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Black Abolitionists Used the Terms “African,” “Colored,” Commanding Officer Benjamin F

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Black Abolitionists Used the Terms “African,” “Colored,” Commanding Officer Benjamin F $2 SUGGESTED DONATION The initiative of black presented to the provincial legislature by enslaved WHAT’S IN A NAME? Black people transformed a war men across greater Boston. Finally, in the early 1780s, Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman (Image 1) to restore the Union into of Sheffield and Quock Walker of Framingham Throughout American history, people Abolitionists a movement for liberty prevailed in court. Although a handful of people of African descent have demanded and citizenship for all. of color in the Bay State still remained in bondage, the right to define their racial identity (1700s–1800s) slavery was on its way to extinction. Massachusetts through terms that reflect their In May 1861, three enslaved black men sought reported no slaves in the first census in 1790. proud and complex history. African refuge at Union-controlled Fort Monroe, Virginia. Americans across greater Boston Rather than return the fugitives to the enemy, Throughout the early Republic, black abolitionists used the terms “African,” “colored,” Commanding Officer Benjamin F. Butler claimed pushed the limits of white antislavery activists and “negro” to define themselves the men as “contrabands of war” and put them to who advocated the colonization of people of color. before emancipation, while African work as scouts and laborers. Soon hundreds of In 1816, a group of whites organized the American Americans in the early 1900s used black men, women, and children were streaming Colonization Society (ACS) for the purpose of into the Union stronghold. Congress authorized emancipating slaves and resettling freedmen and the terms “black,” “colored,” “negro,” the confiscation of Confederate property, freedwomen in a white-run colony in West Africa. and “Afro-American” – which later including enslaved people, and the payment of Although some black entrepreneurs initially became “African American” to identify black laborers in the Union cause. Word of that supported the plan, most northern African themselves and their ancestors. In our policy stirred black men, women, and children Americans spurned colonization as a ruse to brochures, the terms “people of color,” throughout the South to seek freedom behind remove dissident blacks and tighten slavery’s grip “people of African descent,” “black,” the Union lines. This mass movement ultimately on the nation. and “African American” are used forced the government to treat the “contraband” interchangeably to reflect the identities as free people and prompted President Abraham In opposition to the ACS, free people of color claimed by African Americans over Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation affirmed and defended their rights to equal time. at the start of 1863. citizenship within the United States. In 1829 David Walker, a free black North Carolinian who These and the terms “enslaved” Ever since the early 1700s, people of color had relocated to Boston, wrote Appeal to the Colored (versus “slave”) and “enslaver” (versus been forcing whites to reckon with the slave Citizens of the World, which urged the immediate “master” or “owner”) are used to system. In both northern and southern colonies, end of slavery by any means necessary. TheAppeal reflect the humanity of the millions of slave rebellions often brought savage repression, advocated black education, equal employment, black men, women, and children who while in other instances black protests won and community organization. Walker and his claimed their personhood, in various support from sympathetic whites. In 1769 a British supporters formed the Massachusetts General ways large and small, despite the laws customs official in Boston purchased enslaved Colored Association in 1826 to demand freedom and systems that bound them. Who actually James Somerset and took him back to England. and justice for people of African descent. The There, Somerset escaped from his “owner” and next year the nation’s first black newspaper, New enlisted the aid of whites, who argued his cause York’s Freedom’s Journal, created strong ties among freed the slaves? in the courts. The Somerset Case (1772) ruled that radical black abolitionists across the country. slavery had no legal foundation in England and In this context of rising black activism, William Wales. Somerset was thus a free man, but were Lloyd Garrison launched The Liberator in 1831. BY KERRI GREENIDGE, TUFTS UNIVERSITY he to return to the Americas, he could legally The Liberator hired black printers, welcomed black be kept in chains under local laws. News of the writers, and supported the early careers of such Somerset decision inspired enslaved people in black abolitionist orators as Maria Stewart (2), Massachusetts to seek freedom. Between 1773 Frederick Douglass (3), Harriet Tubman (4), and and 1775, over 25 antislavery petitions were William Wells Brown (5). © THE ROBBINS HOUSE, INC. By 1837, when Susan In 1850 Benjamin F. Roberts protested the Robbins Garrison* became exclusion of his daughter from a segregated school, and Charles Sumner partnered with a founding member of Robert Morris (6), one of the nation’s first African the Concord Female American lawyers, to sue the city of Boston. The Antislavery Society, black case reached the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which ruled against Roberts; however Roberts, abolitionists already had a again aided by Sumner, then brought the issue to long history of demanding the Massachusetts legislature. Ellen Garrison signed a petition to support this bill. In 1855 freedom and racial justice the Commonwealth of Massachusetts banned on their own terms. segregated schools in the state, the first such law in the United States. A group of free northern men of color started the Black Convention Movement to rally free African In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, Americans around emancipation, education, which required northern courts, law officers, and racial justice. Between 1831 and 1865, free and ordinary citizens to cooperate actively in blacks held eleven national “Conventions of Free the return of fugitive slaves to the South. Black People of Colour,” and several state and regional abolitionists in Boston, such as Lewis and Harriet conventions to debate political strategy, raise Hayden, housed and supported many men money for fugitive slaves, and support black-run and women in flight from slavery – including p Ellen Garrison was one of “the undersigned institutions. In 1836, a group of black abolitionist Shadrach Minkins, who was brought by Hayden colored citizens of Boston” to sign the 1844 “Petition to Have the Smith School Abolished and women in Boston took direct action to prevent the to a home in Concord on his way to Canada. That Their Children Be Permitted to Attend the return of fugitives to the South, which included Other Schools.” (Courtesy of the Trustees of the charging the courthouse and plucking two female In 1857, black abolitionists and their white allies Boston Public Library/Rare Books) escapees out of federal custody. After 1837 – until created the Radical Abolition Party to “remove t 1851 Massachusetts AntiSlavery and Anti- the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 – no fugitive could slavery from the national territories.” By the time Segregation Petition, signed by Robbins House resident John Garrison, Jr. (Massachusetts be returned from Massachusetts to southern southern states seceded from the Union during the Archives) bondage without a jury trial. winter of 1860–1861, black radical abolitionists had transformed the antislavery movement into a national fight for America’s republican ideals. SOURCES & FURTHER READING CONTENT REVIEWERS Primary sources include Concord and Boston Robert Bellinger, Sulfolk University, Black Studies antislavery petitions. Program Director; Robert Gross, University of Connecticut, History Professor Emeritus, Author of Peter Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: The Minutemen and Their World; Joanne Pope Melish, David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave University of Kentucky, History Associate Professor, Resistance (Penn State University Press, 1995). Author of Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and ‘Race’ in New England, 1789–1860. James and Lois Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks 170 0–1860 (Oxford University Press, 1998). COVER IMAGES p 1872 National Convention of Colored Citizens p A weekly four-column publication of foreign and Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of (1) Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman (Collection of the in the House of Representatives, New Orleans. domestic news printed every Friday, Freedom’s Abolition (Yale University Press 2016). Massachusetts Historical Society); (2) Maria Stewart (Courtesy Library of Congress) Journal was founded by free African Americans (Public Domain); (3) Frederick Douglass (The Rubel Col- Julie Winch, Between Slavery and Freedom: Free John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish in 1827, lection); (4) Harriet Tubman (Library of Congress); (5) People of Color in America From Settlement to the New York City. William Wells Brown (Public Domain); (6) Lewis Hayden Civil War (Rowan and Littlefield, 2014). *NOTE: names in bold are associated with the Robbins House. (Boston African American National Historic Site).
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