Dear readers, my newest journal article has just been published in New York History, Volume 104, Number 2, Winter 2023-2024, pp. 264-275. You can find it at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/918263 (It’s paywalled – my apologies! If you’re affiliated with an educational institution, you may be able to access it for free.)
Hello!
I’d like to introduce my new Substack newsletter dedicated to the transatlantic world of the great American physician and intellectual James McCune Smith.
I’m delighted to announce – to all who may not know already – that I’m writing a biography of him, under contract with the University of Georgia Press. (It will be his first published scholarly biography, to my knowledge, building on my PhD thesis, the first completed book-length monograph on his life.) This newsletter will share intriguing discoveries and facts about McCune Smith’s life and his world that I come across – and have already come across – as I conduct research for the book and write it.
This newsletter has a dual purpose. First, and most importantly, I hope to generate more interest in McCune Smith. Due to several accidents of history, McCune Smith has come to be at least as forgotten in our time as he was famous in his own. In tandem with many other wonderful scholars and authors who have been rediscovering him and his remarkable legacy over the last few decades, I hope to help restore him to widespread historical memory, as his legacy deserves.
Secondly, I also hope to generate some financial support for my work on McCune Smith and his world, which is currently unfunded. This newsletter will consist of a mix of freely accessible posts and some available only to paid subscribers. For those who can and do support my work by subscribing to this newsletter ($5 per month, $50 per year), thank you so very much! For those who can’t support this work financially but do so by subscribing to the free version (and hopefully by recommending this newsletter to others), I thank you as well.
Sincerely,
Amy
P.S. While I’ll occasionally post to Ordinary Philosophy, my James McCune Smith Substack letter will be my primary outlet for my writing as I work on his biography – with the exception of articles and other works published in others’ media outlets (for example, I have an article pending publication in a New York history journal). So, hope to see you there!
Frederick Douglass c. 1855, and the first edition of his first newspaper The North Star, Dec 3 1847, public domain via the Library of Congress
‘We should be cautious how we indulge in the feelings of virtuous indignation. It is the handsome brother of anger and hatred’
~ Frederick Douglass, The North Star, Aug. 15, 1850
~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!!
In the course of my journey following the life of Frederick Douglass in 2016, I was so glad to have the opportunity to visit the place in New York City where he may have first met the great Ida B. Wells. It was late 1892, and the fiery young newspaperwoman had published her controversial piece of investigative journalism in the New York Age on June 25, 1892. It was expanded and published as a pamphlet later that year as Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.
Many people at that time thought of lynching as an unfortunate and somewhat rare excess of race-hatred by frustrated Southern whites. And many more saw it as a lawless but not entirely unjustified species of vengeance against black men who had raped white women. But Wells (born in Mississippi on July 16th, 1862) would change all that. In early 1892, three of Wells’ friends were lynched after a dispute between themselves and white owners of a rival business. She was outraged and began an investigation of the practice and history of lynching.
When Wells wrote Southern Horrors, she had already been an activist and writer promoting black rights for many years. In 1884, she resisted being forced out of the first class train car into the ‘colored car’; she later sued the train company, won the first suit, then lost on appeal. This incident (which echoes Douglass’ train protest in 1841) led to many other lawsuits, articles, and activism against anti-black laws and social practices. In 1892, her investigation of lynching revealed to Wells that lynching was far from just vengeance for rape or other violent crimes; it served as vengeance for or a public warning against alleged insubordination or impertinence, petty crimes, idleness, drunkenness, and so on. It was also put to such uses as eliminating business competition (as was the case for Wells’ friends), getting rid of inconvenient owners of coveted land, or scapegoating black people for the crimes of others. She discovered that lynchings were not all that rare, either, and came to the conclusion that they constituted a form of social control that replaced the terrorism (the system of coercion which included whippings, deprivations, rape, and threats of being sold ‘down the river’) of slavery.
Douglass was inspired and energized by Wells’ writing and anti-lynching work, and his letter in praise of Southern Horrors served as the pamphlet’s introduction. He visited her in New York City where she was living for a little while as a writer for and part owner of the New York Age, which was (probably) published at the site I visited in Harlem. I also visited a second site that happened to be associated with Wells two days after my New York visit: she delivered one of her hard-hitting speeches in her speaking tour following the publication of Southern Horrors at Tremont Temple in Boston on Feb 13th, 1893.
Education was another driving force in her life. Her first job was as a teacher at age 14, and she taught for many years, over time supplementing her teaching with journalism, writing and editing for the Evening Star, The Living Way, and the Free Speech and Headlight. Another of her most controversial, consciousness-raising articles was published in 1891 in the Free Speech about the conditions in black schools: the poor quality of the buildings which housed them, and of the education and morals of the teachers and school boards who administered them. She was not fired outright, but the school refused to hire her for the next school year. She then went on to work full-time for the newspaper, promoting the Free Speech from city to city and writing articles along the way, until the Free Speech‘s offices and printing press were destroyed by angry whites after the publication of her ‘Lynch Law’ piece. Adversity only served to strengthen Wells’ resolve, each attack causing her to re-double her efforts on behalf of her people.
Wells went on to have a long and distinguished career in writing, investigative journalism, and activism for black rights and women’s suffrage. She worked with Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois, toured the United States and Europe as a speaker and activist, founded Chicago’s Alpha Suffrage Club, served as secretary of the National Afro-American Council, founded and became the first president of the Negro Fellowship League, and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), among many other things.
For a long time, Wells thought of marriage and romantic relationships as oppressive, where women were expected to defer to men and flatter their vanity. But one day, she met a man who must have made her feel very differently, an attorney, writer, and fellow advocate for black rights named Ferdinand Barnett. She married him and they raised four children.
If I ever manage to accomplish the tiniest fraction of what she did in my own life, I would consider myself a great success!
Here are some excellent resources for learning more about the brilliant and irrepressible Ida B. Wells:
Barnett, Ida Wells (1862-1931) ~ by Tyina Steptoe for BlackPast.org
Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. ~ by Ida B. Wells, Ed. Alfred Duster. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett ~ by Beckett Graham and Susan Vollenweider, The History Chicks podcast episode 51
Ida B. Wells-Barnett ~ by the editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
Ida B. Wells: Crusade for Justice ~ by Jennifer McBride for Webster University’s website.
New York Age ~ by Heather Martin for the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance: K-Y
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases ~ by Ida B. Wells (1892) via Project Gutenberg
*A version of this piece was previously published in Ordinary Philosophy
~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!
Julia Ward Howe, ca. 1855
Julia Ward Howe, poet, and activist, was born on May 27, 1819, and lived a long life ever dedicated to social reform.
She’s best known as the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the stirring Civil War anthem still sung at military events and in churches today; I remember singing it at Mass growing up. Filled with Biblical imagery, it reminds me of the Old Testament-inspired Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln. In it, Lincoln addresses the terrible costs of the war in lives and property, surmising that God’s justice may demand that ‘all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk., and …every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword’ in recompense for the terrible sin of slavery.
Howe wrote her Hymn in 1861, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural was delivered in 1865. Lincoln is known to have heard the Battle Hymn and reported to have wept when he did. He was well versed in Scripture and references it liberally in his writings and speeches; nevertheless, he may also have had Howe’s Hymn in mind when he wrote his Address. In any case, both remain prominent in American historical memory. John Steinbeck uses her Book of Revelation-derived phrase The Grapes of Wrath as the title of his great novel about the suffering of Dust Bowl refugees fleeing to California. The great Leonard Cohen references her Hymn in ‘Steer Your Way’ from You Want It Darker, his final album released shortly before his death. Howe’s lyric ‘As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free’ became ‘As he died to make men holy, let us die to make things cheap’ in his stinging rebuke of hyper-materialism’s destructive exploitation of the earth to satisfy short-term comfort and short-sighted greed.
Julia Ward Howe postcard dated August 28th, 1903, from the Hutchinson Family Scrapbook in the collection of the Lynn Historical Society in Massachusetts. I was here in the spring of 2016 following the life and ideas of Frederick Douglass. The Hutchinson family dedicated their musical skills to the abolition movement and other reform causes and were friends with many prominent activists of their day. The scrapbook doesn’t note which member of the Hutchinson family Howe addressed this card to.
Read more about this great abolitionist, feminist, and author:
Julia Ward Howe, 1819–1910: Biography ~ Poetry Foundation
Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) ~ by Debra Michals for the National Women’s History Museum
‘The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe,’ by Elaine Showalter ~ by Jill Lepore for The New York Times
Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, Volume 1 ~ by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards, Maud Howe Elliott, and Florence Howe Hall, 1915
*A version of this piece was previously published at Ordinary Philosophy
~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!
James McCune Smith, closeup of engraving by Patrick H. Reason
On this anniversary of Dr. James McCune Smith’s birth, I’d like to share the story of this great thinker and activist’s life and why I’ve chosen him as the subject of my Ph.D. studies. Rather, in a way, I think he chose me. While researching the life of his colleague, friend, and frequent star at Ordinary Philosophy Frederick Douglass, I came across McCune Smith and was drawn in by his intelligence, passion, writing styles, and fascinating life story. I’m now working on writing the first full-length biography of this great and far-too-little known pioneering African American physician, intellectual, activist, and community benefactor who also made important contributions to history, literature, anthropology, physiology, medicine, constitutional theory, and the emerging field of statistics.
McCune Smith was born in New York on April 18th, 1813, the son of self-emancipated slave Lavinia Smith and, likely, her former master, a merchant named Samuel Smith. From an early age, little James excelled in his studies at New York City’s African Free School No. 2 on Mulberry St. There, he was a classmate of, and over the years, a lifelong friend, colleague, and in some cases biographer of such luminaries as minister and activist Henry Highland Garnet, mathematician and educator Charles L. Reason, engraver Patrick H. Reason, and Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge. All of these, as well as others among their classmates, went on to become leaders in the fight for abolition and equal rights.
Drawing of Napoleon Francois, Charles Joseph, by James McCune Smith, 1825. Published at O.P. with the kind permission of the New-York Historical Society
Upon finishing his studies at the Free School, McCune Smith continued his studies independently and with tutors, focusing on Greek, Latin, and the classics; over the years, he would come to be fluent in Greek and Latin, and to gain a working knowledge of French, German, and Hebrew. When his applications for admission were rejected from the medical schools at Columbia and Geneva in New York on account of his African ancestry, McCune Smith applied to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, which had no racial restrictions. He completed his bachelor’s degree there in 1835, his master’s degree in 1836, and his medical degree in 1837, receiving several honors along the way. Upon his return to his native New York City in 1837, he was said to be the most educated African American of his time.
Though he had enjoyed great freedom and opportunity in Scotland, McCune Smith decided to make New York City his permanent home. There, he continued the freedom struggle he had engaged in as a founding member of the Glasgow Abolition Society, this time in his native United States where he felt his efforts were most needed. While he was establishing his pharmacy and medical practice at 93 West Broadway St, McCune Smith also jumped right into political activism, fighting to remove the discriminatory $250 property qualification that applied only to black voters. He is most well known today for his activism in abolitionist societies such as the American Anti-Slavery Society, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and the Radical Abolitionists, as well as his leading role in the Colored Convention movement. Yet much, if not most, of McCune Smith’s freedom struggle took place on a personal, community, and grassroots level. He fought for greater economic and educational freedom and opportunity for his fellow New Yorkers of color, regularly gave lectures to raise money for black charities, was a founding member of the Committee of Thirteen dedicated to helping those escaping from slavery, and was the attending physician to the Colored Orphan Asylum for over twenty years.
McCune Smith Cafe & Shop, Glasgow, Scotland, photo January 2019 by Amy Cools
McCune Smith married Malvena Barnet in the early 1840s and together they had (about) 11 children, five of whom survived to adulthood. McCune Smith and Malvena loved raising children and grieved hard over the loss of so many. It must also have been uniquely hard for McCune Smith in his role as a physician administering to children, not being able to save so many of his own from their ultimately fatal illnesses. Yet he managed to keep his hope alive and his energies up, leading an incredibly productive professional, intellectual, and creative life. In addition to his groundbreaking work as the first African American to have a case report presented to a mainstream medical association and to have an article published in a medical journal, McCune Smith wrote prolifically and brilliantly in statistics, several sciences, history, travel, and literature. His writing ranged from concise and clinical to lyrical; from erudite to plain and direct; from sharply critical to experimental; from sarcastic to witty; from righteously angry to tender; from wry to comical.
It was not only suffering the loss of so many children that could have kept McCune Smith down. The Colored Orphan Asylum that he had loved and labored for so long was burned down in New York City’s draft riots of 1863, leading McCune Smith to move his family to the safety of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. He felt frustration, anger, sorrow, and even despair at the intractability of racism and oppression directed at his fellow African Americans despite their abilities, potential, and invaluable contributions to American prosperity and culture. McCune Smith also suffered from bouts of heart disease, lung ailments, and edema for about twenty years, and though he had many health scares over that time, he always seemed to rally and push on. Yet as he wrote occasionally throughout the middle and later years of his life, McCune Smith suspected he would not live a long life. He was right. McCune Smith died of congestive heart failure on November 17th, 1865, at only 52 years old. He had lived to see the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, the end of the Civil War, and the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, but died just before that Amendment was fully ratified.
Please stay tuned for more about McCune Smith as I continue my research into his life, ideas, and legacy…
Sources and inspiration (not exhaustive by any means, but these are some readily available to share with you online):
‘AFS Bios: James McCune Smith’. Examination Days: The New York African Free School Collection
Associated Press. ‘White Descendants Gather to Honor 1st Black US Doctor, Put Tombstone on His Unmarked NYC Grave’. FoxNews.com, 26 September 2010
Lujan, Heidi L. and Stephen E. DiCarlo. ‘First African-American to Hold a Medical Degree: Brief History of James McCune Smith, Abolitionist, Educator, and Physician.‘ Advances in Physiology Education 43, no. 2 (April 2019): 134-39
Morgan, Thomas M. ‘The Education and Medical Practice of Dr. James McCune Smith (1813-1865), First Black American to Hold a Medical Degree.’ Journal of the National Medical Association 95, no. 7 (July 2003): 603–14
‘Obituary of James McCune Smith’. The Medical Register of the City of New York for the Year Commencing June 1, 1866, 1866, 201–4
Smith, James McCune, and John Stauffer. The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006
~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!
Frederick Douglass and his grandson Joseph, concert violinist who inherited his love of music from his grandparents, from the Library of Congress archives
Let us remember and salute the great human rights activist and Enlightenment thinker Frederick Douglass, on this near-anniversary of his birth.
The exact day of Douglass’ birth is unknown. We know the year, 1818, from his entry in the slave ledger of his master Aaron Anthony. His likely birth month, February, is an estimate. In his later years, Douglass chose to celebrate his birthday on February 14th because, he said, his mother Harriet once called him ‘my Valentine’.
Douglass is among my favorite people that ever inhabited the earth. He was born into slavery in Maryland, was mostly self-educated, escaped to freedom when he was 20, married the loving and strong Anna Murray, and became one of the most eloquent and influential advocates for civil rights in American, and, indeed, world history. He was an author, orator, preacher, activist, statesman, patriarch, musician, and world traveler. I had the joy of following the life and ideas of this motivated, resourceful, brilliant, complicated, and incredibly fascinating person through the United States, and now I’m continuing my research in Scotland, where he spent a relatively brief but very influential part of his life.
Here are a few links to some articles and works of art by, about, and inspired by the great Frederick Douglass, including my own work.
7 Haunts of Frederick Douglass in New York City ~ by Amy Cools for Untapped Cities
Frederick Douglass ~ by Melvyn Bragg and guests Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt, and Celeste-Marie Bernier for In Our Time
Frederick Douglass – by Ronald Sundstrom for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Frederick Douglass ~ Melvin Bragg discusses the life and ideas of Frederick Douglass with Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt, and Celeste-Marie Bernier for In Our Time
Frederick Douglass: In Progress ~ by Leigh Fought
Frederick Douglass Papers ~ at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Frederick Douglass Papers ~ at the Library of Congress
Frederick Douglass: United States Official and Diplomat ~ by the Editors for Encyclopædia Britannica
Frederick Douglass and a Valentine, Emily Dickinson and a Snake – by Rob Velella for The American Literary Blog
Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia – by John Muller
Frederick’s Song– Douglass’ words arranged and set to music by SayReal and Richard Fink
From Oakland to Maryland, New York, and Massachusetts I Go, in Search of Frederick Douglass – History of ideas travel series by Amy Cools for Ordinary Philosophy
Interview with Ken Morris, Anti-Slavery Activist ~ by Ken Morris and Amy Cools for Ordinary Philosophy Podcast
Interview with Leigh Fought on Anna and Frederick Douglass ~ by Leigh Fought and Amy Cools for Ordinary Philosophy Podcast
Frederick Douglass in the British Isles ~ History of ideas travel series by Amy Cools for Ordinary Philosophy in Scotland, England, and Ireland, 2018-2019
*A version of this piece was previously published in Ordinary Philosophy
~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!
Strike for Freedom Frederick Douglass exhibit poster, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2018, featuring an 1853 engraved portrait by John Buttre
Thursday, October 4th, 2018
This afternoon’s an exciting one: it’s the opening day of the Strike for Freedom exhibit at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland. It features photos, letters, books, memorabilia, and more relating to Frederick Douglass and his family, friends, and colleagues, who spoke and worked for the abolition of slavery and equal rights in the antebellum United States and beyond.
Frederick Douglass is featured here at the NLS because he became an especially well-known abolitionist speaker in Scotland. Douglass traveled to the British Isles in August of 1845 following the publication of his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. He planned to kill two birds with one stone when he crossed the Atlantic: one, he would escape the danger of re-capture by his legal owner with the help of the information contained in the Narrative and two, he would add his voice to the growing antislavery movement in Britain. After touring Ireland, Douglass arrived in Ardrossan, Scotland on January 10th, 1846. Not long after his arrival, Douglass became involved in the ‘Send Back the Money!’ campaign, which called on the newly formed Free Church of Scotland to return donations from American congregations who supported slavery. Though the campaign did not succeed in persuading the Church to return the funds, Douglass’ speeches were immensely popular and he garnered a huge amount of support for the various causes he spoke for, including abolition, temperance, and equal access to public modes of transport and accommodations regardless of race.
Frederick Douglass items in Strike for Freedom exhibit, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2018. At bottom left is the first Irish printing of Douglass’ Narrative, published by abolitionist Richard Webb, with a frontispiece portrait signed ‘B. Bell.’ Douglass hated the portrait, and though Webb took offense at Douglass’ reaction to it, he duly replaced it with another in subsequent printings. This is the very same copy from the NLS’ collection I consulted this summer when researching my master’s dissertation.
The Strike for Freedom exhibit’s opening is kicked off today with a fascinating and rousing talk by Celeste-Marie Bernier, who was instrumental in arranging this exhibit. The focus of her talk was how Douglass did not become the great man he was alone. His wife Anna Murray; his daughters and sons Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Remond, and Annie; and his mother and grandmother Harriet and Betsy Bailey were all instrumental in helping him become the man he was. They functioned as inspirations, teachers, helpmeets, companions, consciences, correctives, encouragers, amanuenses, and above all, sources of love, pride, and joy for Frederick in every stage of his growth from slave child, to self-emancipated young man, to husband and father, to activist and author, to American statesman and moral leader.
The Strike for Freedom exhibit centers around Douglass family artifacts (mostly original with occasional facsimiles) from the Walter O. Evans collection. Dr. Evans and his wife Linda are major collectors of African-American art, but Dr. Evans has also gathered a massive collection of African-American documents, photos, and other artifacts throughout the course of his life. The exhibit also includes at least one item from the NLS’ own collection, and images from the Maryland State Archives, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library of Congress, the Central Library of Rochester & Monroe County in New York, and the National Park Service’s Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.
Frederick Douglass in Edinburgh map, Strike for Freedom exhibit, National Library of Scotland, 2018
As I head for the exhibit after the talk, I pass by a large glass case with a map laid out, marked with pins and labels. It shows the location of Edinburgh sites associated with Douglass’ visits to Scotland. I’ll be covering these Edinburgh sites as I take my own journey through Edinburgh following Douglass, stay tuned!
Here are just some of the artifacts I saw in the exhibit. No doubt, I’ll be sharing more with you throughout my Douglass in the British Isles series as they relate to the stories.
Jesse Glasgow’s book on Harper’s Ferry and John Brown and a ‘Send Back the Money!’ anti-slavery meeting pamphlet at the Strike for Freedom exhibit at the NLS, 2018. Glasgow was a classics student at the University of Edinburgh and unfortunately, died young in 1860, at only age 23, having already become a published author and an award-winning scholar.
Lewis Henry and Helen Amelia Longuen Douglass photos and letter, Strike for Freedom exhibit at the NLS, 2018. Lewis was Douglass’ eldest son, and Amelia was a member of a prominent abolitionist family. The love letters between Lewis, away fighting in the Civil War, and his beloved Amelia tell a revealing and fascinating story of love among war and the fight for equality.
Frederick Douglass’ Family Story photos and artifacts at the Strike for Freedom exhibit at the NLS, 2018. At the top, from left to right clockwise, are pictured Rosetta, the Douglass’ eldest daughter; Anna Murray, Douglass’ first wife and mother of all of his children; the Douglass’ middle child Frederick Douglass, Jr.; Douglass with his second wife Helen Pitts (sitting) and her sister Eva (standing); and Douglass with his grandson Joseph (standing), a famous violinist. The four-page document is a speech written by Charles Remond Douglass titled ‘Some Incidents of the Home Life of Frederick Douglass’ in which he describes Douglass’ civil rights work as a family affair.
Frederick Douglass’ Family Story photos and artifacts, Strike for Freedom exhibit at the NLS, 2018
After a good long visit to the exhibit and chatting with some fellow attendees at the talk (including an all-too-brief chat with Dr. Evans), I depart, inspired, happy with the new things I’ve learned, and excited to continue my journey through texts and physical places following Douglass in the British Isles.
~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sources and Inspiration:
Bernier, Celeste-Marie, and Andrew Taylor. If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection. Edinburgh University Press, 2018
Delatinerjan, Barbara. ‘Interest in Black Art Just Grew and Grew.‘ New York Times, Jan 30, 2000
‘Jesse Ewing Glasgow, Jr. (c. 1837-1860)‘, Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University website
Murray, Hannah Rose. Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland
Our Bondage and Our Freedom: An international project celebrating the 200 year anniversary of the birth of African American activist and author, Frederick Douglass. School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh website
Pettinger, Alasdair. Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life. Edinburgh University Press, 2018
Pettinger, Alasdair. ‘Douglass in Scotland‘ series for bulldozia.com
In honor of the great feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton‘s birthday, I’m sharing again the stories of my explorations of her life and ideas in the places she lived and worked, often in conjunction with her fellow feminists Ernestine Rose and Frederick Douglass:
To New York City I Go, In Search of Ernestine Rose and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Enjoy, and I hope you find her story as fascinating and inspiring as I do!
~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!
*A version of this piece was previously published at Ordinary Philosophy
John Jones, portrait by Mosher & Baldwin, 1882, courtesy of the Chicago History Museum
When I visited Springfield, Illinois last summer, I found a very interesting plaque at the Old State House downtown. It told the story of John Jones and his activism against Illinois’s Black Laws, a set of legal codes that pertained only to black people, and, as you likely and immediately supposed, were terribly oppressive. Such laws have a long history in the United States and as long as they’ve been around, lovers of justice have been around to fight them. John Jones was one such person.
Born on November 3rd, 1816 to an American black mother and German white father, Jones had to make his own way early in the world. Jones’ mother did not trust his father to do right by his son so she apprenticed him to a tailor when he was very young. The resourceful Jones taught himself to read and write and, having learned what he needed to, he released himself from the tailor’s service by age 27. He then obtained official free papers for himself and his wife, née Mary Jane Richardson, and secured their freedom to live and travel by posting a $1,000 bond in 1844. While he and his wife were both born free, they had to worry about the numerous ‘fugitive’ slave catchers and kidnappers prowling around, all too happy to capture as many black persons as they could get ahold of, passing them off as escaped slaves in exchange for a substantial payoff.
The Joneses moved to Chicago from Alton, Illinois in 1845, where there was an established community of black entrepreneurs and therefore, more opportunities for families such as theirs. Jones worked hard and savvily, building up a very successful tailoring business and amassing an impressive fortune within just a few years. The Joneses used their success to help their fellow black citizens, making their home one of the key Chicago stops on the Underground Railroad. Jones poured much of his money and time into civil rights activism, working for the abolitionist cause and to overturn the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the already decades-old Black Laws of Illinois, sometimes with his fellow autodidact and activist Frederick Douglass. For the rest of his life, Jones was a prominent intellectual, moral, religious, and political leader in the black community of Chicago and beyond.
Learn more about the courageous civil rights leader John Jones at:
John Jones (1816–1879): Activist, politician, tailor, entrepreneur ~ by Jessie Carney Smith for Encyclopedia.com
Jones, John ~ by Cynthia Wilson for Blackpast.org
Historical placard for John Jones, Old State House, Springfield, Illinois
*A version of this piece was previously published at Ordinary Philosophy
~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!
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