MARY ELIZABETH BOWSER UNION SPY

Murphy Browne © March 28-2018



MARY ELIZABETH BOWSER UNION SPY



“I wish there was some law here, or some protection. I know these southerners pretty well and their present appearance is not at all favorable. I have been in the service so long as a detective that I still find myself scrutinizing them closely. There is little of the open braggadocio that generally characterizes them, but there is that sinister expression about the eye, and the quiet but bitterly expressed feeling that I know portends evil. With a little whiskey in them, they dare do anything. Their apparent good feelings and acquiescence are only a vail to hide their true feelings.”



Excerpt from April 7, 1867 letter from Mary Elizabeth Richards Bowser to G.L. Eberhardt Georgia Superintendent of Freedmen’s Schools




Mary Elizabeth Richards was an enslaved African born on March 30, 1840 in Richmond, Virginia. She was the property of the Van Lew family. As an adult she became the most famous African American undercover agent for the United States Army during the American Civil War. She worked as a domestic servant in the Confederate White House of President Jefferson Davis where she gathered military intelligence for the opposing Union army. Her name in popular history is Mary Elizabeth Bowser, but she used many other names for protection throughout her life. Richards Bowser was part of an extensive Union spy network run by Elizabeth Van Lew, the White woman whose family had enslaved Richards Bowser.




The first record of Richards Bowser is her baptism as "Mary Jane" at St. John's Church in Richmond, on May 17, 1846. She was dentified in the church records as “Mary Jane, a colored child belonging to Mrs. Van Lew.” She was also sent North to be educated and then (as a 15 year old) to Liberia in 1855 as a missionary. Richards Bowser returned to Richmond in the spring of 1860. Although she had lived as a free person during her time in a Northern state and as a missionary in Liberia, on her return to Richmond, Virginia she was once more the property of the Van Lew family.



On April 16, 1861, Mary Richards married Wilson Bowser a free African American man. Her marriage to a free African American man did not change her status as an enslaved woman because she was "hired out" as a domestic to the Whitehouse by her owner Elizabeth Van Lew. From Elizabeth Van Lew’s diary entry dated May 14, 1864 “When I open my eyes in the morning, I say to the servant, "What news, Mary?" and my caterer never fails! Most generally our reliable news is gathered from negroes, and they certainly show wisdom, discretion and prudence, which is wonderful.”



In the Jefferson Davis Whitehouse it was assumed that Richards Bowser was “dim witted” and illiterate so she was free to wander around cleaning offices, reading and memorizing sensitive military material. The information was passed on to Elizabeth Van Lew or other White, Union “spies.” One of these White spies was Thomas McNiven a baker who had immigrated from Scotland on March 25, 1835. In "Recollections of Thomas McNiven and his activities in Richmond during the American Civil War" Mc Niven is quoted: “Miss Van Lew was my best source. She had contacts everywhere. Her colored girl Mary [Elizabeth Bowser] was the best as she was working right in Davis’ home and had a photographic mind. Everything she saw on the Rebel President’s desk she could repeat word for word. Unlike most colored, she could read and write. She made the point of always coming out to my wagon when I made deliveries at the Davis’ home.”



Following the end of the Civil War Bowser gave at least two lectures in the North in 1865 about her education, life in Liberia and her work as a spy. She protected her identity by using pseudonyms at both lectures. At the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Manhattan on September 11 she was Richmonia Richards and two weeks later on September 25, at the African Methodist Episcopal Church on Bridge Street in Brooklyn she was Richmonia R. St. Pierre.




She used the name Mary J. Richards when she founded a school in Saint Mary’s, Georgia in 1867. She taught formerly enslaved Africans in her school including mostly children as day students, adult night students and Sunday school students. In a June 1867 letter to the Georgia Superintendent of Freedmen’s Schools she requested that he refer to her as Mary J. R. Garvin. After the St. Mary's school closed she left the US to join her new husband in the Caribbean and there is no further record of Mary Elizabeth Richards Bowser Garvin.




In 1995 she was inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame in Fort Huachuca, Arizona by the U.S. government. The acknowledgement of her work reads in part: “Ms. Bowser certainly succeeded in a highly dangerous mission to the great benefit of the Union effort. She was one of the highest placed and most productive espionage agents of the Civil War.” Mary Elizabeth Bowser is just one of countless African Americans whose contributions remain mostly hidden. From the 1500s to the 21st century African Americans have been and continue to be an integral part of American life and yet as African American poet Langston Hughes wrote: “I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company come. I, too, am America.”



It seems not much has changed in the USA since Richards Bowser expressed her fear of being targeted by envious White people who were unsettled at the sight of African Americans striving for education. While in April 1867 they could destroy her school with no consequences, in March 2018 they can kill and maim African Americans and be excused as “troubled” youth even if they are in their 30s.



Murphy Browne © March 28-2018

MARY ANN SHADD-CARY AND THE PROVINCIAL FREEMAN

Murphy Browne © March 22-2018


MARY ANN SHADD-CARY AND THE PROVINCIAL FREEMAN


On March 24, 1853 “The Provincial Freeman” a weekly newspaper published by African Canadian Mary Ann Shadd Cary was first printed. Shadd Cary became the first African Canadian female newspaper publisher in Canada when she founded and edited “The Provincial Freeman” in 1853. Her name did not appear as the editor of the newspaper because of the accepted sexism of the time in which she lived. The motto of “The Provincial Freeman” was “Self-Reliance Is the True Road to Independence.” The newspaper was co-edited by formerly enslaved African Samuel Ringgold Ward. Ward (October 17, 1817 – c. 1866) had escaped enslavement as a three year old in 1820 when his family fled from Maryland and lived in Greenwich, New Jersey until 1826 before moving to New York. Ward was apparently an activist from an early age as it is noted that “in 1834 when he was 17 Ward was attacked by a pro-slavery mob in New York and was temporarily jailed.”


In his “Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: his anti-slavery labours in the United States, Canada and England” published in 1855 Ward noted that on July 7, 1834 “For the crime of being publicly assaulted by several white persons, I was locked up in the watchhouse throughout the night.” On April 5, 1850 Ward gave a speech at Faneuil Hall in Boston “attacking” the “Fugitive Slave Bill.” Ward reportedly said during his speech: “This is the question, Whether a man has a right to himself and his children, his hopes and his happiness, for this world and the world to come. That is a question which, according to this bill, may be decided by any backwoods postmaster in this State or any other. Oh, this is a monstrous proposition; and I do thank God that if the Slave Power has such demands to make on us, that the proposition has come now—now, that the people know what is being done—now that the public mind is turned toward this subject—now that they are trying to find what is the truth on this subject.” Like Shadd Cary, Ward was unapologetically outspoken against the enslavement of Africans. Ward left Canada to travel to the UK in April 1853 seeking to raise funds to help enslaved Africans fleeing from the US who were “then pouring into Canada West.” Ward remained in Britain until 1855 when he was offered 50 acres of land in Jamaica. He travelled to Kingston, Jamaica late in 1855 with his family to take up the generous land offer. Ward transitioned to the ancestral realm in 1866 in Jamaica.



“The Provincial Freeman” survived until 1857 published from various locations in Ontario. It was first published in Windsor (1853–1854,) Toronto (1854–1855) and Chatham (1855–1857.) The newspaper was closed with issue number 49, published on August 22, 1857. During the life of the “The Provincial Freeman” Shadd Cary encouraged emigration to Canada by publicizing the success of African Canadians living in freedom in Canada. Slavery in Canada had been abolished 16 years (August 1, 1834) before the US passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 which put even the freedom of African Americans living in Free states at risk. “The Provincial Freeman” was noted for “its militant editorial policy.” One description was that the: “paper's tone -- toward Uncle Tom's Cabin and white America generally -- was a lot more aggressively critical than most African Americans living in the North at this time, including Frederick Douglass, allowed themselves to be.”



Following the closing of “The Provincial Freeman” Shadd Cary returned to the USA during the Civil War. She was hired by Martin Robison Delany to recruit African American men as soldiers during the Civil War. Martin Robison Delany was the only African American who received the rank of Major during the Civil War. Shadd Cary eventually attended Howard University School of Law and graduated as a lawyer in 1883.



Mary Ann Shadd Cary transitioned to the ancestral realm on June 5, 1893 in Washington, DC. She is remembered as a pioneering newspaper editor, abolitionist, educator, lawyer, feminist and suffragist. The Mary Ann Shadd Cary House (where she lived from 1881 to 1885) located at 1421 W Street, NW in Washington, DC. was declared a National Historic Landmark on December 8, 1976 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1987 Mary Ann Shadd was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project, an American non-profit organization dedicated to honoring and preserving women's history. She was honoured by Canada, as a Person of National Historic Significance on November 24, 1994. The Mary Shadd Public School at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) located at 135 Hupfield Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada opened in 1985. The Junior Kindergarten to Grade 8 public school named in honour of Shadd Cary has as its student population “18 nationalities where 76% of the students speak another language as well as English” but does not have an African Heritage class as part of its International Languages Program.


I found it interesting that of the four schools (451 elementary schools) where the African Heritage Program at the TDSB languishes, neither of the two schools named in honour of Africans (Mary Ann Shadd PS and Nelson Mandela Park PS) has an African Heritage Program. We are still within the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) with the theme “Recognition, Justice and Development” and where Member States (including Canada) are encouraged: “to strengthen actions and measures to ensure the full realization of the economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights of people of African descent, and their full and equal participation in society.” One hundred and sixty five years ago on March 24, 1853 Mary Ann Shadd Cary first published “The Provincial Freeman” and in March 2018 we still have need for our own newspapers.


Murphy Browne © March 22-2018

JAN ERNST MATZELIGER REVOLUTIONIZED THE SHOE INDUSTRY

On March 20, 1883 Jan Ernst Matzeliger received patent # 274,207 for his invention of the shoelasting machine which revolutionized the shoe making industry and ...made it possible for almost everyone to own at least one pair of shoes. Matzeliger was born in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (now the Republic of Suriname) South America on September 15, 1852 to an enslaved African woman in the country which was colonized by the Dutch. Shortly after receiving the patent for his invention Matzeliger was forced to sell his patent to a group of white men in Massachusetts who made billions from the machine while he received a few thousand dollars worth of stocks in the company they founded. Matzeliger transitioned on August 24, 1889 just a few days before his 37th birthday. The US government honoured him with a 29 cents postage stamp in 1991! Before Matzeliger invented the shoelasting machine, "lasting" was done by hand exclusively by white men who were unionized and jealously guarded admission to their union. The most skilled could finish 50 pairs of shoes in a ten hour day. Matzeliger's machine finished 700 pairs in the same time span. Matzeliger;s machine made Lynn, Massachusetts the capital of shoemaking and the company that was founded by the white men who "bought" his patent # 274,207 had the monopoly owning 98% of the business of manufacturing shoe making machines. Instead of Matzeliger's machine becoming known as "The Real Matzeliger" it was often referred to as "The N-gg-r Head Machine!" One hundred and thirty two years ago today (March 20, 1883) Jan Ernst Matzeliger completed his quest/venture to revolutionize the shoe industry!!

JAN ERNST MATZELIGER REVOLUTIONIZED THE SHOE INDUSTRY


Murphy Browne © Wednesday March 18 2015


“To all whom it may concern:
Be it known that I, JAN ERNST MATZELIGER, of Lynn, in the county of Essex, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Lasting-Machines; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full, clear, and exact description of the same.
My invention relates to the lasting of boots and shoes.
The object of it is to perform by machinery and in a more expeditious and economical manner the operations which have heretofore been performed by hand.
My invention includes the mechanism for holding the last in place and allowing it to be turned and the last fed forward in proper position for the operation of the machine. It includes a feeding device for moving the last step by step at a proper distance, whereby the mechanism for drawing over the leather may operate successively and at proper intervals.
It includes pinchers or gripping mechanism for drawing the upper over the last, mechanism for turning the gripping mechanism in order to plait the leather at the heel or toe, mechanism for holding them in proper position for the operation of the feeding mechanism, mechanism for feeding the nails and holding them in proper position to be driven, and mechanism for driving the nails at the proper instant. The details of construction are all fully set forth hereinafter, and, together with the principles of my invention, are stated in the claims.”



Excerpt from the 15-page application for a patent by African-American inventor, Jan Ernst Matzeliger, in 1883.


Jan Ernst Matzeliger was granted a patent for his shoe lasting machine on March 20, 1883 and revolutionized the shoe making industry. Matzeliger’s invention made it possible for White immigrants to America to gain employment in the booming shoe making industry by the early 20th century. Matzeliger, as many African-American inventors of his time, did not have the money to manufacture his invention so he was forced to go into partnership with two White men who demanded 2/3 of the profits from his invention. They did not do any work and had no knowledge of the workings of the invention but they had the money to strike a hard bargain and Matzeliger was forced to give them an equal share of his invention and he retained 1/3 of the “Union Lasting Machine Company”, the company that was founded to sell his invention.



African-Jamaican historian, Joel Augustus Rogers, in his 1947 book, “World’s Great Men of Color, Volume 2,” writes about the effect Matzeliger’s invention had on the revolution of shoe manufacturing: “Sales of shoes abroad increased approximately $16,000,000 annually. United Shoe Machinery Company machinery and shoe experts were sent around the world and American shoe manufacturing methods were adopted farthest north in Norway, in tropical Central America, in England and all the countries of Europe, in Africa, Australia and even in China, Japan and the Philippines.”



Matzeliger was born in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, (now the Republic of Suriname), South America on September 15, 1852 to an enslaved African woman and a Dutchman. Matzeliger began working for his father as a 10-year-old apprentice machinist. Slavery was abolished in Suriname on July 1, 1863 but Africans who had been enslaved by the Dutch were forced by law to continue working for their “owners” for a further 10 years so they were not free to leave their “owners” until 1873. As with the British, the Dutch slaveholders were compensated by their government for the loss of their “slaves.”



The Africans and their descendants have never received compensation for the centuries of coerced unpaid labour that enriched Europeans and their descendants, from which they continue to benefit even today. Matzeliger, born to an enslaved African woman, would have inherited his mother’s status unless his father “freed” him. This seems to have been the case with Matzeliger, as the documented history tells of Matzeliger working for his father as an apprentice machinist from 10 years old until he was age 19.



In 1871, a 19-year-old Matzeliger left Dutch Guiana as a sailor on a ship belonging to the “Dutch East Indies Company”. While working on the ship, which travelled mostly throughout Asia, Matzeliger, although employed as a seaman/sailor, was frequently called to work on the ship’s engines. After working on the ship for two years when they docked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1873, Matzeliger decided to remain and seek work as a machinist in Philadelphia.



Although by 1873, when Matzeliger arrived in Philadelphia, slavery had been abolished in the U.S. (1865), White factory owners would not hire an African-American machinist. As a stranger in segregated Philadelphia without a job, Matzeliger soon found an African-American church where he was welcomed, fed and given advice on where African-Americans could find work. After doing various odd jobs to which African-Americans were relegated, Matzeliger was eventually hired to work in a small shoemaker’s shop where he worked for two years, becoming skilled in operating the machine that sewed the top part of shoes.



In 1877, Matzeliger decided to move to Lynn, Massachusetts which at the time was considered America’s shoe manufacturing centre. Unlike Philadelphia, there were no African-American churches and Matzeliger was not welcome in any of the three White churches he attempted to enter. Trying to find a job in one of the 170 shoe factories that existed in Lynn at the time was just as difficult as finding a welcoming church. After pounding the pavement for days in search of employment, Matzeliger was eventually hired when he was allowed by a factory owner to demonstrate his skill on the sewing machine. Without having to spend time training this new worker the owner was smart enough to hire him immediately.



In 1877 there were no machines that could “finish” shoes by connecting the upper part of shoes to the sole of the shoes. The “lasters” who sewed the upper part of shoes to the sole of the shoes were skilled and well paid workers who did the job by hand. Matzeliger was convinced that he could design and make a “shoe lasting” machine, which did not endear him to the “lasters”, who were all White men. In 1880, while he was working on his invention, Matzeliger was offered $50.00 dollars for his invention by a White man which he refused, then another offer of $1,500 in 1882, but he was not interested in selling his invention.



Eventually Matzeliger was forced to join forces with two White men (C.H. Delnow and M.S. Nichols) who had the money and founded the “Union Lasting Machine Company”. Eventually the two White men formed a partnership with two other White men (George W. Brown and Sidney W. Winslow) who had even more money to invest but demanded that Matzeliger give them control of his patent in return for a block of stocks in a new company they founded, the “Consolidated Lasting Machine Company”. For Matzeliger it was either give in to the demands of the men with the funds or see his dream disappear since he had the knowledge but not the money to make the machines. The business was enormously successful because while a skilled “shoe laster” working by hand could finish 50 pairs of shoes in a 10 hour day, Matzeliger’s machine could finish 700 pairs in the same amount of time. Although Matzeliger’s machine made a fortune for White men and definitely made their worklife easier the machine was frequently referred to as the “N****r Head Machine”.

While he had been diligently working on perfecting his “shoe lasting” machine, Matzeliger had been living in poverty and forced to neglect his health. He contracted tuberculosis and on August 24, 1889 at almost 37 years old, Matzeliger transitioned. By then (1889) Matzeliger’s “shoe lasting” machine was in demand internationally and the same year (1889) the men who owned the patent to Matzeliger’s “shoe lasting” machine founded the “United Shoe Machinery Corporation” with a capitalization of $20 million. From 1899 to 1910, the “United Shoe Machinery Corporation” earned over $50 million and held a monopoly (98 per cent) of the sale of shoe machinery. By 1955, the company was worth more than a billion dollars.



Matzeliger did not live to reap the benefits of his almost lifelong work. He is hardly ever mentioned as the man who revolutionized the manufacture of shoes where in 2015, almost everyone can afford a pair of shoes although he probably would be mystified that there are people willing to pay upwards of $4,000 dollars for a pair of shoes.



A bridge was named in Matzeliger’s honour in 1984 and a statue was erected in his honour in Lynn, Massachusetts, the town that rejected him in 1877. The U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in his honour in 1991, as part of its Black Heritage Collection.


Murphy Browne © Wednesday March 18 2015

UPRISING OF ENSLAVED AFRICANS ON MARCH 17-1768 ST PATRICK'S DAY

Murphy Browne © March 17-2018


UPRISING OF ENSLAVED AFRICANS ON MARCH 17-1768 ST PATRICK'S DAY


On St. Patrick's Day March 17, 1768 a group of enslaved Africans on the Caribbean island Montserrat planned a revolt while their mostly Irish enslavers were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. When sugar cane replaced tobacco and indigo, entrepreneurs from several Irish counties, including representatives of several Galway “tribes”, set up plantations and imported thousands of Africans who they enslaved on the island.


As historian Donald Akenson notes in his 1997 study, “If the Irish Ran the World,” "pre-emancipation Catholics denied full rights were “notably callous” towards potential black congregation members. The Church of England did “only marginally better”, and it was the Wesleyan Methodists, arriving towards the end of the slave era, who showed any serious concern for the spiritual welfare of those in captivity."


Montserrat is described as a 40sq m mountainous volcanic rock, home to spiders and lizards and leatherback turtles, to three species of hummingbirds and to the rare oriole. Queen’s University Belfast academic Donald Akenson and Sir Howard Fergus, Montserrat historian and poet, have researched the "relationship" of Irish slaveholders and the Africans they enslaved debunking any notions of a “nice” Irish slave holder or overseer. Ears could be cut off as punishment for minor theft, death was a regular penalty, and “mulattos” born of the rape of enslaved African women by their white enslavers and white overseers could not be christened by Catholic priests. In 1985 March 17th was declared an official holiday to commemorate the uprising of enslaved Africans on March 17-1768.


Beginning in 1632, European settlers arrived in Montserrat from the neighbouring islands of St Kitts and Nevis, as well as from other Caribbean islands, Ireland and England. Seventy percent of Montserrat’s white population self-identified as Irish, in comparison to much lower percentages of the populations on nearby St Kitts (10 percent), Nevis (23 percent) and Antigua (26 percent).
"Ireland's Neo-Feudal Empire 1630-1650." In his 1997 published book "If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730" Ackenson writes: "Ireland's putative empire in the West Indies, the island of Montserrat, was a fragment kicked loose by the cultural equivalent of a nuclear blast, the so-called “expansion of Europe” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a bizarre, and totally unprecedented time in human history. Europeans, having discovered what to them were new worlds, began to exploit them with a ferocity that challenges description and defies explanation. Having found several Edens, Europeans treated these places instead as Eldorados, sites to be strip-mined for quick, or at least easy, riches. " A royal patent was given to the Earl of Carlisle in the 1630s which entitled him to control all affairs in Montserrat including the holding of all land. "It is probably best to label this form of colonial activity feudal remnant since the spirit was commercial and not military, and the pattern of landholding made it more manorial, at least initially. European settlement began in the early 1630s with the arrival of the Irish from a variety of venues. Survivors from the Amazon, rejects from Virginia, migrants from St. Christopher and maybe Nevis, and colonists recruited by an Irish entrepreneur (with Italian ancestry) formed the first wave of settlers."


In 1768, the enslaved Africans planned an island-wide attack on St. Patrick’s Day, when the planters would be celebrating. Enslaved Africans who worked in Government House were supposed to seize and use all the weapons they could find inside, while those who worked in the fields would attack with rocks, farm tools, clubs and homemade swords.


The plot to seize their freedom came to nothing when the Africans were betrayed. In Montserrat: History of a Caribbean Colony, Fergus shares this information about the fateful St. Patrick’s Day plot: “The slaves working within Government House were to seize the swords of the gentlemen while those outside were to fire into the house using whatever missiles were at their disposal. They evidently had some arms because the plan was revealed when a White seamstress, noted for her drunkenness, heard two of the leaders discussing the disposition of their arms.” Needless to say, “As the plot broke the Whites went berserk. They hacked, quartered, hanged, and starved in gibbets any suspects whose owners were foolish enough to send them to town for ‘trials’.”


In some quarters of the British Isles there is much made about the fact that St. Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in Montserrat. It seems to escape the attention of those who tout Montserrat’s “Irish heritage” that Montserratians are the descendants of enslaved Africans who were enslaved by White people from Britain (English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh).


With the assertion: “Montserratians are Afrikans” in the June 1993 edition of “THE PAN-AFRIKAN LIBERATOR, Chedmond Browne wrote: “At no point in time throughout the 360 years of European occupation on the island of Montserrat is there any indication that the two ethnic groups merged, amalgamated, and formed a Creole Afrikan-Anglo or Creole Afrikan-Irish society. If there’s any doubt in your mind, just look at the faces around you.”


The original name of the island was Alliouagana before the arrival of Europeans. Alliouagana is a Carib (the original inhabitants of the island) word which means “land of the prickly bush”. In November 1493, Christopher Columbus renamed the island “Santa Maria de Montserrat” when he “sighted” it as he sailed by during his second voyage to the area. The first European colonizers were Irish Catholics from nearby St. Kitts who were sent there in 1632 by Thomas Warner, the first British governor of St. Kitts. Irish immigrants from Virginia followed. Plantations were established to grow tobacco and indigo, followed eventually by cotton and sugar.


African Montserratian historian, Howard Archibald Fergus, writes in his 2004 book Montserrat: History of a Caribbean Colony, that it is “reasonable to infer” that enslaved Africans were first taken to Montserrat in the 1640s although the first record of enslaved Africans in Montserrat is from 1651 when: “In 1651 an Irish trader of the English Guinea Company called at Montserrat, having buried 23 men at sea, including Mr. Dobes who was a factor. This is the first actual mention of slaves in Montserrat.”


According to Fergus, “Slave labour was in demand, not just for plantation but for public works.” He also writes: “Slaves were unevenly distributed across the island and among households. In the heyday of the plantation economy and right down to emancipation, more than half of the slaves were located in St. Peter’s and St. Anthony’s.”


After the Africans were betrayed and captured the Irish slave holders beheaded Cudjoe the leader of the uprising and hung his severed head from a silk cotton tree. A dawn “freedom run” from Cudjoe Head Corner to the village of Salem commemorates the failed uprising on March 17, St. Patrick's Day.

Murphy Browne © March 17-2018

MARCH 21 IS THE INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

Murphy Browne © March 15-2018

March 21 is the “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” because on that day, in 1960, White police in Sharpeville, South Africa killed 69 African men, women and children during a peaceful demonstration. The Africans had gathered to protest the steady loss of their human rights, as White interlopers/settlers stole their land. The pass laws of the White supremacist settler group who had seized the African country from Africans, had become an unbearable burden for the Africans. African men and women were forced to carry the passbook, an identifying document that restricted their movement in urban areas where White people had settled and occupied exclusively.

The unarmed African men, women and children were shot in the back as they fled. Members of the press later gave eyewitness accounts of the carnage. A White reporter, Humphrey Tyler, assistant editor of “Drum Magazine” witnessed: “Hundreds of kids were running, too. One little boy had on an old blanket coat, which he held up behind his head, thinking, perhaps, that it might save him from the bullets. Some of the children, hardly as tall as the grass, were leaping like rabbits. Some were shot, too. Still the shooting went on. One of the policemen was standing on top of a Saracen, and it looked as though he was firing his gun into the crowd. He was swinging it around in a wide arc from his hip as though he were panning a movie camera.” The shooting finally stopped when there were no moving protestors in sight. http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/eyewitness-accounts-sharpeville-massacre-1960 Together with the 69 killed, upwards of 300 African men, women and children were wounded. 

 

The Sharpeville Massacre prompted worldwide condemnation of the minority White supremacist, illegitimate regime of South Africa. This led to international protests and calls for disinvesting in the White supremacist apartheid structure of South Africa. In spite of the brutality of the “Sharpeville Massacre,” disinvestment did not happen on a large scale until the 1980s. In 1966 the United Nations (UN) passed a resolution recognizing March 21 as the “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.”

Many people believe that racism is the very blatant apartheid system to which the White settler group of South Africa subjected the Africans, or the Ku Klux Klan riding through African American neighbourhoods in white sheets and burning crosses on an African American homeowner’s lawn. The institutionalized/systemic racism that is better described as White supremacist culture/White skin privilege is prevalent in every area of the lived reality of racialized people including the education system, housing, the prison industrial complex and policing. 

 

Although Canada has an official policy of multiculturalism, a White supremacist culture prevails. The so called Canadian culture is a White Eurocentric culture that has been imposed on the indigenous peoples and other racialized people. A White supremacist culture (institutionalized/systemic racism) continues to negatively affect racialized people in Canada. On September 13, 2007, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada was one of four nations (including the USA, Australia and New Zealand) that voted against the Declaration; 143 other nations voted in favour of the Declaration. This decision by the Canadian government was made in spite of the October 2004 Amnesty International report “Stolen Sisters” which condemned "the terror and suffering that has been inflicted on Indigenous or Aboriginal women and their families across Canada" and urged the Canadian government to address the issue. The report cited the disproportionate number of Aboriginal women who go missing or are killed every year with little public outcry or action. Professors Carrie Bourassa and Wendee Kubik indict the long legacy of assimilation and colonization (“Stolen Sisters and the Legacy of Colonization” published in 2006) as crucial contributing factors to Aboriginal women being particularly targeted by these acts of violence committed largely with impunity. Following myriad criticisms and condemnation of their refusal to do so Canada did eventually support the Declaration on November 12, 2010.

Even though there has been an African Presence in Canada since the 1600s with the arrival of Mathieu DaCosta (explorer, interpreter) in 1603 and six year old enslaved African child Olivier Le Jeune in 1628, African Canadian history remains marginalized. Even during February there is reluctance by some educators and educational institutions to acknowledge the history of Africans in Canada. African Canadians have contributed to every area of Canadian life; beginning with the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved Africans helping to enrich White enslavers to today where African Canadians are mostly subjected to precarious employment. Last hired, first fired and contract positions; many relegated to low paying jobs regardless of their education. Men and women who are descendants of those who settled in the long standing African Canadian communities throughout Canada from the time of the American Revolution (1775 to 1783) as United Empire Loyalists; and throughout the 1800s do not fare better than those of us who immigrated from Africa, the Caribbean or elsewhere. 

 

Institutionalized/systemic racism especially in the police forces has been in the news recently with the Ontario wide public consultations on carding regulations. Carding which allows police to randomly stop anyone and gather their information has been a practice abused, with African Canadians especially victimized. Although the Canadian Prime Minister acknowledged the existence of anti-Black racism in Canada last month not much has been done to rectify this scourge that affects many African Canadian children from the time they enter the education system.

In spite of the much touted five year “Action Plan to Confront Anti-Black Racism” (which acknowledged that “Black Torontonians remain significantly more likely to be expelled from school, unemployed, incarcerated, or victimized in hate crimes”) by City Council, not much has been done since the “unveiling” of the plan last year. On March 21, 2018 Canadian government institutions may as usual pay lip service to the “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” and not much else.

Murphy Browne © March 15-2018

CHLOE COOLEY MARCH 14-1793

Murphy Browne © March 8-2018

On March 14, 1793 Chloe Cooley, an enslaved African woman in Queenston, (Upper Canada) Ontario was brutally beaten by three White men, (including Vrooman, her enslaver) thrown into a boat, taken across the Niagara River and sold in the United States. She was loud and physical in her resistance but she was vastly outnumbered. This woman did not go quietly. She resisted so fiercely that Peter Martin, a free African Canadian man took note of her screams and struggles and made an official report to Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe and the members of the Executive Council of Upper Canada. To his credit, on hearing of the atrocity, Simcoe made an “attempt” to abolish slavery in (Upper Canada) Ontario. He was unsuccessful because many members of the “Family Compact” including William Jarvis, Peter Russell, Alexander Grant, James Baby, Richard Cartwright and Robert Hamilton – were slave holders. These powerful slave holders and politicians were members of the Executive Council of Upper Canada on March 21, 1793 when Peter Martin made his report about the brutalizing of Chloe Cooley.

On July 9, 1793 “An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude” was passed in the House of Assembly of Upper Canada. Chloe Cooley was not saved from slavery but her resistance was the catalyst that led to the first piece of anti-slavery legislation in Canada. The legislation did not free any enslaved African but at least it gave them hope that their descendants would one day be free. Life did not change for those enslaved Africans living in Upper Canada (Ontario) but the passing of the Act meant that any enslaved African who escaped slavery in the U.S. and made their way to Ontario was a free person.

That was 225 years ago when many African Canadians were enslaved by White people throughout this country. At that time slavery was a “legal” institution throughout Canada, just like hanging which was the fate of enslaved African woman Marie Joseph Angelique on June 21, 1734 in Quebec. Today in March 2018 slavery is no longer legal in Canada, abolished on August 1, 1834 (almost 184 years ago) and hanging abolished 42 years ago in 1976. Incidentally one of the last persons hanged in Canada at the Don Jail on December 11, 1962 was 54 year old African American Arthur Lucas. The man was an American citizen but he was African American and that was 1962. Lucas born in Cordele, Georgia, USA was convicted of killing an FBI informant despite lingering questions about his guilt and his mental impairment. Many legal minds question the legality of his trial and sentencing.

In 1793 when Simcoe unsuccessfully attempted to end slavery in Ontario he was blocked by other powerful White men who were slaveholders. In 2018 when African Canadians are mistreated or victimized by the normalized White supremacist culture there are always voices raised to defend the indefensible. Very recently an African Canadian television personality wrote of a heartrending, traumatic incident of her encounter with police racial profiling. Shortly after her article was published a White journalist wrote an article minimizing this African Canadian woman’s experience. This White man who will never experience what it is like to be confronted by an armed police, with the history of members of your race and gender as examples, thought it was appropriate to weigh in. As a White man or woman the history and experiences are so different from that of any racialized person and especially an African Canadian woman, he has no clue because he does not live in our skin. Yet there he was defending the racial profiling of this African Canadian woman. To add insult to injury he wrote: “Like with the Hijab Hoax, racism allegations must be fully vetted.” Is this man really suggesting that the trauma this African Canadian woman experienced at being confronted by an armed police on the driveway of her house is a “hoax?” I surely hope not! Then in his White skin privileged position and arrogance he continues that although “An investigation could happen” it would be “his preference” to have the offending police officer, the African Canadian woman who was confronted by said officer on the driveway of her home and the chief of police “hugging it out — with lessons learned.” This man seems to have written this “advice” without an ounce of sarcasm, with a straight face; he sat at a computer, wrote this and sent it off to be published! Was this the mindset that justified slavery, colonialism, Residential schools, the 60s scoop?

On Thursday, March 8-2018 as the world celebrates International Woman’s Day (IWD) I cannot help wondering how many African Canadian women will be confronted by armed police as they just breathe. How many have to attend at their child’s/children’s school to deal with racial bullying by White “educators” or other adults in the school? These are just some of the daily racist micro-aggressions and not so “micro” that many African Canadian women live with daily. This is the daily lived reality of many African Canadian women. This can affect emotional health, mental health and eventually physical health not only of the women who experience these aggressions but their families and their communities. Recognizing IWD has to be more than marching for one day.

Murphy Browne © March 8-2018

AMISTAD TRIAL MARCH 9-1841

One hundred and seventy seven years ago today on March 9-1841 a group of Africans who had been on trial for "mutiny" were set free. On March 9, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. The Amistad, ruled in favour of a group of Africans captured by U.S. authorities after they had seized control of a Spanish schooner, La Amistad, that was transporting them to a life of slavery in Cuba; the justices ruled, 7-1, that the Africans had been illegally enslaved, and should be set free.

Murphy Browne © Friday, December 3-2010 

SENGBE PIEH

  

On November 27, 1841 thirty five Africans aboard a ship the Gentleman sailed out of New York bound for Sierra Leone. These Africans were part of a group of 600 who had been kidnapped in West Africa, forced onboard a slave ship Tecora (flying a Portuguese flag) in April 1839 and taken to Cuba. The story of their struggle for freedom was fictionalized and immortalized in the movie La Amistad which was released in 1997. Several books have also been written about the Africans who were on La Amistad when it was intercepted on August 26, 1839 off of Long Island, New York, by the crew of the U. S. Coast Guard vessel, the USS Washington. These books include the 1953 published novel Black Mutiny: Revolt on the Schooner Amistad written by William Owens, the 1988 published Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy written by Professor Howard Jones and the 1998 published Freedom's sons: the true story of the Amistad mutiny written by Suzanne Jurmain.

When the Africans were kidnapped in 1839, Britain, the USA, France, Portugal and Spain had on paper at least outlawed the transportation of Africans from the African continent into slavery in the various European occupied colonies. The enslavement of Africans by Europeans was still a pratice but the importation of Africans had been abolished. Britain abolished the trade in 1807, the USA in 1808, the Portuguese in 1810, the Austrians, Danes, French, Russians and Prussians in 1814, the Dutch in 1818 and the Spanish in 1820. When the Portuguese owned slave ship Tecora set sail with the Africans in April, 1839 the owner, captain and crew were breaking an international law and “violated all of the treaties then in existence.”

Although all these European nations had abolished the slave trade yet Africans were bought and sold in the various European occupied colonies. The British had outlawed the transportation of Africans from the continent yet the Africans who were taken on board the Tecora in April 1839 were kidnapped and taken from Sierra Leone which was a British protectorate. Like millions of Africans before them, the occupants of the Portuguese slave ship Tecora were forced into the hold of the ship and shackled in place for the roughly 10 weeks of brutal travel along the Middle Passage. After enduring a horrific journey and landing at Havana in the Spanish colony Cuba, the Africans were fraudulently classified as Cuban-born slaves (renamed with Spanish names) and sold at auction to Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montez, who planned to transport them to their plantations on another part of the island aboard the cargo schooner La Amistad.

Three days into the journey aboard La Amistad the understandably angry and desperate Africans seized control of the ship in an effort to return to Africa. The Africans were led by Sengbe Pieh, a 25-year-old member of the Mendi nation (the Spanish had renamed him Joseph Cinque) who had managed to free himself and his companions. The Africans ordered the two Spanish sailors who survived the revolt to sail La Amistad east towards the rising sun and to Africa. During the night, the Spaniards secretly changed course, attempting to sail back to Cuba or to the southern coast of the United States and after more than two months at sea La Amistad eventually reached Long Island Sound in August 1839. In search of food and water, the Africans went ashore on Montauk Point, Long Island, where they were recaptured on August 26, 1839 by the crew of the Federal naval brig USS Washington. On August 29, 1839, three days after the La Amistad was towed to New London, Connecticut, Judge Judson presided at a hearing on complaints of murder and piracy filed by the two Spaniards Montes and Ruiz who had purchased the Africans in Havana. Thirty-nine of the 43 Africans who had survived the weeks at sea were present, including their acknowledged leader Sengbe Pieh. The three main witnesses at the hearing were the first mate of the USS Washington and Montes and Ruiz. After listening to the testimony, Judge Judson referred the case for trial in Circuit Court, where in 1839 all federal criminal trials were held and ordered the Africans put into custody at the county jail in New Haven. The incarcerated Africans were subjected to more indignities when reportedly as many as 5,000 people a day visited the jail where the jailer charged "one New York shilling" (about twelve cents) for close looks at the captives.

Meanwhile the Spanish government urged the United States government to return La Amistad to its Cuban owners, concede that the U. S. courts had no jurisdiction over Spanish subjects and return the beleaguered Africans to Havana. The almost two year legal struggle for the Africans’ freedom had begun.

On September 14, 1939, the Africans were sent by canal boat and stagecoach to Hartford for trial in the Circuit courtroom of Judge Smith Thompson who also served as a justice on the United States Supreme Court. District Attorney Holabird asked the court to let President Martin Van Buren decide the fate of the Africans since he (Holabird) viewed this as a matter that could affect the relations between two great powers. Lawyer for the defence, Roger Baldwin argued that the United States should not become a "slave-catcher for foreign slave-holders." After three days of argument Judge Thompson decided that because the alleged mutiny and murders occurred in international waters and did not involve U. S. citizens, the court had no jurisdiction to consider the criminal charges. He also decided that whether or not the Africans were slaves and if they were slaves who owned them was a decision for the district court; and he further ruled that although the Africans were no longer considered prisoners they should be detained until the district court could make a decision about their status.

The Amistad civil trial began on November 19, 1839 in Hartford and after two days of testimony, the trial was adjourned until January 7, 1840. Meanwhile President Van Buren, in anticipation of the court ruling in favour of the Spaniards, sent the naval schooner Grampus, to wait in the New Haven harbour to take the Africans back to Cuba.

Judge Judson announced his decision on January 13, 1840, after a weekend of deliberation. He ruled that the Africans were "born free" and had been kidnapped in violation of international law. He ordered that the Africans be "delivered to President Van Buren for transport back to Africa." The government appealed Judson's decision, but it was affirmed by Circuit Judge Thompson. The government then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where five of the nine justices were southerners who either owned or had owned slaves. On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court announced its decision based on the fact that Sengbe Pieh and his companions were "kidnapped Africans, who by the laws of Spain itself were entitled to their freedom."

Although the American government was willing to transport the Africans to slavery in Cuba, they refused to provide transportation back to Africa. Private donors provided the finance for the charter of the Gentleman which sailed out of New York on November 27, 1841 taking the surviving Africans including Sengbe Pieh back to their home.

Murphy Browne © Friday, December 3-2010

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2010

Murphy Browne © Wednesday March 3-2010

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2010

International Women’s Day (IWD) is a United Nations (UN) recognized day which according to the UN is dedicated to “looking back on past struggles and accomplishments, and more importantly, for looking ahead to the untapped potential and opportunities that await future generations of women.” In 1975, during International Women's Year, the U N began celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8. However IWD supposedly “emerged from the activities of labour movements at the turn of the twentieth century in North America and across Europe.” In the USA, National Woman's Day was first observed in 1909 when the Socialist Party of America choose February 28 to honour the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women protested against their working conditions. The history books omit the fact that the women who were protesting were white women because at that time in the history of North America African women were relegated to working as domestics in the homes of white women.

In the December 6, 1938 edition of Crisis Magazine (founded in 1910 by W.E.B Du Bois as a crusading voice for civil rights) Ella Baker and Marva Cooke wrote an article documenting the experience of African American women in New York who worked as domestic servants. Some of the women were as young as seventeen and as old as seventy “who would stand on a two block stretch as white housewives from the suburbs drove by in their cars and negotiated to hire them for domestic service.” This area was considered the Bronx Slave Market and Baker and Cooke wrote that this “illustrated the race, class and gender subordination of black women.” Following in-depth interviews and hours of research Baker and Cooke observed "Rain or shine hot or cold you will find them there Negro women old and young sometimes bedraggled sometimes neatly dressed waiting expectantly for Bronx housewives to buy their strength and energy for an hour, two hours or even for a day at the munificent rate of fifteen, twenty-five or if luck be with them thirty cents." In their groundbreaking expose Baker and Cooke also discussed the backbreaking work and the sexual assault the women often encountered on the job from the male relatives and friends of the white women who employed them as domestic workers.

The similar struggles of domestic workers in Canada have been documented in Makeda Silvera’s 1989 published Silenced: Talks with Working Class Caribbean Women about their Lives and Struggles as Domestic Workers in Canada. The vivid descriptions of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse as told in the voices of the women themselves, using their own language makes for a heart rending read. Many of these women had left children and other loved ones behind in their home countries while they tried to make a living with the hope of eventually reuniting. Those hopes were in many cases never realised as a result of the turmoil that they dealt with working in precarious and unsafe conditions.

IWD is also supposed to address the absence of women from the history books. While white women’s history may have been relegated to the margins of the history books, African women’s history is usually in the footnotes or entirely absent. Fortunately there are books written mostly by African men and women (from the continent and the Diaspora) that document the lives, struggles, triumph and contributions of African women internationally.

In Annette Madden’s 2000 published In Her Footsteps 101 Remarkable Black Women from the Queen of Sheba to Queen Latifa some of the remarkable women are well known while others are not known. This book which lists 101 African women beginning with Dinknesh who lived more than 3 million years ago in Ethiopia and is considered the first woman in the world according to archeological records should be required reading.

In many cases when we read of a historic struggle of Africans the names of the women are absent. We may know of the freedom fighters of Haiti who wrested their freedom from brutal French enslavement but most of those names are male. One of the few books where the contribution of women to the Haitian Revolution is mentioned is Haiti the Breached Citadel published in 2004 by Haitian historian Patrick Bellegarde-Smith. One of the women mentioned in Bellegarde-Smith’s book is Cecile Fatiman who officiated with Boukman at the Vodou ceremony that launched the revolution on August 22, 1791. Bellegarde-Smith also writes of Marie-Jean Lamartiniere who is popularly known as Haiti’s Joan of Arc for fighting at the Battle of La Crete-a-Pierrot of 1802. We need to know the names of these women described in Haiti the Breached Citadel: “Other female revolutionaries such as Suzanne Sanite Belaire and Henriette Sainte-Marc demonstrated formidable military prowess until they were captured and executed by the French.”

In 2009 Professor Carol Boyce Davies published Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Claudia Jones (1915-1964) was an African woman born in Trinidad whose life and work in the USA and Britain as an activist, communist and feminist has not been documented in mainstream history books. Boyce Davies writes: “The fact that Claudia Jones is buried to the left of Marx in Highgate Cemetery, London, provides an apt metaphor for my assertions in this study. Her location in death continues to represent her ideological position while living: this black woman, articulating political positions that combine the theoretics of Marxism-Leninism and decolonization with a critique of class oppression, imperialist aggression, and gender subordination, is thus ‘left’ of Karl Marx.”

Jones is brought to life in the pages of Boyce Davies’ book as a pioneer among African women feminists who addressed the exploitation of her sisters and advocated the inclusion of race with gender and class. In her book Boyce Davies recognizes Jones pioneering work incorporating gender and race in her political critique and activism.

She writes: Claudia Jones’s position on the “superexploitation of the black woman,” Marxist-Leninist in its formation, offered, for its time, the clearest analysis of the location of black women – not in essentialized, romantic, or homogenizing terms but practically as located in the U.S. and world economic hierarchies. It thereby advanced Marxist-Leninist positions beyond their apparent limitations. To develop her argument, Jones contended that if all workers are exploited because of the usurping of the surplus value of their labor, then black women – bereft of any kind of institutional mechanism to conquer this exploitation, and often assumed to have to work uncountable hours without recompense – live a life of superexploitation beyond what Marx had identified as the workers’ lot. Jones’s argument regarding the superexploitation of the black woman is clearly a position left of Karl Marx, since Marx himself did not account for race and gender and/ or the position of the black woman.

Many white feminists similar to Marx do not have “either the imagination or the historical context to argue for the gendered black subject” and therefore the history of IWD for the most part excludes the history of African women as activists, feminists and workers.

Even in the traditional telling of the history of the Black Power and Civil Rights Movements, the role and activities of the women are not as prominent as those of the men. In 2009 Professors Dayo Gore, Jeanne Theoharris and Komozi Woodard collaborated to publish Want To Start A Revolution? Radical Women In The Black Freedom Struggle where African American women’s contribution to the Civil Rights, Black Power and feminist movements are at the centre. The women including Shirley Chisholm, Shirley Graham DuBois, Vicki Garvin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Assata Shakur and Johnnie Tilmon are recognized for their activism, bravery and ground-breaking work that contributed to changing the lives of Americans.

There has been a growing movement to include women’s history in the curriculum in Ontario schools. Two years ago, on February 14, 2008 a group of women held a demonstration outside the provincial government offices demanding that the McGuinty Liberals create a women’s studies course in Ontario high schools. Education Minister Kathleen Wynne told the group yesterday that progress is being made to develop women’s studies as an optional high school course. Ideally this course will include the intersectionality of class, gender and race.

The names of African Canadian women including Marie Joseph Angelique, Jean Augustine, Zanana Akande, Rosemary Brown, Lucy Blackburn, Chloe Cooley, Afua Cooper, Viola Desmond, Sherona Hall, Mary Ann Shadd and Carol Ann Wright are all part of Canadian history and their names and contributions must be included to encourage our "future generations of women" to tap into their potential.

Murphy Browne © Wednesday March 3-2010