Sarah Douglass and Racial Prejudice Within the Society of Friends

Sarah Douglass and Racial Prejudice within the Society of Friends A Pendle Hill lecture given by Margaret Hope Bacon Several months ago we were discussing at the dinner table the perennial question, why was the Society of Friends experiencing such difficulty in attracting blacks to its meetings, retirement centers, and institutions such as Pendle Hill. A wise, kind, elderly man asked the question, didn’t most blacks after all prefer to go to their own churches. Didn’t they find the Quaker form of worship incompatible? Didn’t they miss the music and excitement? I thought immediately of Sarah Mapps Douglass, a nineteenth century black Quaker educator, and a debate she held over 150 years ago with a correspondent for the Orthodox Quaker journal, The Friend, who signed himself P. R. P.R. blamed the fact that few blacks had joined Friends to his belief that they were uncomfortable with Quaker worship. “The fact is,” P. R. wrote, “Very few of them incline to attend our meetings. Friends’ mode of worship does not suit their dispositions; they are fond of music and excitement, and hence they prefer their own meetings where they regularly hear singing and preaching.”1 Sarah Douglass wrote a long, spirited letter in reply, and when The Friend failed to publish it, submitted to the National Anti-Slavery Standard. In it she argued that many blacks would attend Quaker meeting if they were not asked to sit on the segregated back bench, and treated with coldness. “I myself know some, whose hearts yearn for the quiet of your worshipping places, and who love the ‘still small voice.’ better than harp or viol.”2 Douglass was not the first black Quaker to protest discrimination within the Society of Friends, but she was the first to make her protest public. Because of the concern of British Friends, hers became briefly a cause celebre. And although she did not bring about any marked change in the discriminatory practices of the Society of Friends in her day, she left ripples which were remembered almost a century later, and contributed to the twentieth century concern to integrate Quaker schools, meetings and organizations. Sarah Douglass attachment to the Society of Friends went back to her grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, (1732-1806) a son of Samuel Bustill, a Burlington, New Jersey lawyer, and his slave. After enduring Bustill and another master, Cyrus was bought by Thomas Prior, a Friend and a baker, who taught Cyrus the baking trade, and after seven years, freed him. Bustill continued as a Friend and married a woman who was also connected with Friends. Elizabeth Morey, daughter of Richard Morey and a Delaware Indian woman named Satterwait, had been a maid in the household of Nicholas Waln before her marriage, and attended meeting with the Walns. The couple had eight children. www.fgcquaker.org Quaker Resources | 1 After he was freed, Bustill set up his own bakery in Burlington. During the Revolutionary War he baked bread for the American Army. After the war he moved to Philadelphia, and opened his shop at 56 Arch Street, building a home on nearby Third Street. Here he and his family attended the North Meeting, on Keys Alley. Retiring from his business in 1803, he built a house at Third and Green, and taught at a school that was for a time supported by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.3 Grace Bustill (17821842) mother of Sarah, was the fifth child of Cyrus and Elizabeth Bustill. Grace grew up as Friend, attending meeting with her parents at Keys Alley and became a milliner, conducting business at her father’s old shop at 56 Arch Street. In 1803 she married Robert Douglass, a hairdresser, whose business was next door at 54 Arch Street. In addition to giving birth to six children, Grace operated a school, and was a founding member and frequent officer of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.4 Neither Cyrus Bustill, or any of his children applied for membership in the Society of Friends, though they dressed and spoke as Friends and attended North Meeting, first at Keys Alley, later at Fourth and Green, and still later at Sixth and Noble. After she married, Grace also attended the nearby Arch Street meeting house, built in 1804. When her children were young, Grace thought of becoming a member of the Society of Friends so that her children could enjoy a religiously guarded education, but was warned in kindly fashion by a friend not to apply, because she would only get her feelings hurt.5 Sarah Douglass’ concern with discrimination within the Religious Society of Friends began when she was a child, and observed that her mother, Grace Douglass, was asked to sit either under the stairs or on a back bench both at the nearby Arch Street Meeting and at the old North Meeting. In a letter “to an esteemed friend,” Sarah wrote: I remember well, wishing, (with the “foolishness that is bound in the heart of child”) that the meeting house would fall down, or that Friends would forbid our coming, thinking then that my mother would not persist in going among them.6 Later, in a letter to William Bassett, dated December, 1837, asking about separate seating for blacks she wrote of her experiences: And as you request to know particularly about Arch Street Meeting, I may say that the experience of years has made me wise in this fact, that there is a bench set apart at that meeting for our people, whether officially appointed or not I cannot say; but this I am free to say, that my Mother and myself were told to sit there, & that a Friend sat at each end of the bench to prevent white persons from sitting there. And even when a child, my soul was made sad by hearing five or six times, during the course of our meeting, this language of remonstrance addressed to those who were willing to sit with us. “This bench is for the black people,” “This bench is for the people of colour”—and often times I wept, at other times I felt indignant & queried in my own mind, are these people Christians? Now it seems clear to me, that had not that bench been set apart for oppressed Americans, there would have been no necessity for the often repeated and galling remonstrances, galling indeed because I believe they despise us for our colour. I have not been in Arch Street for four years, but my Mother goes once a week & frequently she has a whole long bench to herself. www.fgcquaker.org Quaker Resources | 2 Seating blacks separately was the custom among all the denominations in Philadelphia, and Friends had evidently never given the matter much thought. When the so-called Great Meeting House was enlarged in 1756, the persons planning the building were instructed “to allot some suitable places for the Negroes to sit in our common meetings.” There was separate seating at the Key’s Alley meeting house. One Friend, Israel Johnson objected and sat in the Negro section himself. There was also a black bench at the Haddonfield meeting.7 Subsequent experiences at North Meeting did not improve Sarah’s opinion. At one time a young white Friend, Mira Okrum, who wished to sit with Grace and Sarah at this meeting was forbidden to do so. Later after the new meeting house was built at Sixth and Noble, Grace Douglass attended the funeral of a minister she had known. She was first seated all by herself in a room, and then asked to walk with two young male colored employees behind the casket, while every other woman in the funeral party was given a ride.8 When Grace attended meeting in New York, where she had gone to attend the Annual Convention of Anti-Slavery Women, she was told to sit upstairs, “because Friends do not like to sit by persons of thy color.” Later, when Sarah herself moved to New York to teach school and attended meeting no one spoke to her except one woman who asked, “does thee go out for house cleaning?” She spent the entire meeting in tears, but still no one approached her. After Sarah had returned to Philadelphia, and her younger brother Charles died of tuberculosis, Sarah wrote an account of how he had been wounded by the prejudice among Friends, and declared at the end of his life that he would like to go to meeting again if he could be spared the back bench.9 Sarah shared some of her bitter feelings with two sisters from South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, who had come to Philadelphia to get away from slavery, and had joined Arch Street Meeting. When Angelina Grimké was asked to lecture for the American Anti-Slavery Society, and Sarah joined her as companion they did not consult the elders of Arch Street, who became increasingly disturbed by their subsequent notoriety. Returning from their lecture trip, they defiantly sat with Grace Douglass on the back bench at Arch Street. They were not however disowned for this offense as has been stated. Instead, they were disowned when Angelina married Presbyterian Theodore Weld, and Sarah “connived” in the wedding. In 1839, after their disownment, Sarah Grimké began to gather evidence of discrimination within the Society of Friends, and requested that Sarah Douglass contribute. Sarah was somewhat reluctant to mention incidents that required the use of names. Mother thinks it would not do for us to mention names, as it could implicate some who stand high in the church—and others who have had the names of being our best friends.

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