Mixed-race slaves from New Orleans 

 Albumen print photocard by Chas. Paxson, photographer, New York, 1864. Via digital copy on Library of Congress website, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16936743 

 Text on back: "Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1864, by S. Tackaberry, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York" "The nett proceeds from the sale of these photographs will be devoted to the education of colored people in the Department of the Gulf, now under the command of Maj. Gen'l Banks" Notes: The four people shown were from a group of slaves emancipated in Union occupied New Orleans under orders of General Nathanial Banks. 8 were brought to New York City by Colonel George H. Hanks, and put on tour to generate sympathy for emancipation and raise funds for the education of freedmen. This photo is one of a series sold in this fund raising effort. Half of the former slaves brought north in this effort were very light skinned with Caucasian features, under the presumption that some Whites would be more likely to sympathize with people of White appearance than of more obviously African ancestry. Links with further details: Mirror of Race: “As White As Their Masters”, Quakers & Slavery: "White Slaves". 

BLACK, BROWN, RED,YELLOW, & WHITE, ALL  ARE BEAUTIFUL & PRECIOUS IN GOD'S SIGHT!!!

 

For this year's 2016 Black History month, we remember and give honor to the following:

James Forten, September 2, 1766 – March 4, 1842

James Forten was born free in 1766 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of two children of Thomas and Margaret Forten. Thomas Forten was the grandson of a slave who had "freed himself".

In Philadelphia in 1786, James became apprenticed to sail-maker Robert Bridges, his father's former employer and a family friend.  He learned quickly in the sail loft. This was where the large ship sails were cut and sewn. Before long, the young man was promoted to foreman.
At Bridges' retirement in 1798, Forten bought the loft. He developed a tool to help maneuver the large sails, by 1810 Forten had built up one of the most successful sail lofts in Philadelphia. He created the conditions he worked for in society, employing both black and white workers. Because of his business acumen, Forten became one of the wealthiest Philadelphians in the city, black or white.

James Forten married twice: his first wife, Martha Beatty died after only a few months of marriage. In 1806, he married Charlotte Vandine. Their children were Robert Bridges Forten, Margaretta, Harriet, Sarah Louisa, Charlotta, William Deas, Mary Theresa, Thomas Willing, Francis, and James Jr. succeeded their father in the family sail-making business.
The children grew up in and committed to the abolitionist movement. Robert, named for his father's former boss and mentor, was a vigorous anti-slavery activist. Sisters Harriet and Sarah Louisa married the prominent abolitionist brothers Robert Purvis and Joseph Purvis, respectively. Educated at Amherst College, they were sons of a wealthy white English planter and his wife, a free woman of color. They used their great wealth in lives of public service. Margaretta became a lifelong educator and was an officer of the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, 1845.
The Fortens' granddaughter Charlotte Forten Grimké became a poet, diarist and educator. Her diary from teaching freedmen and their children in the South after the Civil War became well known; it was republished in scholarly editions in the 1980s.

 James Forten, along with Black leaders Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, enlisted the help of 2,500 Blacks to help guard Philadelphia against the British during the War of 1812.  He also used his leadership to solicit many of the first 1,700 Black subscribers for William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, "The Liberator", and donated money to help cover the paper's first 27 subscriptions.  His Lombard Street home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, served as an Underground Railroad way station for escaping slaves.  These examples are only a few of the many activities that Forten was involved in. He maintained a strong stance against colonization and slavery. This inventor-businessman, James Forten Sr. used his resources to improve life for his people.  He was a forerunner for civil rights and a true humanitarian.

One author wrote of him: "When James Forten died, he left behind an exemplary family, a sizable fortune, and a legacy of philanthropy and activism that inspired generations of black Philadelphians."

Some excerpts above from: "A Salute to Black Scientists and Inventors".  Also reference from Wikipedia Encyclopedia.



 Reverend Absalom Jones, 1746-1818

The above famous image of Reverend Jones was rendered by Philadelphia artist Raphaelle Peale in 1810

Absalom Jones was America’s first black priest. Born into slavery, November 6th or 7th, 1746, in Sussex County, Delaware, at a time when slavery was being debated as immoral and undemocratic, he taught himself to read, using the New Testament as one of his resources. At the age of 16, Jones was sold to a shopkeeper in Philadelphia where he attended a night school for blacks, operated by Quakers. Following the purchase of his own freedom in 1784, Jones served as lay minister for the black membership at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church.

The active evangelism of Jones and that of his friend, Richard Allen, greatly increased black membership at St. George’s. Alarmed by the rise in black attendance, the vestry decided to segregate blacks into an upstairs gallery without notice. When ushers attempted to remove the black congregants, the resentful group exited the church. This exodus triggered the establishment of the Free African Society by Jones and Allen in 1787 to aid in the emancipation of slaves and to offer sustenance and spiritual support to widows, orphans, and the poor.

In 1794 Jones and Allen, with the assistance of local Quakers and Episcopalians, established the “First African Church” in Philadelphia. Shortly after the establishment that same year, the African Church applied to join the Protestant Episcopal Church, laying before the diocese three requirements: the Church must be received as an already organized body; it must have control over it’s own affairs; and Jones must be licensed as lay-reader and if qualified, ordained as its minister. Upon acceptance into the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the church was renamed the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. The following year Jones became a deacon but was not ordained a priest until 1804, nine years later. At 58 years old, he became the first black American priest. He continued to be a leader in his community, founding a day school (as blacks were excluded from attending public school), the Female Benevolent Society, and an African Friendly Society. In 1800 he called upon Congress to abolish the slave trade and to provide for gradual emancipation of existing slaves. Reverend Jones died in 1818.

• He is listed on the Episcopal calendar of saints and remembered liturgically on the date of his death, February 13th, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer as "Absalom Jones, Priest, 1818".

The above information is from Wikipedia Encyclopedia and from http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/leadership/jones.php



 

Amanda Berry Smith

• Amanda Berry Smith, 1837-1915 Amanda Smith born to slave parents in 1837, stated in her autobiography, published in the year of our Lord 1893, "I belong to Royalty and am well aquainted with the KING OF KINGS,

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and better known and better understood among the great family above than I am on earth."

• Document Menu
• An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist: Containing an Account of Her Life Work of Faith, and Her Travels in America, England, Ireland, Scotland, India, and Africa as an Independent Missionary.
•  Chicago: Meyer & Brother Publishers, 1893.
  

Summary

Amanda Berry Smith was one of the few women evangelists to leave a personal account of her work. She was born to slave parents on January 23, 1837 in Long Green, Maryland. Her father, Samuel Berry,

earned enough money through extra work to purchase freedom for himself, his wife, Mariam Matthews, and their five children. They moved to York County, Pennsylvania, where their home became a station on the Underground Railroad. There they had seven more children. Although Amanda Smith received less than three months of formal schooling, she learned to read and write with the help of her parents. She worked briefly as a washerwoman and maid to support her family before marrying Calvin M. Devine in 1854. He died as a Union soldier in the Civil War. She moved to Philadelphia in 1863 and married James H. Smith, a deacon in an African Methodist Episcopal church. Smith had two children by her first husband three by her second, but only one daughter, Mazie, survived childhood.

During her first marriage, Smith converted to Christianity. She became active in the Holiness movement, which urged all believers, regardless of their situation or status, to publicly share their faith. Smith was particularly attracted by the controversial principle of sanctification, the belief that purification from intentional sin is achievable through faith. Smith reports that she experienced sanctification in 1868. Following her second husband's death in 1869, Smith began preaching in churches and at Holiness camp meetings in New York and New Jersey, becoming a popular speaker to both black and white audiences during the 1870s. Although she was not ordained or financially supported by the AME Church or any other organization, she became the first black woman to work as an international evangelist in 1878. She served for twelve years in England, Ireland, Scotland, India, and various African countries.

In 1892, Amanda Smith returned to the United States and settled in Chicago where she continued preaching. In 1899, Smith opened a home for black orphans, later called the Amanda Smith Industrial School for Girls in Harvey, Illinois. She wrote a monthly newspaper, the Helper, which augmented her fundraising efforts for the school, and published her autobiography in 1893. She retired to Sebring, Florida in 1912, and died in March 1915.

Works Consulted: Andrews, William L., Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, eds., The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; Garraty, John A. and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, vol. 20, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; Harris, Sharon M., ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 221: American Women Prose Writers, 1870-1920, Detroit: Gale Group, 2000; Melton, J. Gordon, Religious Leaders of America: A Biographical Guide to Founders and Leaders of Religious Bodies, Churches, and Spiritual Groups in North America, Detroit: Gale Group, 1999.

Monique Prince 

THE INFORMATION ABOVE IS FROM: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Accessed: February 1st, 2016 @ URL: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/smitham/summary.html

Amanda's Statement from her autobiography, chapter XV, page 198, "I belong to Royalty and am well aquainted with the KING OF KINGS", plus pictures above and below, accessed February 1st & 2nd, 2016 @  URL: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/smitham/smith.html 

Matthew 5:16 NKJV Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. 



 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments Ratified

 NARA

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is the nation's record keeper of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government.

 Although full political freedom for African Americans would not come until the 1960s,

in the 1860s the Constitution was fundamentally altered to eliminate discrimination that had been enshrined in the founding document.

• The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) officially abolished slavery, 
• the Fourteenth (1868) granted citizenship rights to former slaves, and
• the Fifteenth (1870) bestowed voting rights. 

With their new-found rights, several African Americans were elected to political office at the national level. Hiram Revels of Mississippi, in 1870 Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi State Senate to finish the term of one of the state's two seats in the US Senate, which had been left vacant since the Civil War. Previously, it had been held by Albert G. Brown, who withdrew from the US Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded.

Soon afterwards however, particularly in Southern states, a Jim Crow system would be implemented that undermined these rights.

{Jim Crow was not a person, yet affected the lives of millions of people. Named after a popular 19th-century minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans, "Jim Crow" came to personify the system of

government-sanctioned

racial oppression and segregation in the United States.}

see WBS #56/OFFENSES & OPPRESSORS