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Black Abolitionists of Central New York: an Intimate Circle of Activism

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Black Abolitionists of Central New York: an Intimate Circle of Activism Syracuse University SURFACE The Courier Libraries 2001 Black Abolitionists of Central New York: An Intimate Circle of Activism Bonnie Ryan Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/libassoc Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Ryan, Bonnie, "Black Abolitionists of Central New York: An Intimate Circle of Activism" (2001). The Courier. 341. https://surface.syr.edu/libassoc/341 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Courier by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIB RA RY ASS 0 CI ATE S c o URI E R VOLUME XXXIII . 1998-2001 SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ASSOCIATES COURIER VO LU ME XXXIII 1998-2001 Franz Leopold Ranke, the Ranke Library at Syracuse, and the Open Future ofScientific History By Siegfried Baur, Post-Doctoral Fellow 7 Thyssen Foundation ofCologne, Germany Baur pays tribute to "the father ofmodern history," whose twenty-ton library crossed the Atlantic in 1888, arriving safely at Syracuse University. Mter describ­ ing various myths about Ranke, Baur recounts the historian's struggle to devise, in the face ofaccepted fictions about the past, a source-based approach to the study ofhistory. Librarianship in the Twenty-First Century By Patricia M. Battin, Former Vice President and 43 University Librarian, Columbia University Battin urges academic libraries to "imagine the future from a twenty-first cen­ tury perspective." To flourish in a digital society, libraries must transform them­ selves, intentionally and continuously, through managing information resources, redefining roles ofinformation professionals, and nourishing future leaders. Manuscripts Processing at Syracuse: An Insider's View By Kathleen Manwaring, Manuscripts Processor Syracuse University Library After explaining the specialness ofspecial collections, Manwaring compares the processing ofbooks and serials, with their preselected, preorganized content, to the processing ofmanuscripts, which "reflect the chaos inherent in real life." The latter requires "total immersion" in order to "discover and reflect the underlying structure ofthe individual's life experience" while making his or her papers accessible to scholars. African Americans and Education: A Study ofArna Bontemps ByJoseph Downing ThompsonJr., Director 77 John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African-American Documentation, Duke University Using the life and work ofArna Bontemps as a case in point, Thompson exam­ ines the relationship between the formation ofracial identity and the culture of educational institutions themselves, not merely the intellectual, cultural, and political traditions imparted by them. Black Abolitionists ofCentral New York: An Intimate Circle ofActivism By Bonnie Ryan, Associate Librarian 101 Reference Department, Syracuse University Library In the spring of1999 Ryan curated an exhibition in E. S. Bird Library tided "Intimate Circles ofActivism: Abolitionists ofCentral New York, 1830-1860." This article, an offshoot ofthe exhibition, focuses on letters to activist and philanthropist Gerrit Smith from certain African American abolitionists. Stephen Crane's Inamorata: The Real Amy Leslie By Charles Yanikoski, Independent Scholar 117 Harvard, Massachusetts In 1896 Stephen Crane had a love affair with a woman named Amy Leslie. Was she a denizen ofthe New York underworld, as many scholars have maintained? Or was she, as Yanikoski argues, a Chicago actress, theater critic, and celebrity? Some Unpublished Oscar Wilde Letters By Ian Small, Professor ofEnglish Literature 135 University ofBirmingham, England Oscar Wilde scholar Ian Small provides the historical context offour Wilde letters held in the Syracuse University Library. Cultural History and Comics Auteurs: Cartoon Collections at Syracuse University Library By Chad Wheaton, Doctoral Student in History, 143 Syracuse University With Carolyn A. Davis, Reader Services Librarian 159 Syracuse University Library Department of Special Collections After discussing the importance ofthe comics as a subject for scholarly study, Wheaton describes selected cartoonists and genres represented in Syracuse Uni­ versity Library's cartoon collection. Carolyn Davis provides a complete list of the Library's cartoon holdings. Marya Zaturenska's Depression Diary, 1933-1935 By Mary Beth Hinton, Editor Syracuse University Library Associates Courier Selections from the diary ofthe poet Marya Zaturenska reveal her struggles as a woman and an artist, and provide glimpses ofthe intellectual scene in New York and London during the depression. News ofSyracuse University Library and of Library Associates 197 Post-Standard Award Citation, 1998, for David H. Starn Post-Standard Award Citation, 1999, for Dorothea P. Nelson Post-Standard Award Citation, 2000, for KatWeen W Rossman Recent Acquisitions: Thomas Moore Papers Kat Ran Press (Michael Russem) Margaret Bourke-White Photographs The Werner Seligmann Papers Library Associates Programs for 1998-99, 199~0, and 2000--01 In Memoriam Black Abolitionists ofCentral New York: An Intimate Circle ofActivism BY BONNIE RYAN Monrovia, Liberia, August 18, 1835 My Dear Friend, As the vessel will not sail as soon as we expected therefore I will improve the opportunity to write unto you some more ofthe sad state ofAfrica The Colo­ nization Society is continually sending out here old men women and children then say how many we have sent to Africa and one halfofthem do not live out their six months and the others generally are sick from one to two years and all that time they have to be begging from the Public for something to eat and of­ ten beg and never receive and I do affirm to say that in this way the Coloniza­ tion Society is running themselves needlessly unto debt.... THIS LETTER WAS ADDRESSED to Gerrit Smith (1797-1874), a wealthy landowner and social activist from Peterboro, New York. 1 Its author, Ephraim Titler, was a free African American employed by the American Colonization Society to guide other African Americans to Liberia and to serve as a missionary there.2 Titler's Bonnie Ryan is a librarian in the Reference Department ofSyracuse University Library with responsibilities in the areas ofAfrican and African American Stud­ ies and Anthropology. She is also a doctoral student in Syracuse University's De­ partment ofAnthropology, specializing in historical archaeology. Her research interest is the African Diaspora, specifically the lives offree blacks in the middle to late nineteenth century. I. In this and subsequent letters I have preserved the original spelling and punc­ tuation. 2. Founded in 1816, the American Colonization Society was the first nation­ wide organization to work against slavery. The published objective ofthe soci­ ety was to "Christianize" the Africans, and its plan was to return free African Americans to their "homeland" by recolonizing them in western Africa. Many well known abolitionists were once members of the society, among them William Lloyd Garrison and Gerrit Smith. Most African American activists, on the other hand, thought that the colonization movement denied the American heritage ofAfrican Americans born in the United States, whether slave or free. Therefore, they rejected the movement's tenets. Syracuse University Library Associates Courier Volume XXXIII, 1998-2001 ror letter is one of almost 300 abolitionists' letters among the Gerrit Smith Papers housed in Syracuse University Library's Department ofSpecial Collections. This article will include excerpts from some ofthese letters. On 18 February 1999 the Library opened an exhibition titled "Intimate Circles ofActivism: Abolitionists ofCentral New York, 1830-1860."3 Most of the items in the exhibition came from the Gerrit Smith Papers.4 That collection includes letters, business transactions, pampWets on scores ofsocial issues, newspapers, pho­ tographs, maps, and other documentary material. As curator ofthe exhibition, I drew primarily on abolitionists' letters because they bring to a personal level the history ofslavery and antislavery dur­ ing the nineteenth century. This article will focus on some ofGer­ rit Smith's African American correspondents. This article is not the first to focus on these letters. In theJour­ nal ofNegro History, Benjamin Quarles points out that Smith, more than any other white abolitionist ofthe times was "especially sen­ sitive to the cause ofthe Negro .. ." Quarles notes that, with a few exceptions, Smith received at least one letter from every literate African American ofthe times.5 Quarles notes that his "acute social consciousness and his gen­ erosity made Smith a target for advocates ofnearly every contem­ porary movement in the North designed to promote human betterment." Gerrit Smith indeed adopted many causes: temper­ ance, women's rights, and land reform, as well as abolitionism. He served as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, opening his 3. A catalog of that exhibition, Intimate Circles of Activism: Abolitionists of Cen­ tral New York: 1830-1870, was published in the summer ofl999 by Syracuse Uni­ versity Library. 4. The Gerrit Smith Papers are part ofa larger collection, the Smith Family Pa­ pers, which includes documents of Gerrit's father, Peter Smith. The latter at­ tained the family fortune by working withJohnJacob Astor in the fur trades and post-Revolutionary War land speculation. Other sources for the exhibition were the general
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