Our author Levi Coffin remembers, “Perhaps no case” regarding “fugitive slaves attracted more attention and aroused deeper interest and sympathy than the case of Margaret Garner, the slave mother, who killed her child rather than see it taken back to slavery.” This is a troubling story. I do not wish […]
How did Henry Box Brown escape from slavery? Simple, in 1849 he “had himself boxed up and forwarded to Philadelphia direct by express.” The box was “made to fit him most comfortably,” it was “two feet eight inches deep, two feet wide, and three feet long.” With him were “one bladder of water and a few small biscuits,” with but one hole for breathing.
After he “entered his box, it was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops and was addressed” by a friend to William Johnson in Philadelphia marked, “This side up with care.” The box was transported right side up, but for many miles it was transported upside down, which “had him on his head for miles.” This box went from steamboat to wagon to railroad, the delivery time was a little more than a day. […]
After spiriting so many slaves to freedom, a massive bounty of $40,000 was placed on Harriet Tubman’s head, which is equivalent to many hundreds of thousands in today’s money, enough to buy hundreds of slaves. If she had been caught, she likely would have been lashed with a hundred lashes bleeding out, she likely would have died from the punishment. She was bold, she would go to the market pretending to be an old woman, once she brushed past one of her former masters!
Before the Civil War, she made nineteen trips to Maryland to rescue more enslaved relatives, and slaves on other plantations. In this account she remembers she rescued three hundred souls from slavery, other accounts say less than a hundred. […]
Why don’t the Roman Stoics discuss justice as much as Plato? In the direct Radical Democracy of Athens, the citizens served on the juries and passed the laws, which meant that ordinary citizens participated in rendering justice. This is why Socrates sought to educate ordinary citizens on justice. But in the Roman Empire, the totalitarian Emperors and their servants were responsible for the administration of justice, the ordinary citizens no longer directly influenced the administration of justice. But that is not the case in modern America and most democracies, many ordinary citizens serve on juries and vote for many political officials, local and national. Justice should be our concern.
You can make a strong argument that Stoicism, like Judaism and Christianity, is founded on the two-fold Love of God and neighbor, that you should Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Plus, we have the St Maximus the Confessor corollary, that we should be eager to forgive our neighbor. […]
The slave catchers were searching for her. “In the evening, she discovered pursuers nearing the house, and with desperate courage, she determined to cross the river, or perish in the attempt. Clasping her child in her arms, she darted out the back door and ran toward the river, followed by her pursuers, who had just dismounted from their horses when they caught sight of her.”
“No fear or thought of personal danger entered Eliza’s mind, for she felt that she had rather be drowned than to be captured and separated from her child. Clasping her babe to her bosom with her left arm, she sprang on to the first cake of ice, then from that to another and another. Sometimes the cake she was on would sink beneath her weight, then she would slide her child onto the next cake, pull herself on with her hands, and so continue her hazardous journey. She became wet to the waist with ice water and her hands were numbed with cold, but as she made her way from one cake to ice to another, she felt that surely the Lord was preserving and upholding her, and that nothing could harm her.” […]
Chief Justice Fred Vinson scheduled oral arguments for December 1952, but the justices were hopelessly fractured, Vinson did not want to abandon Plessy. A second round of oral arguments were scheduled for December 1953, but Chief Justice Fred Vinson died of a heart attack in September. After attending his funeral, Justice Felix Frankfurter quipped to a friend, “This is the first indication I have ever had that there is a god.”
President Eisenhower appointed long-time Republican Earl Warren as Chief Justice, he later said this was his life’s “biggest damn fool mistake.” Earl Warren convinced his fellow justices that this needed to be a unanimous decision. Warren said this, summarizing the court’s opinion, “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other tangible factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.” […]
Martin Luther King was vigorously campaigning for voting rights. In his first national address, he proclaimed, “Give us the ballot. Give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.” “Give us the ballot and we will fill the legislature with men of goodwill. Give us the ballot and we will get the people judges who love mercy. Give us the ballot and we will quietly, lawfully, and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement” the US Supreme Court Brown decision. Ensuring that blacks have the right to vote was the key civil rights objective in the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War. […]
The biographer David Levering Lewis observes that “the King family belonged to what is known as the school hard preaching, of which cult of personality, and occasional pinch of exploitation, and sulfurous evangelism are indispensable ingredients.” Martin’s maternal grandfather founded the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and his father, Martin Luther King Sr, grew it into one of the largest and most prestigious black Baptist Churches in Atlanta.
His family was known for their involvement with civil rights. After the disastrous 1906 Atlanta race riots, his maternal grandfather was one of the charter members of the local NAACP chapter. He helped defeat a local bond issue that did not fund any new black schools and was instrumental in advocating the building of Booker T Washington High School, the first school in Atlanta for secondary education. […]
In her 1861 autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs recounts her experiences, spreading the awful truth about slavery. “I can testify,” she writes, “from my own experiences and observations, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.” […]
There was one very real benefit of slavery to the enslaved in the Deep South. Before the Civil War, slaves were far less likely to be lynched or killed than were freed slaves after the war. The reason for this was simple: it is illegal to damage someone’s property, and slaves were extremely valuable. Slaves were the most valuable asset class in America before the Civil War. Before the Civil War, a slave was worth as much as an economy car is worth today. […]
Copyright 2017
