Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England

By Catherine Adams and Elizabeth H. Pleck

Oxford University Press, 2010

“On a regular basis, however, black women and men sought eternal salvation through evangelical Protestant Christianity both because the style of worship bore some resemblance to African practice and because they preferred to listen to dynamic preachers. In the process of conversion they could testify about their personal experience of captivity and loss and they felt welcomed by the message that the meek shall inherit the earth. The Holy Spirit stirred to life most visibly in two major religious revivals in the eighteenth century, the first in the 1740s, the second in the 1760s; in ordinary times Christian ministers spoke words of comfort to grieving mothers, and in the extraordinary era of the American Revolution Phillis Wheatley understood, as did many others, that slavery was a violation of Christian beliefs and assumed that those who committed the sin of slavery would not be admitted to heaven. In sum, the path of black women’s Christianity begins with an implicit understanding of the freedom implied in their faith and leads to an explicit statement of it during the Revolution.” (p. 82)

“To be sure, central and West Africans had their own spiritual traditions, moral code, and rules for proper conduct, but these did not include a concept of sin, of heaven and hell, or of the Devil. It was the moral power to condemn sin—power held by women as well as men—that was unique to evangelical Christianity. Like many other believers, Phillis Wheatley employed this power to point out the hypocrisy of Christians who professed a love of freedom while keeping their fellow human beings in bondage; true repentance for sin could only come with the manumission of slaves. She believed that the god she worshiped would turn against the Patriots’ cause if they continued to hold their fellow human beings in bondage. Because of Wheatley’s fame, a letter she wrote stating these views was reprinted in many New England newspapers, and during the revolutionary period it constituted her entry into ongoing debates in the region about the incompatibility of Christianity and slavery.” (p. 82)

“The abolitionist implications of Christianity became clearer to more of the public as the revolution approached. Phillis Wheatley shared the views of [Reverend Samson] Occom, [Reverend Samuel] Hopkins, and many others of her age who held that slavery was a profound violation of Christian religious beliefs. In the revolutionary age many Christians understood slavery as a sin requiring immediate and total redress through the emancipation of slaves since there could be no compromise with the evil of slavery. An opponent of personal immorality and slavery, Wheatley saw political and spiritual liberty as inseparable, adding her voice to those who regarded the abolition of human bondage as a religious and moral issue.” (p. 102)

“Despite much recent interest in slavery in New England the black female experience is invisible and marginal in the story of slavery and freedom in New England. In part, the reason black women are absent is because there is simply much more information in the documentary record about black men. In sheer numbers, men made up more than half of the population of blacks in New England. Yet there are additional reasons why women so often recede into the background in the chronicle of black history. ‘The slave,’ as a generalized being, is often thought of as a male and the enslaved woman is instead considered the exception—a supplement or an aside to the main story, which is about men. There are more general assumptions as well about the major theme of African American history, the struggle for freedom. Freedom is perceived as such an overriding goal of all black people and race unity the best means to achieve it that it is assumed there is no particular woman’s angle in need of telling.” (p. 20)

“The one very visible black woman in Revolutionary New England history is the young enslaved prodigy Phillis Wheatley. The best-known black person in all of the colonies, hailed as a poetic genius, widely praised for her literary talents, her life was in many ways the exception to the common condition of black women of her place and time. She was not the first black woman poet in New England but rather the first to have her work published. She was also another first as well, the first African in North America to use the word ‘freedom’ in her poetry and the first to express her ‘love of Freedom’ in print. A symbol of black intellectual and literary achievement, even amidst bondage, she was a slave who knew Greek and read Ovid in the original Latin, and was a published author when she was thirteen or fourteen. Feted on a brief trip to England and hailed for her verse by Voltaire, her return to Boston received considerable notice. Many pieces are missing from her biography, especially the years of her marriage, the birth of her three children, and her early death in poverty at around age thirty. Still, her celebrated but tragic life and early death cannot serve as a proxy for the condition of black women in New England. She was a transatlantic figure who met the distinguished people of her day at a time when most black women, once they had been forced to cross the Atlantic, were much more defined by the local.” (pp. 20–21)

“[B]lack women’s desire for freedom has survived, preserved in documents written by others. The defining feature of this more indirect testimony was that it was ‘as told to’ another person, usually white, usually male, with the other person not always clearly identified. An illiterate woman offered her testimony, which was copied down according to the linguistic conventions of the day and/or the format required for a particular kind of document. It is impossible to distinguish between the two voices in such collaborative efforts or discern the process that went into constructing a single account. Moreover, the product of such collaboration was often written in the dominant literary styles of the day, from Enlightenment phrases about the rights of the individual, to sentimental language about the suffering of the family, to the language of sin and redemption used in conversion narratives. Still, there have been a couple of extremely important finds in recent years; these consist of a new poem and letter written by Wheatley; conversion narratives of two enslaved women in Ipswich; and three additional lawsuits for freedom in New England courts brought by black women, two in New Hampshire, and one in Rhode Island.” (pp. 21–22)

Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War

By Lisa Brooks

Yale University Press, 2018

“Although well remembered within Native New England communities, like her mother, Weetamoo has often not been named in the histories and literatures of early America, despite her prominent leadership role. Weetamoo emerged as the saunkskwa of Pocasset after Conbitant’s death, recognized by Ousamequin as his relation and ‘true heir’ to the Pocasset sachemship. In fact, the title of this book is taken from Ousamequin’s description of Weetamoo as ‘our beloved cousin’ and ‘kinswoman.’ An influential Wampanoag diplomat, Weetamoo presented a political and cultural challenge to the Puritan men who confronted her authority. Her strategic adaptation to the colonial ‘deed game’ enabled her to protect more land than nearly any surrounding leader (a history explored in chapter one). She married Wamsutta, Ousamequin’s eldest son, in a dual marriage alliance with her sister Wootonakanuske and Wamsutta’s brother Pometacomet, more commonly known as Metacom, or ‘Philip.’ She played a key role and forged alliances during the infamous colonial conflict known as ‘King Philip’s War.’ One Puritan chronicler portrayed her ‘as potent a Prince as any round about her’ with ‘as much corn, land, and men, at her command’ as Metacom, insisting she was ‘much more forward in the Design and had greater success than King Philip himself.’ Yet in many histories of the war, she is relegated to a trivial role in comparison to Metacom or colonial leaders such as Plymouth governor Josiah Winslow, Edward’s son. Even recent scholarly accounts mention her briefly, a footnote to history.” (pp. 3–4)

“[Anne]Hutchinson and Weetamoo challenged the beliefs and structure of Puritan society by asserting a space of authority for women. In Weetamoo’s country, banishment was reserved for the worst offenses—unthinkable acts of violence and family betrayal that threatened the whole. However, Hutchinson’s world rested on a firm hierarchy of male authority, in which families, farms, towns, and colonies needed to be ‘husbanded’ into order by men designed by God to govern those below them. The rebellion of a woman, or the failure of men to control and ‘yoke’ their subordinates, threatened to push the entire social order toward chaos.” (pp. 32–33)

“While Portsmouth men solidified their identity as ‘planters’ by husbanding the land into orderly fields, Pocasset women derived strength from cultivating the intertwined mounds. Weetamoo’s leadership arose from her role as a cultivator of diplomacy. The 1651 Nonaquaket deed recognized Namumpum’s title as ‘squa sachem,’ a phrase English men erroneously translated as ‘queen’ or ‘sachem’s wife.’ English women’s status was defined primarily by the men to whom they were bound, by birth to their father’s rank, and by marriage, to their husband’s. Thus it was challenging, despite the recent reign of Queen Elizabeth I, for English settlers to conceive of a Native woman governing in her own right, particularly given that, in their hierarchies of race, class, and gender, an ‘Indian’ woman would rank far below themselves.” (p. 34)

As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas

Edited by Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas, and Terri L. Snyder

Cambridge University Press, 2020

“Other women took on the role of spokesperson for their communities placing their intellectual work in the service of the campaign to end slavery and extend human rights to people of African descent. Even before slavery was outlawed, recently freed black women and their daughters pushed back against the national mythologies designed to write them and their foremothers out of the nation. Inaugurating a process that would continue into the twenty-first century, black women engaged in intellectual work that placed them in the vanguard of the ongoing quest for freedom. Free black women writers placed the pen in the service of the larger cause, writing poetry, novels, and essays in support of the movement. Just as women had kept alive family history by transmitting genealogies from one generation to the next, they also insisted on telling their own stories by dictating or writing their own memoirs. These women were essential to the emergence and expansion of black women’s intellectual tradition, a tradition that was essential to freedom movements across the diaspora.” (pp. 20–21)

“For [Laura Etta Davis] Titus, education and the emerging black middle class was a critical ‘interstitial space’ where blacks could contest white subordination and domination. Yet, this view also included a warning. She believed that unless they were trained to meet the period’s bar of middle-class respectability, blacks could contribute to the negative stereotypes and expectations of white society and shore up arguments used by whites to legitimize the systematic disenfranchisement and segregation of African Americans. Like many other prominent African American women of this generation, Titus believed that transforming an illiterate and impoverished population that had only one degree of separation from slavery and imbuing them with the value of industry, piety, and manners would accomplish two critical tasks. First, it would elevate people’s perceptions of themselves and it would elevate the outsiders’ perceptions of them. Second, once educated, people would return home to assist their communities, building institutions and establishing transformative organizations. With this in mind, Titus devoted her resources and efforts to spreading education and Victorian values to those in her community.” (p. 412)

“Black women’s community work was the counteractive ingredient to this systematic government-sponsored affront to the civil rights and liberties of African Americans. Once again, black women dug deeply into the historical foundations of their church-based welfare efforts and self-help organizations to create a platform for a larger initiative of community self-help. Pooling their resources, these women provided support ‘during sickness, unemployment, or family troubles.’ [Citation—Anne F. Scott, “Most Invisible of All: Black Women’s Voluntary Associations,” Journal of Southern History 56, no. I (1990): 6.] Indeed, they were the architects of their own ‘self-invention’ through these organizations that served as bulwarks against oppression, that galvanized community support, and that engaged interracial allies to promote their black progressive agenda. Women who were bolstered by college and professional training and participation in community organizations would help form the core of an expanded educated middle class. Educators like Laura Titus were committed to uplifting their communities and initiating conversations about race and gender equality, which included the formation of the black women’s club movement.” (pp. 416–417)

“As If She Were Free is about the emancipatory acts of African and African-descended women in the Americas from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century. The stories of some two dozen individuals discussed in these chapters constitute a collective biography that narrates the history of emancipation as experienced by women in the western hemisphere. This history began upon the arrival of enslaved people from Africa in the Americas in the early sixteenth century and continued into the twentieth century as their descendants pursued an ongoing quest for liberty. As If She Were Free narrates this individual and collective struggle—in which African-descended women spoke and acted in ways that declared that they had a right to determine the course of their lives. This book, a collective biography of women who renounced their commodification and exploitation, articulates a new feminist history of freedom.” (p. 1)

“As If She Were Free recasts the word freedom to insist that women were agents of emancipation. Emancipation was deliverance from slavery; it was liberation from civil or other restraints; and it included efforts to gain economic, personal, political, and social rights. On all of these fronts, women emancipated themselves. When women ran away, they delivered themselves into a state of being free from the control of those who had previously claimed ownership over their bodies. When women filed freedom suits, challenged owners’ abusive behavior, left philandering husbands, practiced healing, experienced spiritual rituals of possession, formed illicit trade networks, or participated in revolutionary movements, they gave themselves freedom.” (p. 3)

All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

By Tiya Miles

Random House, 2021

“As multiple things rolled into one, Ashley’s sack is an extraordinary artifact of cultural and craft productions of African American women. Nothing else quite like it has yet been uncovered in the trunks, closets, or museum storage rooms of the North, South, or West. And the sack is more than an artifact. It is an archive of its own, a collection of disparate materials and messages. It is at once a container, carrier, textile, art piece, and record of past events. As with any archive, we cannot presume that this sack bears straightforward, unassailable facts. Using the object responsibly as a source for historical inquiry means asking questions of it and, as uncomfortable as it might feel, maintaining a willingness to poke holes into it. Placing this artifact in conversation with other sources and considering its various historical contexts can help us test its reliability in the service of historical understanding as well as the search for ‘symbolic truths’ that transcend hard evidence and speak to the intangible meaning of our collective human lives.” (pp. 16–17)

“While free men have historically owned and passed down ‘real’ property (especially in the form of land), women have typically had only ‘movable property’ (like furniture and linens—and, if the women in question were slaveholders, people) at their disposal. Although African American women possessed a limited form of property, they used that property intentionally to ‘assert identities, build alliances, and weave family bonds torn by marriage, death, or migration.’ [Citation—“Assert identities: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of the Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 133, 138. For more on how women passed down clothing as assets, see Martha R. Miller, The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 28.]” (p. 27)

“Ruth’s decision to tell this tale through needle and thread was a choice of significance. She could have selected a sheet of paper and written down the tale of the cotton sack, and perhaps she did sketch out a draft on some page long lost. But in the end, she chose to memorialize these family happenings in fabric, a medium used for millennia ‘as a vehicle for recording information, such as history or mythology.’ [Citation—Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years; Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 153.] Cloth is a particular kind of material for relating events of the past: it has traditionally been the craft of women across cultures, and it has held a special place in women’s lives. ‘Textiles, homemade or store-bought, were a form of female inheritance,’ a particularly valued kind of movable property, as the celebrated scholar of women’s material culture Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has explained. [Citation—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 40. (notes on the citation continue…)] For women, cloth also tended to represent the work of their hands, the female branches of family trees, and notions of the feminine ideal. Passing on a textile or inheriting a textile, then, symbolized women’s ability, creativity, and continuance.” (p. 233)