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Looking locally at the Underground Railroad

February 28, 2015
· Martin Kelley

It seems like we’re under­go­ing some reassess­ment in terms of the Under­ground Rail­road. A piece appear­ing in yesterday’s New York Times, “Myth, Real­i­ty and the Under­ground Rail­road” by Ethan J Kytle and Carl Geis­sert, tell one nar­ra­tive tells the sto­ry of one of the pri­ma­ry myth-makers of the 1890s:

Although Siebert tem­pered some of his con­tem­po­raries’ hyper­bole, he nonethe­less took many Under­ground Rail­road sto­ries at face val­ue. Undaunt­ed by a dearth of ante­bel­lum doc­u­men­ta­tion — most rail­road activists had not kept records in order to pro­tect run­aways and them­selves — Siebert relied on the rem­i­nis­cences of “‘old time’ abo­li­tion­ists” to fill “the gaps in the real his­to­ry of the Under­ground Railroad.”

An arti­cle in last month’s Times explains that this sto­ry got the revi­sion­ist treat­ment in the 1960s:

That view large­ly held among schol­ars until 1961, when the his­to­ri­an Lar­ry Gara pub­lished “The Lib­er­ty Line,” a slash­ing revi­sion­ist study that dis­missed the Under­ground Rail­road as a myth and argued that most fugi­tive slaves escaped at their own ini­tia­tive, with lit­tle help from orga­nized abo­li­tion­ists. Schol­ar­ship on the top­ic all but dried up, as his­to­ri­ans more gen­er­al­ly empha­sized the agency of African-Americans in claim­ing their own freedom.

That arti­cle focus­es on Eric Fon­er, who’s just come out with a book that you might call a post-revisionist his­to­ry, based on some recently-uncovered doc­u­ments by little-known 19th-century abo­li­tion­ist edi­tor named Syd­ney Howard Gay. It’s on my to-read list. It’s nice to have some new doc­u­men­tary evi­dence, as it some­times seems the Under­ground Rail­road is the prover­bial blank slate upon which we project our con­tem­po­rary politics.

I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing “Philadel­phia Quak­ers and the Anti­slav­ery Move­ment” by Bri­an Tem­ple, an ama­teur South Jer­sey his­to­ri­an. It’s a use­ful lens. There are a hand­ful of crazy cool sto­ries of white Quak­ers, but it’s clear that much of the Quak­er involve­ment is point­ing run­aways to the near­est African Amer­i­can town. But that’s where it gets inter­est­ing for me. So many of these towns seem to be on land sold them by a white Quak­er farmer; they’re just a mile or two from a Quak­er town, down a qui­et sec­ondary road where you can see any­one com­ing, along­side deep woods or marsh­es into which run­aways can eas­i­ly disappear.

It seems like one of the most impor­tant Quak­er con­tri­bu­tion to the Under­ground Rail­road in South Jer­sey was par­tic­i­pat­ing in the found­ing of these towns: places where man­u­mit­ted and self-freed African Amer­i­cans could live in a self-governing and self-defensible community.

This rais­es lots of ques­tions. There was one promi­nent South Jer­sey African Amer­i­can Quak­er but he was the excep­tion. And it’s often for­got­ten, but much of the source of Quak­ers’ wealth (the land they had to sell) was war and pre­vi­ous enslave­ment. But still, it seems like there might have been some­thing resem­bling repa­ra­tions going on here: forty acres and a mule and giv­ing the freed Africans the space to min­is­ter their own church­es and gov­ern their own town. The his­toric black towns of South Jer­sey would make a great the­sis for some hard­work­ing grad student.

The racial pol­i­tics of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry have not been kind to these towns (Ta-Nehisi Coates could write a new chap­ter of Case for Repa­ra­tions based on them). High­ways plan­ners look­ing for routes close to the now-historic Quak­er towns drew their lines right through the towns. Since most were nev­er for­mal­ly incor­po­rat­ed, zon­ing and school board bat­tles with their sur­round­ing town­ship have tak­en away much of their auton­o­my. Many have been swal­lowed whole by mid-century sprawl and towns in more rur­al areas have depop­u­lat­ed. An old church is often the only vis­i­ble rem­nant and some­times there’s not even that.

My read­ing has stalled three-quarters of the way through Temple’s book and I’ve missed a few oppor­tu­ni­ties to see him present it local­ly. But I’ll try to fin­ish and give a more com­pre­hen­sive review in the near future.

Carolina Friends School in Durham confronts reports of decades-old sexual abuse

August 28, 2014
· Martin Kelley

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A Friends School talks open­ly about past school abuse via Raleigh News & Observer)

The alum­nus said he’s upset the prin­ci­pal [Harold Jerni­gan] has not acknowl­edged the accu­sa­tions. But he said he doesn’t regret send­ing his orig­i­nal mes­sage. ‘If you read Quak­er lit­er­a­ture, they spell ‘Truth’ in the upper­case – the impli­ca­tion of divin­i­ty,’ he said, ‘that it is a holy thing to con­tin­ue that search for truth.’

I’m glad this is get­ting out now, but I did a double-take as the accused prin­ci­ple is still alive and liv­ing a few dozen miles from me. He was a lightning-rod fig­ure as prin­ci­pal of at least two oth­er schools after Car­oli­na. I imag­ine the behav­ior con­tin­ued. Updates below:

  • An peri­od arti­cle on his tenure at a Friends Sem­i­nary, a Man­hat­tan Friends school, talked about the unrest of his two-year tenure there. It sounds like he came in and sum­mar­i­ly fired the heads of the low­er, mid­dle, and upper schools. This is the kind of thing one would do if they want­ed to cur­tail accountability.
  • A mem­oir by Quak­er edu­ca­tor Leonard Ken­wor­thy talks about this peri­od at Friends Sem­i­nary: “He moved much too rapid­ly in bring­ing about changes, ask­ing for the res­ig­na­tions of the heads of the ele­men­tary and mid­dle school, plus sev­er­al oth­er shifts, with­in a very short peri­od, even before he took over as prin­ci­pal. Over and over I urged him not to move too fast but he said there were two ways of han­dling such a sit­u­a­tion. One was to move slow­ly over a peri­od of years. The oth­er was to bring about quick changes and then to begin rapid­ly to ini­ti­ate new pro­grams and new per­son­nel. He was deter­mined to use the lat­ter approach.”
  • A 1986 New York Times pro­file of Friends Sem­i­nary had this to say of its for­mer head: “After a shake-up of the staff that led to the res­ig­na­tion or dis­missal of sev­er­al teach­ers, a teacher’s union was formed, and stu­dents went on strike. Even­tu­al­ly, the prin­ci­pal, Harold Jerni­gan, resigned and the school ”reject­ed mus­cu­lar Quak­erism and returned to its mys­ti­cal faith,” in the words of the offi­cial history.”
  • A com­menter on one news arti­cle writes: “Please also know that Harold Jerni­gan’s behav­ior con­tin­ued on at Atlantic City Friends School, where he was Head­mas­ter. As an Alum of ACFS, I thought that should be made clear.”
  • Car­oli­na Friends School wrote an open let­ter to the com­mu­ni­ty in June.

Update Decem­ber 2014. I have received emails from a for­mer stu­dent who wished to remain anony­mous at this time. I have no way to fact check this but it is con­sis­tent with the his­to­ry and I have no rea­son to think it’s inac­cu­rate. With that caveat, here are some excerpts:

As an Alum­ni of Atlantic City Friends School I am not sur­prised at all to hear about Harold Jerni­gan sex­u­al abuse in the least . Please note this abuse along with more forms of abuse went on at ACFS into the ear­ly 80’s

Sex­u­al abuse was not the only abuse. Abuse of the school sys­tem in gen­er­al includ­ing drugs , abuse of pow­er , mon­ey , teach­ing so bad­ly that curves were used to grade so curved that the high­est grade in a math class Harold Jerni­gan taught was a 42 yet all were passed . Harold Jerni­gan also would lis­ten to class­rooms and lock­er rooms with a speak­er sys­tem in his office even after he promised Teach­ers he would not . Please note if Harold Jerni­gan did not want a stu­dent to pass he would call a meet­ing with all Teach­ers to make sure cer­tain stu­dents would not pass no mat­ter what .

I was a vic­tim of his non sex­u­al abuse but still abuse all the same .

I am only telling you this so some­one puts a stop to this abuse. Back in the late 70’s ear­ly 80’s who would believe a teenag­er . To see this Final­ly come out makes me know there is Karma .

As teenagers in school we would talk amongst our­selves . No one would come for­ward because we knew Harold would hold back our Diplo­mas or not for­ward a let­ter to a college .

You must remem­ber ACFS was attend­ed by either high IQ stu­dents , rich kids that were kick out of their oth­er schools or stu­dents that want­ed to attend a pri­vate school . This made the stu­dent body Easy Prey .

Dur­ing my time at ACFS I made friends with some of the Teach­ers . These Teach­ers are some of my sources ! They knew but need­ed their job

The Morality of Patriotism redux

July 5, 2012
· Martin Kelley

blankFor the Fourth of July, a peek back at one of the more talked-about arti­cles in recent Friends Jour­nal his­to­ry, Tony White’s The Immor­tal­i­ty of Patri­o­tism. A sample:

Patri­o­tism clouds our judg­ment; it hin­ders objec­tiv­i­ty and detracts from our abil­i­ty to assess polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions ratio­nal­ly. Patri­o­tism bias­es us toward our coun­try’s per­spec­tive, encum­ber­ing our desire and abil­i­ty to con­sid­er out­side per­spec­tives. Put briefly, patri­o­tism breeds con­for­mi­ty and closed-mindedness. Fur­ther­more, patri­o­tism makes us over­ly trust­ing of those in pow­er over us, and sus­cep­ti­ble to abus­es of that power.

This was pub­lished before I came as the Jour­nal’s edi­tor. The let­ters forum and Google search­es will pull up some very insight­ful cri­tiques that basi­cal­ly points out the dis­crep­an­cies between the sec­u­lar lefty cri­tique of the arti­cle and the his­toric Friends peace tes­ti­mo­ny. Over on the Friends Jour­nal Face­book page, there’s a live­ly dis­cus­sion cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing about patri­o­tism and the Fourth.

(H/T to Dan­ny Cole­man for the reminder link to White’s article)

Interviewing Doug Bennett

May 29, 2012
· Martin Kelley

If all goes smooth­ly on the tech­ni­cal front, tomor­row I’ll be inter­view­ing Doug Ben­nett for Friends Jour­nal. In this mon­th’s fea­ture arti­cle, he argues that the Quak­er con­tro­ver­sies over homo­sex­u­al­i­ty could be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring us clos­er togeth­er. Reply below with a ques­tion for Doug (<20 words) and we might use it for the interview!

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Superstar? Aw shucks!

July 1, 2008
· Martin Kelley

And a shout-out back to Hit­Tail folks who linked to my arti­cle on Adword shenani­gans by nam­ing me a super­star! Every­one Loves Hit­Tail: Hit­Tail Helps Super­star Blog­ger Mar­tin Kel­ley Save Mon­ey. Is it get­ting hot in here?

I will say that these guys are real­ly good track­ers. I some­times think if I said “hit­tail” in my sleep I’d awake to an email thank­ing me for the men­tion. I’m always sur­prised at how many com­pa­nies don’t fol­low their own pub­lic com­men­tary on them across the inter­net, but Hit­tail cer­tain­ly does.

Lead-painted toys? Aye-Yeash!

June 19, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Trains & MessesThe Times has a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on the rise of recalls on Chinese-made toys over the last few years. Two of our kid’s “Thomas and Friends” wood­en trains are part of the lat­est recall because of lead paint. We’ve long pre­ferred the met­al Thomas trains since 21-month old Fran­cis chews on the wood­en ones and gnaws their paint off.

We learned about the lead paint­ed Thomas’s on the same day that our fam­i­ly doc­tor told us that it was offi­cial­ly time to become con­cerned with Fran­cis’s slow speech devel­op­ment. When Theo was just a lit­tle old­er than Fran­cis is now we put togeth­er a dic­tio­nary of his vocab­u­lary. Fran­cis makes cute sounds and seems bright and curi­ous but he’s not even got­ten out a con­sis­tent mama or papa and we haven’t been able to fig­ure out a mean­ing for his most com­mon word (Aye – YEASH). He’s got an appoint­ment six months from now with spe­cial­ists at Wilm­ing­ton’s Nemours (that’s how backed up they are!).

We’re not blam­ing the trains — the lead ones we had were rel­a­tive­ly unpop­u­lar and have few signs of wear. And we’re not pan­ick­ing. My moth­er brush­es off all con­cern with the assured dec­la­ra­tion that kids learn to talk at lots of dif­fer­ent ages. She could cer­tain­ly be right of course: our doc­tor sent us to Nemours for Theo with the wor­ry that he had a big head. If Fran­cis does turn out to be a lit­tle “slow,” well then we’ll just take that as anoth­er les­son plan God has for us.