Some months ago, a few years after my father's death, while going through some old papers in boxes, we made a startling discovery: that our great-great grandfather, Arthur Thome, was a slave-owner and the first Kentuckian to free his ( approximately fifteen) slaves, between 1832 and 1838, and that his oldest son, our great uncle, James Armstrong Thome, was a very prominent and influential abolitionist, author of Emancipation In the West Indies, a book which profoundly influenced the American abolition movement toward immediate rather than gradual freeing of slaves, and advisor to Abraham Lincoln on the writing of the Emancipation Proclamation. We found copies of the manumission papers freeing Arthur's slaves (the originals are held in the Oberlin College Special Collections Library.) We learned that Arthur lost his business and he and his family were driven at gunpoint from their elegant home in Augusta, Kentucky by angry pro-slavery mobs, and had to flee to another state to start over when he was almost 70 years old. This information was new and startling; we had never heard any reference to this part of our heritage during my father's lifetime. It remains a mystery why my father never mentioned it.
I have felt so many reactions--shame, and guilt at knowing that my own ancestor was a slaveholder, had owned human beings as "property" and benefited from their labor, no matter how kindly he is said to have treated them. Pride that he was willing to risk, and lose, his wealth, position, home and friends, because he came to see that emancipating them was the right thing to do. And, pride that his son was a courageous and committed abolitionist who spoke out and wrote against the evils of slavery at every opportunity, and was responsible for persuading his own father to free his slaves. Sadness and concern as I look at the names of the people he set "free," and I wonder what became of them, how they survived, whether they were able to leave the area, given the intense hostility toward freed people that existed among the dominant slave -owner class in those times. Their deprivation, their sacrifices and labor, contributed greatly to my great-great grandfather's prosperity and way of life: his flour mill business, the ferry he established to cross the Ohio River, and the elegant mansion where he and his family lived until they had to leave.
Not long after these discoveries about our own family history, I began to hear of the reparations movement, and then found CURE via the internet. I then felt that there was a place where I, as a white person, could participate, in some small way, in creating a remedy for an evil which has been a toxic and pervasive force in the entire world and especially perpetuated in this country, for centuries. It has felt very personal, since discovering that my ancestors were both slave-owners and abolitionists. Since then, as I learn more about the history, philosophy, research and scholarship behind the reparations movement, it makes even more sense, and I feel all the more impatient with the resistance expressed toward it by some.
Comments
First, many thanks to Marilee for acting on her family's tradition and for sharing it with us. .
All of our families have extremely complicated histories, especially those of us with ancestors from the Southern US. Many who think of themselves as "pure white" have African ancestors. Many of us who cannot imagine doing something of the kind have ancestors who participated in lynchings, at the least as eager spectators.
As we sort through the emotions of knowing about, or even just imagining, our white ancestors, it is critical that we remember that feelings for humanity and justice were always there in the mix. There were always a few people, in every era, who stood up for justice when they knew the price was high. There were always, of course, many more whites who knew uneasily in their guts that slavery was wrong but lacked the moral fiber to act on what they knew -- one major example of course being Thomas Jefferson.
White privilege was always a tricky fit for human beings who could not help but recognize other human beings across the color line. The "scientific experts" of slavery days had long explanations about the inferiority of Africans. But it is hard to deny the evidence of your own eyes and your own heart, showing you a fellow human being who has the same qualities you do. Many, perhaps most, whites, lived uneasily across the contradictions, brutalizing people of African descent at times and at other times relying on their humanity and even their affections.
One person I like to think about that had real integrity is Benjamin Lundy. He was, almost single-handedly, the white voice of abolitionism during the period between the American Revolution's upsurge of anti-slavery feeling and the abolitionist movement leading up to the Civil War. He lived in an era when abolitionism was a crackpot idea, and he was attacked physically for his beliefs. Yet he gave up his craft and hit the road for abolitionism, and published a magazine on the topic at his own expense, and organized in many communities. He lived to pass his mission on to others, including Garrison, but not to see the final legal abolition of chattel slavery in the United States.
Since we do not know when reparations will be brought about, or when people of African descent will gain their deserved respect from this or a transformed USA, we are all in Lundy's position to some extent. Like him, we have to persist because it is right to do so, whatever happens in our lifetime. Like his, our efforts will not be in vain, but will be part of the long process of repairing the crimes that began with slavery and have compounded themselves since. And like him, despite what we see or hear around us, we continually choose to affirm our own humanity by affirming that of every human being.
In his youth, Lundy saw human beings being transported in chains for sale through the town he lived in. He wrote later "My heart was greatly grieved by the great abomination. I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered my soul."
If you have never felt as he did at that moment, you have separated themselves from your own humanity. Every child has a strong sense of justice. Responding to injustice by taking real restorative action is part of every religion, and it is part of who we each are. This was true even at the height of slavery's power.
Larry Yates
CURE member
Personal website: http://www.user.shentel.net/llyates/