Sarah Douglass and Racial Prejudice within the Society of Friends

A Pendle Hill lecture given by

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 , 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, , (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 , 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 Abolition Society.3

Grace Bustill (17821842) 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, , 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. I think the exposure of names would bring upon us the charge of ingratitude and that we should have to endure bitter persecution without effecting any good, because I believe Friends in this country as a body are given over to a reprobate mind.10

With this proviso she provided much of the material contained in a famous “Letter on the Subject of Prejudice against Colour amongst the Society of Friends in the ” which Sarah Grimké wrote Elizabeth Pease in 1839. Portions of this letter were included, without names, in a

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pamphlet, “Society of Friends in the United States, Their Views of the Anti-Slavery Question, and Treatment of People of Color” which was printed but not published in Darlington, England, in 1840.11

The pamphlet itself did not apparently occasion wide dispute. Three years later, however, Arnold Buffum, a Friend from Providence, Rhode Island, speaking at the Anti-Slavery Convention in London, charged that a woman had been denied membership in the Society of Friends in Philadelphia because she was black, apparently drawing on Sarah Douglass account of her mother’s being discouraged from applying. He also charged that blacks were asked to sit in special seats set aside for their use.

British Friends had been consistently critical of American Friends in regard to their treatment of black members. Traveling Quaker ministers from Britain had observed incidents of segregation in the North as well as the South and the new settlements in Ohio and Indiana, and had written about them. Joseph Sturge, traveling in the United States in 1841 observed that blacks sat with the whites in New Bedford, Massachusetts, but that was the exception to the situation elsewhere. Thomas Shillitoe told of visiting Mount Holly meeting where he heard two stories concerning John Woolman. In one, a black applicant was denied membership in the meeting, despite Woolman’s efforts to persuade the meeting to admit him. Woolman then predicted the meeting would dwindle as a result. A second instance, brought to light by Henry Cadbury, concerned the search for an elder for Mt. Holly Meeting. After numerous meetings of the committee, John Woolman said that there was one elder who ought to be acknowledged, and he was the black man who sat behind the door. “But they preferred going without an Elder, to having a Coloured One,” Shillitoe wrote.

Philadelphia Friends were therefore particularly sensitive to renewed British criticism. Buffum’s speech stung, and aroused an angry response in The Friend, by the writer. P.R. This correspondent insisted that blacks were freely admitted to Friends Meetings and were allowed to sit wherever they liked. Only one had ever been turned down for membership, and that was because he was not convinced of the principles of Friends. He went on to say that few applied because they liked music and excitement.

In her response, Sarah wrote:

I have frequently heard my mother say that very many of our people inclined to Friends’ mode of worship; she lamented the unchristian conduct that kept them out. Some have gone out from “Friends,” not because they prefer their own meetings, where they regularly hear singing and preaching” but because they could not bear the cross of sitting on the “black bench.” Ah, there are many poor stray starving sheep, wandering in this world’s wilderness, who would gladly come into your green pastures, and repose them by your still waters; did not prejudice bar the entrance! I am persuaded the Lord has a controversy with “Friends” on this account. Let them see to it. S.M.D.

In 1837 Sarah said she had not attended Arch Street for four years, although her mother still attended. In 1844 she wrote a friend that she was still placed in a segregated bench when she attended Sixth and Noble. It has been assumed until recently that she gave up attending either of

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these two meetings. Instead, it was thought that she might have become a Hicksite, since at least a few Hicksites were more liberal about social integration.

In 1853, Sarah Douglass transferred her girls’ lower school to the Institute for Colored Youth, located first at 7th and Lombard, later at 9th and Bainbridge. The next year her school was fully integrated into the Institute, and Sarah continued there until her retirement in 1877. Her students reported that she consistently came late to meeting on Tuesdays, because she attended Third Day Meeting. It was assumed that she went to the Hicksite Meeting at 9th and Spruce Street. In an article on the Bustill family in the Journal of Negro History in 1925, Anna Bustill Smith stated that Sarah attended this meeting, adding it was the meeting attended by and her brother, and all subsequent accounts by historians have included this statement as fact.12

Recently however a number of letters of Sarah Douglass to Rebecca White were discovered when the Josiah White papers were catalogued at the Quaker Collection at Haverford College. In the first of these letters, Sarah speaks of hearing Eliza Kirkbride Gurney preach the previous Tuesday. Since Gurney, an evangelical minister, would never have attended a Hicksite meeting, it becomes clear that Sarah did not change her allegiance after all. Instead, she appears to have attended Orange Street meeting, at 7th and Spruce, on Tuesdays, and Arch Street on Sundays. We can only infer that Arch Street Meeting changed its custom, since she would never have returned to sit in segregated seating. The friendship of Rebecca White, and her sister, Hannah White Richardson, wealthy and influential members of Arch Street meeting, may have insured that she was treated with respect, but it was her own protest that had made the difference.

During Sarah Douglass’ life, the situation in regard to admitting blacks to Quaker schools was even more dismal at, than that of encouragement to join meeting. Friends ran schools for blacks starting in 1770. Sarah herself was briefly a student in a school run by a white Quaker, Arthur Donaldson. But her mother did not dare enroll her in a select Quaker school, since she was not technically a Quaker. Instead Grace Douglass and the famous sailmaker, James Forte, established a school of their own for black children. Sarah herself taught in this school, and later a school for black girls in , before establishing her own school on 7th Street. In 1853, she transferred this school to the Institute for Colored Youth, established by Friends in 1837 on the basis of the will of Richard Humphries.

In theory, Friends might have admitted blacks to the small country schools that they ran for the children of the neighborhood, including Friends. Several small Quaker schools in New Jersey claim to have admitted black children. Byberry Friends School educated the light-skinned children of Robert Purvis, the wealthy black abolitionist and his wife Harriet Forte Purvis, after they had bought a farm across the street from the meeting house. But few of the country schools followed this practice In 1858 Esther Hayes, an abolitionist in Kennett Square, reported sadly to William Still, the black coordinator of the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania, that no school, Quaker or otherwise, in the vicinity would accept a black student.

Samuel Ringgold Ward, a former slave who became a Congregational minister, spoke of this discrimination in 1855:

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They will give us good advice. They will aid in giving us a partial education—but never in Quaker schools, beside their own children. What they do for us savors of pity, and is done at arm’s length.

The problem with the high schools or academies was more complicated, because these schools were established as select, that is, for only. There were very few black Quakers, and few if any of them had children. David Bustill, Sarah Douglass’ uncle, claimed that David and Grace Mapps, a black couple living in South Jersey were not accepted by Little Egg Harbor Meeting until the meeting thought Grace was beyond the childbearing age. Later when the Friends high schools and colleges began to admit persons of other denominations, the pattern of white only had been set. When blacks applied to Friends schools they were turned down. In 1891 Friends Central refused a black applicant, stating that black schools were available. When an applicant arrived at Swarthmore College for admission, he was sent home, because of the color of his skin. By and large the majority of Quaker schools and colleges did not admit blacks until mid way through the twentieth century. Friends seemed to feel that they had done all they should in providing “separate but equal” education.

In hindsight of course we see this pattern as inconsistent with Quaker beliefs. This apparent blindness of Friends seems particularly strange in light of Friends ongoing concern for black education. With the establishment of public schools in Philadelphia, Quakers voiced concern that black students be included. When the public schools seemed inadequate, they supported additional small schools for black children. But they did not concern themselves that the public schools were segregated. Shortly after he moved to Byberry, Robert Purvis attempted to enroll several of his younger children in the nearby public school, since the Quaker school lacked a teacher for their grades. He was told by a Quaker member of the public school board that the miserable segregated school at Mechansville would be “appropriate for thine.” It was sometimes thought that Robert and Harriet Purvis joined Byberry Meeting. They had given the meeting a large building, called Abolition Hall, and had buried two of their sons on the burial ground. But they never joined, perhaps because they had experienced this thoughtless act of Quaker discrimination.

The blindness of Friends to their patterns of discimination in education is particularly strange to us in light of their ongoing concern for black education. Following the Civil War, Quakers established and supported freedom schools throughout the South. Some of these were short lived; others continued for many years. These included two schools in eastern Tennessee, at Maryville and Jonesboro. In eastern Arkansas, Friends established Southland College, which continued into the twentieth century and trained many black teachers. Three schools in South Carolina, the William Penn Center in St. Helena, the Laing School in Mount Pleasant, and the Schofield Institute in Aiken continued for many years and served as centers for black community. In addition Friends supported Hampton Institute and Howard University.

Only a few Friends seem to have been aware of this inconsistency. Lucretia Mott entertained black friends in her home, and participated in a campaign to desegregate the public streetcars. With Harriet Purvis she traveled to visit Central College in McGrawville, New York, founded in 1849 by the American Baptist Missionary Society, as both interracial and coeducational. She praised it, but apparently made no effort to suggest that Swarthmore College be established on the same principle.

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Change did not come until the twentieth century. It took the efforts of a few enlightened individuals who protested the exclusion of blacks from schools and the unconscious discrimination that kept them from joining meetings. In the early 1930s Henry Cadbury began to ask Friends to look at their racial attitudes, conducting a series of workshops on the subject. His article in the Journal of Negro History in 1935, “Negro Membership in the Society of Friends,” listed many examples of past discrimination. Two years later he wrote a second article, “The Contribution of Negroes to the Education of Friends,” lamenting, that Friends were not intimate with blacks “on any level, not even of intellectual fellowship or worship.”

The mores of the dominant white group tend to suppress that inherited independence of democratic Quaker fellowship, and vigorous social conscience which should be the cherished birthright of every Friend.

In his series in the Friend, and later in the Friends Journal, Cadbury wrote about Negro membership. In 1947 he discussed the question of the admission of blacks to Friends schools, and rejoiced that change was coming. He listed the Quaker schools and colleges that had desegregated to date:

1927: Bryn Mawr; 1933: Oakwood; 1937: Media Friends School; 1943: Swarthmore College 1943: Haverford College 1945: Westtown School 1946: Haverford Friends School 1946: George School 1947: Moorestown Friends School 1947: Germantown Friends School

At the same time as the Quaker schools were integrating, the American Friends Service Committee was beginning to work in the field of race relations. It began by arranging for notable black professors to speak at colleges and universities. In 1946 it established an employment placement bureau in Philadelphia, leading to a nationwide program of employment based on merit. In the 1950s, following the Supreme Court decision in Brown versus the Board of Education, it supported the black families who dared to send their children to previously segregated schools. When Fairfax County, Virginia, closed all its schools rather than segregate. AFSC undertook to place all the black students in desegregated public and private schools in the North. At the same time, the committee worked on desegregating housing, first in the suburbs around Philadelphia, and later, nationwide. AFSC staff was active in supporting the freedom marches. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was jailed in Alabama, AFSC published his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” At the time of the Selma to Montgomery March one staff member, James Reeb, was bludgeoned to death. Today, the AFSC is a pioneer among Quaker institutions in implementing affirmative action.

There is a charming story linking the work of Friends in the establishment of freedom schools in the past to the work of the AFSC more recently. During the Civil Rights struggle Mae Bertha and Mathew Carter enrolled all seven of their children in the all-white public schools of Sunflower

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County, Mississippi. As a result their house was shot into, they were fired and evicted, and their children were shunned and maltreated by teachers and students alike. The AFSC came to their support through the Rights of Conscience program, and Connie Curry of AFSC visited them regularly for many years. All of the Carter children graduated and many went on to college. One is now a member of the very school board that once tried to reject them.

In 1995, Connie Curry published a book, Silver Rights, based on interview with Mae Bertha. In the course of these interviews she learned that Mae Bertha’s mother, Luvenia Slaughter, had attended Southland Institute for a short period of time. But at Southland she was respected and learned to respect herself and this strength she was able to pass onto her children, especially Mae Bertha, who became a pioneer of civil rights.

Today many persons are attracted to the Religious Society of Friends because of its testimony against discrimination of all sorts, and are puzzled and upset to learn that the record is stained. Why bring that up? Is a common response. “That was in the past.” But we live today with echoes of that past. In Philadelphia, and doubtless elsewhere as well, memories of past acts of discrimination linger among the black middle class, generation after generation, and deter present day trust.

Even more important, the lessons of the past can help us ask ourselves, “of what unconscious acts of discrimination are we guilty today? Do we expect, as our religious ancestors expected, that blacks joining our meetings abandon their cultural conditioning and accept without question the cultural conditioning of the dominant, while membership? Do we react negatively when Friends of African- American descent choose to meet separately to share common experiences? Are we willing to see our Quaker ways, if not our Quaker faith, become modified as they evolve? Are those ancestors we are always evoking, who consigned blacks to the back bench worth emulating today?”

The story of Quakers and race is an illustration of the concept of the continuing revelation so important to the Quaker faith. God did not speak once and for all to Moses, to the prophets, the apostles, the authors of the Bible, He/or She continues to speak to us today. New light comes as individual men and women receive the message of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. We believe in the importance of reading the Bible in the light of current divine inspiration. We worship in silence, waiting for God to speak to one or another of us and reveal new Light.

The Holy Spirit spoke to George Fox, telling him that there is that of God in everyone, including blacks in Africa, or Native Americans who had never heard the Christian message. Fox did not understand the evils of slavery fully, but he urged Quaker slave owners to be kind; to give their slaves religious education, to consider freeing them in their wills. The Holy Spirit spoke to the Friends of Germantown Meeting in 1688, encouraging them to issue the first declaration against slavery. The Spirit spoke to Friends on Nantucket and in Chester, Pennsylvania urging them to minute their disapproval of slavery. It spoke in the hearts of many individual Friends, Benjamin Lay, , Thomas and Sarah Harrison, Patience Brayton, John Woolman, forbidding them to have anything further to do with slavery and urging them to share their concern in meeting. Through these servants it spoke finally to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1776, when the meeting agreed to make it a disownable offense for a member to own a slave.

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It was the voice of the Holy Spirit that encouraged a few Friends to organize in 1775 a society for the relief of Negroes unlawfully held in bondage, the beginning of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. It spoke in the heart of Isaac Hopper, the Philadelphia Quaker who helped one thousand slaves escape from bondage. It spoke in the heart of Lucretia Mott, when she organized the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. It spoke to Thomas Garrett of Wilmington and to the Quaker men and women who were willing to shelter escaping slaves through the Underground Railroad.

All of these men and women were pioneers. Many of them earned the displeasure of their meetings for their role as a prod to conscience. Some Friends were disowned for being too active in the anti- slavery cause. But their actions helped to move the whole Society of Friends forward. Lucretia Mott, who was shunned for her anti-slavery activism in the early days of the campaign, discovered she was a hero at the time of the Civil War. “It is amusing to watch my former detractors packing boxes for the contraband” she wrote a daughter.

Sarah Mapps Douglass was also a pioneer. It may have cost her pain to speak up against the discrimination that her beloved mother endured so long in silence. But her action stirred at least some hearts, as it stirs us today, to complete the work that she has begun.

In 1937, Henry Cadbury gave a talk at Cheyney University entitled “The Contribution of Negroes to the Education of Friends.” In it he spoke of Sarah Douglass’ meeting attendance:

They [her pupils] still recall how on every Third-day morning she was absent from the school room to sit apart and in silence in the neighboring mid-week meeting of Friends. Her quiet little bowed figure may have done in that place of worship a piece of education for Friends more effective than her presence in the formal classroom could do with the children of her own people.13

Footnotes

1 The Friend, Vol.XVI, No. 47,. August 19, 1843.

2 National Anti-Slavery Standard, December 14, 1843.

3 Smith, “The Bustill Family” 638-639; Cadbury, “Negro Membership,”192

4 Ibid.

5 Cadbury, 191-192; National Anti-Slavery Standard, Dec. 14, 1843

6 Sarah M. Douglass to “Esteemed Friend,” April 2, 1844, Grimké-Weld Papers, Clements Library, University of Michigan.

7 Henry Cadbury, “Negro Membership in the Society of Friends,” Journal of Negro History, 1925, p.169.

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8 Sarah M. Grimké to Elizabeth Pease, April 10, 1839; Anti-Slavery Papers, Boston Public Library.

9 Sarah M. Grimké to Elizabeth Pease, April 10, 1839. Anti-Slavery Papers, Boston Public Library.

10 Ibid.

11 Quaker Collection, Haverford College Library.

12 Anna Bustill Smith, “The Bustill Family,” Journal of Negro History, 1925, p.643.

13 Henry J. Cadbury “The Contribution of Negroes to the Education of Friends” The Friend, Twelfth Month, 16, 1837, 217-220.

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