Keynote: The Past and the Future Are Linked: Introducing the Freedom Corridor Free

IT'S A PLEASURE, REALLY, TO GIVE THIS KEYNOTE TALK at the inaugural conference of the Freedom Corridor project.

I want to begin by saluting my colleagues whom I've worked with on the organizing committee: Nalo Mitchell, Carolyn Farrar, Alberta Robinson, Kate Williams-McWorter, Brian Mitchell, Art Wilson, Kamau Kemayó, and especially here at Illinois College, your very own Brittney Yancy. Together, this committee is the personification of the Freedom Corridor's origin from Springfield to Jacksonville to Pittsfield to Barry to Quincy to Hannibal and to, of course, New Philadelphia.

Now, this talk that I'm going to give is to introduce the Freedom Corridor, from New Philadelphia to the history of this country, to the world context for our freedom narrative. This is, of course, a history of the past, but it's also about our present and future, because the true greatness of each of us and collectively all of us is in the future. That's what makes history so exciting, the constant urge to make life better. That's what this is really all about.

It's no accident that we're meeting here at Illinois College. There are three main reasons. First, it was founded as an abolitionist institution and became a station on the Underground Railroad. Its first president, as has been pointed out, was Edward Beecher, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Lincoln is understood to have said to her, “So you're the little woman who started this great war!” The second reason is we have the fortune of Professor Brittney Yancy being hired to initiate a program in African American Studies here at Illinois College. Finally, she is being supported by the Illinois College administration and faculty in hosting this conference and being supportive of the Freedom Corridor. So thank you, Professor and President Farley, and thank you, Illinois College.

Now, more specifically, at the center of this Freedom Corridor narrative, one can find two men, Abraham Lincoln and Frank McWorter. Both came to Illinois from Kentucky, and their connection has been documented by the Looking for Lincoln project with a sign in Barry, Illinois. You will also find brochures that explain this connection between Abraham Lincoln and the McWorters.

So, in this talk, our first concern is to connect the New Philadelphia story with the general pattern of freedom seeking by African Americans and how that is central to our Freedom Corridor, and the general history of this country. This will lead us to discuss the history of the freedom narrative against slavery as well as freedom quests more broadly on a world level. This is a nineteenth-century story that was carried on in the twentieth century as we carry it now forward into the twenty-first century.

I will end with a reflection on why the Freedom Corridor is just a first step in our journey to rewrite our history, placing the freedom we need as a future goal, recognizing the journey we have been on and the need to continue.

So more specifically, why are we at this conference? One of the great lessons of the history of this country is that it begins as an anticolonial struggle against British colonialism. That's the upside. That's the good part of that history. But there are definitely some downsides.

Now, I will argue that the US was founded as a racist, patriarchal, settler colony. I know that sounds like sloganeering from somebody, some woke guy up here, but let me break it down for you. Forty-one of the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. Ten of the first twelve presidents of the US owned slaves. The cost was the enslavement of Africans in North America who suffered for four hundred years. The legal end of slavery was only 159 years ago. So, we continue to deal with the legacy of this institutionalized barbarism.

No, nothing about slavery was good, certainly for Black people, even the slaveowners, because they were taught the negative values of greed and assumed privilege by living off the labor of people they didn't have to pay.

Women didn't get the vote until the Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment was passed and ratified in 1919, 143 years after the Declaration of Independence. That's the patriarchal point. And genocide was used against the Native Americans, and still today, 13 percent of their descendants are living on more than three hundred reservations. So, what is good is that the fight for freedom, justice, and equality has been a constant feature reignited by every generation. This applies to women, the elderly, the working class in general, and everybody, and of course, African Americans.

We have to remember that the first president, George Washington, then one of the richest men in the country, owned slaves. Born into a slave-owning family, marrying a woman who owned slaves, he nevertheless left a will that all of his slaves after his death and his wife's death should be set free.

So, this conference is about an answer to why history is important for us today. We are here because the past continues to live in the present. Even today, the fact is that Black Lives Matter is a lesson that still has to be taught. We have to wonder why that obvious slogan is so controversial.

Carter G. Woodson, a great twentieth-century historian, said, “Those who have no record of what their forebearers have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” This is why we turn to the Freedom Corridor and begin with New Philadelphia.

Frank and Lucy McWorter were part of the Black liberation struggle in the abolitionist movement. They are among the many whose names we need to know, names we need to speak to each other as we live their legacy in our time. We will hear more names at this conference, and they are featured in your program.

Because of these McWorters, we have a new national park here in Illinois that upholds the legacy of the freedom struggle. Every spot on the Freedom Corridor is full of such names. That's one of the goals of this conference, to hear them, to know them, and to represent them in our time.

These McWorters founded a town they called New Philadelphia in 1836. This was the first town in the United States platted and legally registered by African Americans. In sum, they were able to purchase sixteen family members out of slavery. For these reasons, Congress made it a national park.

They were joined by both Black and white people, among them their close friends and abolitionists the African American Walker family, initially from Missouri, as well as the Shipmans and Eckelbergers, abolitionists of European descent, and of course, many others. The New Philadelphia story is not just about itself. It represents a case of the national narrative of freedom.

It's also important to recognize the contributions of the local community in keeping the memory alive, arranging to secure the property for the national park, and working with others to get the congressional act making it a National Park Service historic site. Several people who have contributed in these ways are here, and there are many more. This is the danger of using names, but let me mention a few: Phil and Linda Bradshaw, Larry and Natalie Armstead, Joe Conover, Harry and Helen Wright, Carol McCartney, Marynel and Jerry Corton, Claire and Terry Martin, Kaye and David Iftner, and many more. Thank you all.

This is a poem I wrote to capture the New Philadelphia experience; I call it “Seven Ways to Freedom.”

Now, this poem describes the particularity of New Philadelphia, but it also represents a template that can be used to sum up the freedom narrative of African Americans generally—in other words, freedom seekers: the Underground Railroad as a network, buying themselves out of slavery, joining the Union Army to fight in the not-so-Civil War, setting up a community, becoming part of a community, getting legislation passed, finding ways to impact public policy, and living free in an abolitionist village.

There's seven ways to freedom, but those aren't the only ways. There were also slave revolts. Herbert Aptheker defined a slave revolt as an action involving ten or more slaves with “freedom as the apparent aim and contemporary references labeling the event as an uprising, plot, insurrection, or the equivalent of these.”¹ In all, Aptheker says he found records of approximately 250 revolts.

There's also manumission, where slaveowners volunteered and set their enslaved people free.

But there were also conventions where the freed African Americans gathered to discuss freedom and to begin to encourage more people to become part of the freedom seeking in the country.

And then lastly, there were publications. You might be familiar with the great slave narratives, people who told their own stories of what it was like to be a slave, how they grew up. But there were also other publications as part of the abolitionist movement. There were newspapers, for example.

Now, the armed struggle against the slave confederacy was joined by men from Illinois, including from places in the Freedom Corridor. Black men were present, including men from New Philadelphia and the McWorter family. Of the 150 total units of colored troops, the Twenty-Ninth US Colored Infantry was the only unit organized in Illinois, in Quincy.

Now, there were almost five hundred thousand free African Americans living in the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War, about 10 percent of the entire Black population. And of course, free is a concept we have to understand in the context of the times, because obviously Black people were not free in the sense of being first-class citizens.

Also, at the very year that the McWorter family was moving to set up their home in Hadley Township in Pike County, Nat Turner was in Virginia planning his armed revolt against slavery. He was a religious man, just as Frank McWorter and Lucy McWorter were religious people. Frank had the opportunity for negotiations and entrepreneurship, while Nat was forced into war. Nat Turner was a martyr for freedom in 1831.

Now both positions, negotiation and armed struggle, were taken up in organized conferences at a national level and a state level starting in 1830, again, the time when the McWorters entered Pike County. Meetings in Illinois were subsequently held in Alton, Galesburg, and Chicago. There are extensive minutes of these meetings demonstrating how Black people were taking ownership of their freedom struggle, not simply relying on others.

Now, the legal struggle to deal with slavery begins with the adoption of the Northwest Ordinance on July 13, 1787, by the Confederation Congress, the one-house legislature operating under the Articles of Confederation. This law had two aspects covering the territory of what became six states: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory other than the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

That's the first part. In other words, no slavery there. But then it goes on: “Provided always that any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugitives may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.”²

That's the second part. In other words, the ordinance prohibited slavery in some places, but also permitted capturing freedom seekers by slaveowners in states that had legal slavery. That's why they call them fugitives. They were taking the slaveowner's point of view in calling those fleeing enslavement fugitives rather than freedom seekers. Both systems—free and unfree—were recognized, but the contradiction remained. The issue at the origin of this country was whether it was going to be a slave or a free nation: States were formed on one side of the question or the other. Of the original thirteen states, six were slave states and seven were free. So seven to six. But then the next fourteen, seven were free and seven were slave states. The entire country was debating this question: Was the US going to be a slavery country or was it going to be a free country? One area of the country was based on slavery, plantation-level agricultural production, rice, sugar, tobacco, cotton, and one was where industry was developing, the northern states.

Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, allowing slaveowners to invade the North to recapture freedom seekers who had escaped and, by so doing, Congress put free Black people at risk of being kidnapped and dragged into slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act was the law. Lincoln had a personal position of being against slavery and thinking that evolutionary change would lead to the end of slavery, but he supported the Fugitive Slave Act.

Now remember, the statement that people think defines the founding of this country, “all men are created equal,” was coined by the same people and institutions that upheld the enslavement of Africans and genocide against Native Americans. This is the heart of the American dilemma.

While this was happening in the US, we have to also ask the question, what was happening globally? What was the rest of the world like? Let's take a look at France. Their revolution in 1789 raised high the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. What lofty goals. But when their Haitian slaves tried to embrace them as well, they were forced to fight to win their independence from France in search of these goals several years later.

Let's turn to the Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture. What did he have to say about this revolution? “It is not a liberty of circumstance conceded to us alone, that we wish: it is the adoption of principle that no man born red, black, or white can be the property of his fellow man.”³ So each revolution must be judged on its merits. Neither the 1776 nor the 1789 revolutions were truly democratic and inclusive of freeing the enslaved.

Another major leap forward was when workers in the United States began to organize trade unions. During this period, workers organizing focused on two main demands: first, raising wages to a livable standard; second, cutting back the hours of work in this context from twelve to ten hours a day. Free-wage workers were fighting for reforms well beyond the conditions of the enslaved people, who were working from “can't see to can't see.” That meant you got up when it was dark, and you worked until the sun went down. You worked from “can't see to can't see” for no wages at all. Put that into context now, what's going on in the country. This was a tension between the states. Slaves were paid no wages; thus, slavery was a threat to fair wages for free workers. In other words, the capitalist country we lived in had a choice. It was going to be free or slave. If you were a worker being paid a wage, you were threatened with the possibility they would replace you with a slave they didn't have to pay anything to.

The decision about this free or slave was made in 1865, when the Thirteenth Constitutional Amendment was passed by Congress and ratified by a sufficient number of states. In that case, it was twenty-seven out of thirty-six. This is something we ought to know. The week after Congress passed the act, the Illinois State Legislature ratified it. The first state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment was Illinois. But it's also important to remember Mississippi ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in 1995, 130 years later.

Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the states in rebellion; it did not call for the total elimination of slavery. In other words, he said, for those states in rebellion, “We end it,” where he couldn't, but as for slavery in the states that were in the Union, he didn't say anything and he allowed slavery to continue there. So it was two years later that the Thirteenth Amendment actually ended slavery.

In either case, Emancipation Proclamation or the Thirteenth Amendment, January 1 is celebrated as Freedom Day and many of us eat special foods in remembrance. Can anybody feel me on that? You know, black-eyed peas, some cornbread.

As the saying goes, the struggle continues. In Illinois, there were Black Codes. Illinois's Black Laws, Black Codes, were observed from 1819 to 1865. Under these laws, Black people could not vote, testify, or bring suit against white people, gather in groups of three or more without risk of being jailed or beaten, and could not serve in a militia, and thus were unable to own or bear arms. This is an important context to understand the 1837 law that the McWorters got passed, enabling them to sue and be sued and engage in legal activity. In other words, that law in 1837 made an exception for the McWorter family. The elimination of legal slavery did not mean the removal of the Black Codes. It was not until the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution and adoption of the Illinois Constitution of 1870 that the last legal barriers ended. But social practices obviously continued well into the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first century.

One name that should not be forgotten is John Jones, who was a great abolitionist leader from Chicago. It's also important for us in Illinois to remember the abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner, as he spoke against the 1856 proslavery Kansas-Nebraska Act put forward by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas. He gave a speech in Congress to Douglas's face, calling him a “noisome, squatting, nameless animal, not a proper model of an American senator.”⁴ Then he was attacked on the floor of Congress. He was attacked and beaten by Representative Preston Brooks from South Carolina so severely that he had to take time off to heal and didn't fully return until several years later. Now hopefully we won't have to see such behavior in our time, although there are some congressmen who insist upon their right to bear arms while they're attending sessions in Congress.

Another name that must never be forgotten, especially in Illinois, is Dred Scott. Now, Dred Scott was before the Reconstruction constitutional amendments. The Dred Scott case made slavery clear. Scott had lived in Illinois, a free state, and then moved to Missouri, a slave state, and sued to be free based on the fact that he had lived in Illinois. US Supreme Court Justice Robert Taney said, no, Scott has no standing to sue for his freedom, and upheld slavery in the United States territories, denying the legality of Black citizenship in America. The Dred Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857, led by Chief Justice Taney, with the support of the newly elected President Buchanan, held that a slave, Dred Scott, who had resided in a free state and territory where slavery was prohibited, Illinois, was not thereby entitled to his freedom, that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States, and that the Missouri Compromise, which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional.

But soon after the Civil War, Congress consolidated its victory against slavery with a series of constitutional amendments:

1. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865.

2. The Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship to all people born in the US in 1868.

3. The Fifteenth Amendment gave Black American men the right to vote in 1870.

After the amendments, Congress made a great leap forward with the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was designed to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights. It was the last major piece of legislation related to Reconstruction passed by Congress. The act forbid all discrimination in hotels, trains, and public places. Congressman Elliott from South Carolina said the following about this act:

But the 1875 act was struck down in 1883 by the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Morrison Waite from Toledo, Ohio. The argument was that the constitutional amendments did not outlaw race discrimination, so segregation was deemed legal and lasted until the 1960s. Interesting is the fact that there is a high school in Toledo named after Morrison Waite, but nothing named after James Ashley. James Ashley was the author of the Thirteenth Amendment. Is everybody hearing what I'm trying to say here? They named a high school after the man who overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875. So all the kids going to school know about going to Waite High School and nobody knows about James Ashley, again from Toledo, who wrote the first version, the first draft, of the Thirteenth Amendment.

While the country was celebrating the Roaring Twenties, in 1925 the Ku Klux Klan was marching in Washington, DC. Of course, the next year, 1926, Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week. What I'm trying to get you to understand is there's been this constant struggle that's going on in this country. Almost a hundred years later, the fascist right-wing racist marches continue. In this case, Charlottesville, one person was killed.

So the question I put to you is: Do we need a freedom corridor today? Outrage spread throughout the country after that racist march in Charlottesville. Thousands of freedom-loving people turned Massachusetts Avenue in Boston into a freedom corridor of a new type, one week after Charlottesville, as did cities throughout the country, just like the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century. The resistance is everywhere.

So, in summary, we can return to the big question, what is history? More particularly, what is Black history? The slaveowner Thomas Jefferson, talking about what history is, said, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” The imperialist Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.” But the Harvard philosopher George Santayana gave advice to two of his students, W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, that still resonates with us: “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” That's why I give this talk: to remember our history has been a constant struggle, from the anticolonial wars against the British to the domestic struggles from slavery till now against the incredible racist terror waged against Black people, countered by their basic heroic struggles for freedom. That's why we have the project, the Freedom Corridor.

New Philadelphia, as a National Historic Site, a national park, honors the agency of African Americans in their seven ways to freedom. It honors all of the residents of New Philadelphia, Black and white. Its even bigger significance is how it enables us to think together these six cities as a start, but we intend to reach out further to Alton and East St. Louis, to Knox College, Galesburg, and of course Chicago and the Freedom Trail going all the way from Detroit to Canada. Our mission is clear.

We hope everybody here will become an endorser of the mission statement of the Freedom Corridor:

We invite everyone here to join us by endorsing this freedom mission statement. We have endorsements from over thirty-five states and six countries, and we will continue to build on that. The students here will help you and guide you to endorse if you so choose.

It started with New Philadelphia. Now we have six cities. And stay tuned. In fact, join us as we extend to more in Illinois, more in Missouri, and everywhere else.

Now, as I end this talk, let me share with you a poem by Langston Hughes that is so relevant to what we are about: “Let America be America again.”

Thank you very much.

Notes