump. The smells of rotting flesh, vegetables, fish and cheese are overpowering. Watch out though, a chamber pot may be emptied on to you from an open window above!

Just 200 years ago, Paris was famously one of the foulest and smelliest cities in Europe. In this programme historian Dan Snow sniffs out the rotten story of the French revolution.

Stunning CGI reveals the stinking streets where ordinary people slaved in toxic industries and suffered grotesque poverty and disease. Dan immerses himself in their world, visiting a perfumer to recreate the stench of the 18th century city - Pong de Paris. He has a go at one of the worst jobs in history - tanning leather by 18th century methods using dog excrement and urine - to make exquisite luxury goods that only the filthy rich could afford.

Marie Antoinette

Get a courtier's eye view of Marie Antoinette in her boudoir at the Palace of Versailles as you watch her perform her toilette. The heady scent of Coronation Water, created especially for her by her personal perfumer Louis Fargeon, fills your nose and hides the stench of the filthy rich.

He gets a rare glimpse of the private rooms of infamous Queen Marie Antoinette at the glittering palace of Versailles and reveals some surprising facts about the royal court. Plus he comes face to face with the ultimate killing machine - the gruesome guillotine. Dan finds out what happened to the thousands of bodies that overflowed in the cemeteries of Paris during The Terror.

Dan has a go at the worst job in 18th century Paris. Now you can see and smell how bad this exhausting and stinking trade really was. As a tanner in revolutionary Paris you work from dawn until dusk heaving the hides into pits of lime, bating them with dog dung and scraping off the layers of fat and hair.

Dan discovers how monumental filth and injustice drove Parisians to a bloody revolution which would transform their city and give birth to a new republic.

Filthy Cities Paris

Filthy Cities Paris from baron haussmann on Vimeo.

Filthy Cities - Medieval London

From the UK Telegraph on 5 April 2011: Medieval London: 10 disgusting facts. Ahead of BBC Two's new history series, Filthy Cities, we list some revolting facts about how dirty medieval London was.

1. The inhabitants of medieval London (human and animal) produced 50 tons of excrement a day.

2. In medieval London, there were no pavements - people had to walk on the bare earth. Except, unfortunately, it wasn't bare earth - the ground was covered with the excrement of both people and animals, as well as animal entrails and rotting food.

3. Eventually, many streets became impassable, so muck-rakers were hired to clean them as best they could. Though the job was abhorrent, the muck-rakers were paid much better than the average working man.

4. In the 14th century, Sherborne Lane in East London was so disgusting that it was officially known as Shiteburn Lane.

5. It was illegal in medieval London to empty chamber pots out of windows. Not that this always stopped people doing it, of course.

6. In 1369, King Edward III demanded that butchers be banned from slaughtering animals within the City of London because of the stench from blood and offal. Rotting meat was commonly dumped in the Thames.

7. In 1345, a law was passed stating that anyone dumping refuse in the street would be fined two shillings - at the time, a considerable sum.

8. Pigs owned by the Hospitallers of St Antony, a charitable order, were allowed to roam the streets of medieval London freely.

9. Between 1348 and 1665, there were 16 outbreaks of the plague in London. During the Black Death of 1348-49, a third of London's inhabitants died or fled.

10. Other causes of terrible smells in medieval London were the tanneries, where leather would be boiled. People rarely washed or changed their clothes.

Filthy Cities - Medieval London -©BBC

Reverdy C. Ransom Defying White Supremacy

The Reverend Reverdy Cassius Ransom (1861 - 1959)

Emily Perper, a staff writer of the Chautauquan Daily, writes: Social justice activism has its roots in the Social Gospel, which was rooted in Christian socialism movements and a growing labor movement — trade unions were disgusted with the church’s inaction in the face of worker oppression, Dorrien said.

Two of the most important figures in the Social Gospel movement were Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden.

But Ransom, the founder of the Black Social Gospel movement, is not so well-known.

“He lived on the other side of American apartheid,” Dorrien said, and he launched into the story of Ransom’s tumultuous yet obscure life journey from a boy born in poverty to one of the most controversial figures in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Ransom was born in 1841. He was raised by his mother, Harriet Ransom, who insisted upon his education and worked hard to provide for him.

The Ransoms moved to Ohio, where hostility toward blacks was quite prevalent at the time.

“Yet they migrated there in large numbers anyway, coping with resentment, abuse, disenfranchisement and lynchings,” Dorrien said.

Ohio was also home to the African Methodist Episcopal Church, of which Ransom and his family were active members.

“Ransom spent his childhood puzzling over the chasm of black and white Americans,” Dorrien said.

Ransom attended a segregated school. All classes were taught by one white man. The curriculum never changed, year after year. Harriet Ransom took laundry jobs for wealthy white people in exchange for private tutoring for her son.

Ransom married young and had a child whom his mother largely ended up raising; she did not want the duties of fatherhood to distract from Ransom’s studies. As his mother decreed, he attended Wilberforce University, an African Methodist Episcopal-affiliated school, in Wilberforce, Ohio.

The school “stood for racial equality and black progress,” unlike other institutions of the time, Dorrien said.

Ransom’s troubled marriage, along with his increasingly liberal views about evolution and theology, conflicted with the conservative lifestyle and theology Wilberforce touted. Ransom feared his liberalism would be discovered and believed that he needed to pretend to be conservative to enter the ministry.

Ransom’s first several church assignments were small congregations. In 1890, he was assigned to a larger parish in Springfield, Ohio. During this time, Ransom developed his personal philosophy, embracing Social Gospel teachings as well as manifest destiny.

“Ransom implored that America could not claim to be civilized when it savagely terrorized blacks,” Dorrien said.

Once he arrived in Cleveland, Ransom converted to what Dorrien referred to as “Social Gospel socialism.” Bishop Benajmin Arnette, a prominent figure in the AME church, was active in the Republican Party.

“(Arnette) legitimized Ransom’s political interests, and he became a close friend and protector to Ransom,” Dorrien said.

Ransom’s political views demonstrated his difference from his newfound friend and his dedication to Social Gospel teachings.

“For Ransom, the best kind of political ministry focused on electoral politics, lynching and economic justice,” Dorrien said.

Ransom’s next church assignment was Bethel Church in Chicago, a place Dorrien called “perfect” for the type of activism that interested him. His congregation was full to bursting as participants in the Great Migration moved from the South. He also joined the Afro-American Council.

Ransom disagreed heartily with many of the beliefs of Booker T. Washington, whose teachings influenced the Afro-American Council. After one heated statement, he was forced to apologize.

“(This served) notice that the cause of militant racial justice had a new voice — the AME ministry,” Dorrien said.

He encouraged the path of democratic socialism, which would eventually attract African-Americans.

“Progressivism was about making progress, and Ransom’s calling was to make sure that blacks were included in it,” Dorrien said.

His next initiative was the Institutional Church and Social Settlement. It offered a variety of programs, including Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs, childcare, early education, job training, counseling and lectures. Ransom felt his center filled a void the church could not fill. His colleagues in the AME church disagreed intensely, accusing him of imitating the white Social Gospel movement.

“Ransom replied that the white Social Gospel-ers were right about one thing: The church has a social mission to change social structures, creating a good society for everybody,” Dorrien said.

Reputed for his powerful preaching, settlement ministry and staunch opposition to the philosophies of Booker T. Washington, Ransom’s radicalism threatened his fellow AME clergy. Subsequently, Ransom was moved from his thriving congregation in Chicago. His protector Arnette stepped in and had him come to New Bedford, Mass., and eventually to a church in Boston.

Together, W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter and Ransom founded the Niagara Movement. Ransom gave the first keynote address in praise of the abolitionist John Brown.

“(The Niagara Movement) stood for the abolition of discrimination in public accommodation, freedom of speech and assembly, universal education and equal rights, regardless of race or class,” Dorrien said.

Nevertheless, racism increased in violent ways.

“Even as the Great Migration took place, there was no tolerance in polite society for social justice or racial justice activism,” Dorrien said.

Again, AME pastors were unimpressed with Ransom’s notoriety and had him moved from his Boston congregation to New York City. But Ransom was not to be stopped. He made a deal with Tammany Hall to end the prohibition on hiring black police officers and co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Ransom adored the ecumenical movement and called it “American Christianity at its best,” Dorrien said.

The 1912 invasion of Cuba gave Ransom second thoughts about the nature and purpose of manifest destiny. Ransom came to see that the white people who implemented its tools brought ideas racism and white supremacy wherever they went.

Instead, Ransom stressed black consciousness and “pride of race.” Rather than racism, “pride of race lifts human being to greatness … the idea is a pride of personality that transcends race grounded in recognition of divine light in every soul,” Dorrien said in explanation of Ransom’s view.

Ransom was elected the 48th Bishop of the AME church. His mother was thrilled, but Ransom worried his administrative duties would take away from his hands-on approach. It did.

“In his last years, the black nationalist strain of Ransom’s thought was stronger than the democratic Socialist and Social Gospel strains,” Dorrien said.

Ransom still struggled with why white America was so afraid of black culture.

In the 1930s, he declared the situation for blacks was improving in only one way: Blacks were acquitting a stronger sense of identity and self-respect. His beliefs combined a confidence in black consciousness and the superiority of Christianity.

“His vision did not really diminish in his later years, however … He would’ve preferred to work with large interracial organizations that struggled for a cooperative commonwealth for all people, but they didn’t exist,” Dorrien said.

Ransom’s philosophy devolved into strange racial superstitions about genetic predisposition. Ransom was long forgotten by his death in 1959 because he had less of a direct connection to civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. and less clout with white activists.

“Ransom is wrongly neglected, as is the Black Social Gospel, which inspired the greatest liberation movement in American history, one that has chapters left to be lived and written,” Dorrien concluded. (source: The Chautauquan Daily)

Gary Dorrien: Defying White Supremacism from Chautauqua Institution on FORA.tv

Seasoning African Slaves By Thomas Clarkson

AN ESSAY ON THE SLAVERY AND COMMERCE

OF THE HUMAN SPECIES,

PARTICULARLY THE AFRICAN,

TRANSLATED FROM A LATIN DISSERTATION,

WHICH WAS HONOURED

WITH THE FIRST PRIZE

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE,

FOR THE YEAR 1785, WITH ADDITIONS.

But to return to the narration. When the wretched Africans are conveyed to the plantations, they are considered as beasts of labour, and are put to their respective work. Having led, in their own country, a life of indolence and ease, where the earth brings forth spontaneously the comforts of life, and spares frequently the toil and trouble of cultivation, they can hardly be expected to endure the drudgeries of servitude. Calculations are accordingly made upon their lives. It is conjectured, that if three in four survive what is called the seasoning, the bargain is highly favourable. This seasoning is said to expire, when the two first years of their servitude are completed: It is the time which an African must take to be so accustomed to the colony, as to be able to endure the common labour of a plantation, and to be put into the gang. At the end of this period the calculations become verified, twenty thousand[059] of those, who are annually imported, dying before the seasoning is over. This is surely an horrid and awful consideration: and thus does it appear, (and let it be remembered, that it is the lowest calculation that has been ever made upon the subject) that out of every annual supply that is shipped from the coast of Africa, forty thousand lives[060] are regularly expended, even before it can be said, that there is really any additional stock for the colonies.

When the seasoning is over, and the survivors are thus enabled to endure the usual task of slaves, they are considered as real and substantial supplies. From this period[061] therefore we shall describe their situation.

They are summoned at five in the morning to begin their work. This work may be divided into two kinds, the culture of the fields, and the collection of grass for cattle. The last is the most laborious and intolerable employment; as the grass can only be collected blade by blade, and is to be fetched frequently twice a day at a considerable distance from the plantation. In these two occupations they are jointly taken up, with no other intermission than that of taking their subsistence twice, till nine at night. They then separate for their respective huts, when they gather sticks, prepare their supper, and attend their families. This employs them till midnight, when they go to rest. Such is their daily way of life for rather more than half the year. They are sixteen hours, including two intervals at meals, in the service of their masters: they are employed three afterwards in their own necessary concerns; five only remain for sleep, and their day is finished.

During the remaining portion of the year, or the time of crop, the nature, as well as the time of their employment, is considerably changed. The whole gang is generally divided into two or three bodies. One of these, besides the ordinary labour of the day, is kept in turn at the mills, that are constantly going, during the whole of the night. This is a dreadful encroachment upon their time of rest, which was before too short to permit them perfectly to refresh their wearied limbs, and actually reduces their sleep, as long as this season lasts, to about three hours and an half a night, upon a moderate computation.[062] Those who can keep their eyes open during their nightly labour, and are willing to resist the drowsiness that is continually coming upon them, are presently worn out; while some of those, who are overcome, and who feed the mill between asleep and awake, suffer, for thus obeying the calls of nature, by the loss of a limb.[063] In this manner they go on, with little or no respite from their work, till the crop season is over, when the year (from the time of our first description) is completed.

To support[064] a life of such unparalleled drudgery, we should at least expect: to find, that they were comfortably clothed, and plentifully fed. But sad reverse! they have scarcely a covering to defend themselves against the inclemency of the night. Their provisions are frequently bad, and are always dealt out to them with such a sparing hand, that the means of a bare livelihood are not placed within the reach of four out of five of these unhappy people. It is a fact, that many of the disorders of slaves are contracted from eating the vegetables, which their little spots produce, before they are sufficiently ripe: a clear indication, that the calls of hunger are frequently so pressing, as not to suffer them to wait, till they can really enjoy them.

This, situation, of a want of the common necessaries of life, added to that of hard and continual labour, must be sufficiently painful of itself. How then must the pain be sharpened, if it be accompanied with severity! if an unfortunate slave does not come into the field exactly at the appointed time, if, drooping with sickness or fatigue, he appears to work unwillingly, or if the bundle of grass that he has been collecting, appears too small in the eye of the overseer, he is equally sure of experiencing the whip. This instrument erases the skin, and cuts out small portions of the flesh at almost every stroke; and is so frequently applied, that the smack of it is all day long in the ears of those, who are in the vicinity of the plantations. This severity of masters, or managers, to their slaves, which is considered only as common discipline, is attended with bad effects. It enables them to behold instances of cruelty without commiseration, and to be guilty of them without remorse. Hence those many acts of deliberate mutilation, that have taken place on the slightest occasions: hence those many acts of inferiour, though shocking, barbarity, that have taken place without any occasion at all: the very slitting[065] of ears has been considered as an operation, so perfectly devoid of pain, as to have been performed for no other reason than that for which a brand is set upon cattle, as a mark of property.

But this is not the only effect, which this severity produces: for while it hardens their hearts, and makes them insensible of the misery of their fellow-creatures, it begets a turn for wanton cruelty. As a proof of this, we shall mention one, among the many instances that occur, where ingenuity has been exerted in contriving modes of torture. "An iron coffin, with holes in it, was kept by a certain colonist, as an auxiliary to the lash. In this the poor victim of the master's resentment was inclosed, and placed sufficiently near a fire, to occasion extreme pain, and consequently shrieks and groans, until the revenge of the master was satiated, without any other inconvenience on his part, than a temporary suspension of the slave's labour. Had he been flogged to death, or his limbs mutilated, the interest of the brutal tyrant would have suffered a more irreparable loss.

"In mentioning, this instance, we do not mean to insinuate, that it is common. We know that it was reprobated by many. All that we would infer from it is, that where men are habituated to a system of severity, they become wantonly cruel, and that the mere toleration of such an instrument of torture, in any country, is a clear indication, that this wretched class of men do not there enjoy the protection of any laws, that may be pretended to have been enacted in their favour."

Such then is the general situation of the unfortunate Africans. They are beaten and tortured at discretion. They are badly clothed. They are miserably fed. Their drudgery is intense and incessant and their rest short. For scarcely are their heads reclined, scarcely have their bodies a respite from the labour of the day, or the cruel hand of the overseer, but they are summoned to renew their sorrows. In this manner they go on from year to year, in a state of the lowest degradation, without a single law to protect them, without the possibility of redress, without a hope that their situation will be changed, unless death should terminate the scene.

Having described the general situation of these unfortunate people, we shall now take notice of the common consequences that are found to attend it, and relate them separately, as they result either from long and painful labour, a want of the common necessaries of life, or continual severity.

Oppressed by a daily task of such immoderate labour as human nature is utterly unable to perform, many of them run away from their masters. They fly to the recesses of the mountains, where they choose rather to live upon any thing that the soil affords them, nay, the very soil itself, than return to that happy situation, which is represented by the receivers, as the condition of a slave.

It sometimes happens, that the manager of a mountain plantation, falls in with one of these; he immediately seizes him, and threatens to carry him to his former master, unless he will consent to live on the mountain and cultivate his ground. When his plantation is put in order, he carries the delinquent home, abandons him to all the suggestions of despotick rage, and accepts a reward for his honesty. The unhappy wretch is chained, scourged, tortured; and all this, because he obeyed the dictates of nature, and wanted to be free. And who is there, that would not have done the same thing, in the same situation? Who is there, that has once known the charms of liberty; that would not fly from despotism? And yet, by the impious laws of the receivers, the absence[066] of six months from the lash of tyranny is-death.

But this law is even mild, when compared with another against the same offence, which was in force sometime ago, and which we fear is even now in force, in some of those colonies which this account of the treatment comprehends. "Advertisements have frequently appeared there, offering a reward for the apprehending of fugitive slaves either alive or dead. The following instance was given us by a person of unquestionable veracity, under whose own observation it fell. As he was travelling in one of the colonies alluded to, he observed some people in pursuit of a poor wretch, who was seeking in the wilderness an asylum from his labours. He heard the discharge of a gun, and soon afterwards stopping at an house for refreshment, the head of the fugitive, still reeking with blood, was brought in and laid upon a table with exultation. The production of such a trophy was the proof required by law to entitle the heroes to their reward." Now reader determine if you can, who were the most execrable; the rulers of the state in authorizing murder, or the people in being bribed to commit it.

This is one of the common consequences of that immoderate share of labour, which is imposed upon them; nor is that, which is the result of a scanty allowance of food, less to be lamented. The wretched African is often so deeply pierced by the excruciating fangs of hunger, as almost to be driven to despair. What is he to do in such a trying situation? Let him apply to the receivers. Alas! the majesty of receivership is too sacred for the appeal, and the intrusion would be fatal. Thus attacked on the one hand, and shut out from every possibility of relief on the other, he has only the choice of being starved, or of relieving his necessities by taking a small portion of the fruits of his own labour. Horrid crime! to be found eating the cane, which probably his own hands have planted, and to be eating it, because his necessities were pressing! This crime however is of such a magnitude, as always to be accompanied with the whip; and so unmercifully has it been applied on such an occasion, as to have been the cause, in wet weather, of the delinquent's death. But the smart of the whip has not been the only pain that the wretched Africans have experienced. Any thing that passion could seize, and convert into an instrument of punishment, has been used; and, horrid to relate! the very knife has not been overlooked in the fit of phrenzy. Ears have been slit, eyes have been beaten out, and bones have been broken; and so frequently has this been the case, that it has been a matter of constant lamentation with disinterested people, who out of curiosity have attended the markets[067] to which these unhappy people weekly resort, that they have not been able to turn their eyes on any group of them whatever, but they have beheld these inhuman marks of passion, despotism, and caprice.

But these instances of barbarity have not been able to deter them from similar proceedings. And indeed, how can it be expected that they should? They have still the same appetite to be satisfied as before, and to drive them to desperation. They creep out clandestinely by night, and go in search of food into their master's, or some neighbouring plantation. But here they are almost equally sure of suffering. The watchman, who will be punished himself, if he neglects his duty, frequently seizes them in the fact. No excuse or intreaty will avail; he must punish them for an example, and he must punish them, not with a stick, nor with a whip, but with a cutlass. Thus it happens, that these unhappy slaves, if they are taken, are either sent away mangled in a barbarous manner, or are killed upon the spot.

We may now mention the consequences of the severity. The wretched Africans, daily subjected to the lash, and unmercifully whipt and beaten on every trifling occasion, have been found to resist their opposers. Unpardonable crime! that they should have the feelings of nature! that their breasts should glow with resentment on an injury! that they should be so far overcome, as to resist those, whom they are under no obligations to obey, and whose only title to their services consists in a violation of the rights of men! What has been the consequence?-But here let us spare the feelings of the reader, (we wish we could spare our own) and let us only say, without a recital of the cruelty, that they have been murdered at the discretion of their masters. For let the reader observe, that the life of an African is only valued at a price, that would scarcely purchase an horse; that the master has a power of murdering his slave, if he pays but a trifling fine; and that the murder must be attended with uncommon circumstances of horrour, if it even produces an inquiry.

Immortal Alfred! father of our invaluable constitution! parent of the civil blessings we enjoy! how ought thy laws to excite our love and veneration, who hast forbidden us, thy posterity, to tremble at the frown of tyrants! how ought they to perpetuate thy name, as venerable, to the remotest ages, who has secured, even to the meanest servant, a fair and impartial trial! How much does nature approve thy laws, as consistent with her own feelings, while she absolutely turns pale, trembles, and recoils, at the institutions of these receivers! Execrable men! you do not murder the horse, on which you only ride; you do not mutilate the cow, which only affords you her milk; you do not torture the dog, which is but a partial servant of your pleasures: but these unfortunate men, from whom, you derive your very pleasures and your fortunes, you torture, mutilate, murder at discretion! Sleep then you receivers, if you can, while you scarcely allow these unfortunate people to rest at all! feast if you can, and indulge your genius, while you daily apply to these unfortunate people the stings of severity and hunger! exult in riches, at which even avarice ought to shudder, and, which humanity must detest!

(source: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10611/10611-h/10611-h.htm#Part_108)