In From the Darkness Cometh the Light, Lucy Berry Delaney tells the story of her dream to be free from slavery. Lucy was born into slavery in 1830, and grew up in Missouri. Not much is known about her outside of her published work, but what she told in her narrative is determined, lush with detail, and full of literary surprise. Lucy Berry Delaney won her freedom in 1844. What follows are Lucy's own words, which do her far more justice than I can:

Regarding her and her mother's desire for escape:

"I was beginning to plan for freedom, and was forever on the alert for a chance to escape and join my sister. I was then twelve years old, and often talked the matter over with mother and canvassed the probabilities of both of us getting away. No schemes were too wild for us to consider! Mother was especially restless, because she was a free woman up to the time of her being kidnapped, so the injustice and weight of slavery bore more heavily upon her than upon me. She did not dare to talk it over with anyone for fear that they would sell her further down the river, so I was her only confidant. Mother was always planning and getting ready to go, and while the fire was burning brightly, it but needed a little more provocation to add to the flames."

Regarding her sense of injustice at the hands of some captors, and the  distaste for slavery of others:

My mother had so often told me that she was a free woman and that I should not die a slave, I always had a feeling of independence, which would invariably crop out in these encounters with my mistress; and when I thus spoke, saucily, I must confess, she opened her eyes in angry amazement and cried:

"You do belong to me, for my papa left you to me in his will, when you were a baby, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk so to one that you have been raised with; now, you take that wrapper, and if you don't do it up properly, I will bring you up with a round turn."

Without further comment, I took the wrapper, which was too handsome to trust to an inexperienced hand, like Mrs. Mitchell very well knew I was, and washed it, with the same direful results as chronicled before. But I could not help it, as heaven is my witness. I was entirely and hopelessly ignorant! But of course my mistress would not believe it, and declared over and over again, that I did it on purpose to provoke her and show my defiance of her wishes. In vain did I disclaim any such intentions. She was bound to carry out her threat of whipping me.

I rebelled against such government, and would not permit her to strike me; she used shovel, tongs and broomstick in vain, as I disarmed her as fast as she picked up each weapon. Infuriated at her failure, my opposition and determination not to be whipped, Mrs. Mitchell declared she would report me to Mr. Mitchell and have him punish me.

When her husband returned home, she immediately entered a list of complaints against me as long as the moral law, including my failure to wash her clothes properly, and her inability to break my head for it; the last indictment seemed to be the heaviest she could bring against me. I was in the shadow of the doorway as the woman raved, while Mr. Mitchell listened patiently until the end of his wife's grievances reached an appeal to him to whip me with the strength that a man alone could possess.

Then he declared, "Martha, this thing of cutting up and slashing servants is something I know nothing about, and positively will not do. I don't believe in slavery, anyhow; it is a curse on this land, and I wish we were well rid of it."

It's easy for 21st Century westerners to look at a picture of Nancy Green, the first representative for Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix, and either feel embarrased or guilty. Pressured into vaudvillian or the "mammy" roles of maids and slapstick performers (if actual black persons were used at all) of the time did not add much to the national discourse in a positive way. There is still a lot of resentment toward such figures as Aunt Jemima, and understandably so. The creators of these figures often glossed over the horrible effects of slavery by adding a comedic element to lives transformed by forced labor, and made the people portrayed out to be less than themselve out of ignorance and a misguided desire to lighten up the terrible circumstances slaves and former slaves lived under.

However, what people often forget about Nancy Green, a former slave born in 1834 in Montgomery County, Kentucky, is that by 1900 (at the age of 66), she was a proud businesswoman, philanthopist, and one of the first faces ever featured in advertising in America. She earned an independent living and had a travel schedule (which included thousands of stops over a period of over 3 decades) many of her peers would liked to have had. She cooked for probably millions of people who loved and respected her, and she was awarded medals and accolades for her talent with people and as a chef until her death in 1923, when she was struck by a car in Chicago, where she had moved after slavery ended.

When you think of Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima, remember the era Nancy Green came from. At a time when so many of her peers were beaten, lynched and otherwise humiliated, she turned the "mammy" image on its head and became a popular and beloved businesswoman.

Mary Church Terrell, the daughter of two former slaves, was born on September 23rd, 1863. She was one of the first African-American women to attend and graduate from college (Oberlin in 1884), and she spent much of her life (until her death on July 24th, 1954) working for civil rights and suffrage.

Quotes:

It is impossible for any white person in the United States, no matter how sympathetic and broad, to realize what life would mean to him if his incentive to effort were suddenly snatched away. To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of score of colored youth. 

And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long. With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue to assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope. Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance. 

Ellen Craft, born in Macon, GA, was the daughter of a slave woman and her white slavemaster. She was born in 1826. Because of her light skin, she was able to "pass" as white.

In 1848, two years after marrying husband William Craft, the two decided they were done for good with the life of a slave, and plotted a daring escape. Ellen posed as a white man, and William posed as her slave. The two eventually made it by train and boat from Macon to Philadelphia, where they told their story.

Two years later, fearing they'd be captured and returned to Macon as a part of the Fugitive Slave Bill, they decided to go to England, where they stayed for nearly 18 years. They raised a family and made a living from writing and personal appearances. Their most famous project -- a book they co-wrote called Running A Thousand Miles For Freedom -- earned them accolades and an income.

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." - Florynce Kennedy

Despite the anti-choice movement's latest tactic -- that abortion is racism -- women (and indeed their families who often benefit as well) know better. Florynce Kennedy, an early advocate for race relations and for women's rights, was at the forefront of the Second Wave, and she rode it all the way to the beach.

Kennedy graduated from Columbia University in 1947, and went on graduate from their law program despite the early protestations of the male department heads. Eventually, they recognized her determination -- and their own internalized racism -- and she was admitted. By 1954, she had opened her own office, but the partnership dissolved after two years. 

She represented the estates of Billie Holliday (who her partner had represented before her untimely death) and Charlie Parker, and worked hard to restore lost royalty payments. She made a name for herself there, but later found herself distraught by the legal system, of which she said was "...there began to be a serious question in my mind whether practicing law could ever be an effective means of changing society or even of simple resistance to oppression." 

In 1966, she became one of the founders of The National Organization for Women (NOW) with Gloria Steinem, and the two women traveled together extensively as lecturers. She went on to become further active politcally as the 1960s wore on, and eventually she would be remembered for being (as put by People Magazine) "...the biggest, loudest and, indisputably, the rudest mouth on the battleground."

Flo (as she was called by family, friends and fans everywhere) lived out loud, and she didn't apologize for or rebut the People statement or ones like it. "I’m just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing and a lot of people think I’m crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stop to wonder why I’m not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren’t like me."

*photo

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born a free woman in Baltimore, MD in 1825, and in the nearly 85 years she was alive on the planet, she was a poet, a crusader for the rights of blacks and of women, and a novelist.

Educated from a young age at The Academy for Negro Youth, Frances grew up well-educated and versed in politics, sociology, literature and other studies. She was the first woman to teach at the prestigious Union Seminary in Ohio, and by the mid-1850s, she was a lecturer on the traveling speaking circuit of The American Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1860, she married Fenton Harper, a widower with three children, and the two had one daughter together. Her husband died 4 years later, and eventually Frances went back to writing and to the lecture circuit to support her family.

She is the author of several books of poetry, and wrote one of the very first books by an African-American woman, known as Iola Leroy (or) Shadows Uplifted.

Here are some of her most memorable quotes, which are as eloquently spoken as those who came after her, such as Martin Luther King Jr.

**We want more soul, a higher cultivation of all spiritual faculties. We need more unselfishness, earnestness, and integrity. We need men and women whose hearts are the homes of high and lofty enthusiasm and a noble devotion to the cause of emancipation, who are ready and willing to lay time, talent, and money on the altar of universal freedom.

**I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need to-day is not simply more voters, but better voters.

**I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.

Quotes

Mood:  a-ok

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16th, 1862, just before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Her parents were born into slavery, but were freed at the end of the Civil War. Her father supported the family as a carpenter.

When Ida was 14, both of her parents and Stanley, her 10-month old brother, died of a yellow fever epidemic sweeping the South. After the funeral, it was decided that the remaining members of the family (6 siblings total) would be sent to live with other relatives scattered across the country. Not wanting to be separated from the rest of her family, Ida decided to drop out of high school and find employment instead. She ended up working at black grade schools as a teacher, and convinced her grandmother Peggy Wells to stay with the family and look over them while she was at work.

In 1880, Ida moved to Memphis, TN, and attended college at Fisk University, a noted school in the area. She became an outspoken feminist (before the term existed) and political writer.

During the summer of 1883, while riding on a Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad train, a railroad conductor ordered her to move from a less-crowded train to the all-black "Jim Crow" car, which was overcrowded, after a white male passenger had asked her to give up her seat. She refused, and was forcibly moved into the Jim Crow car by the conductor and two other men. On her return home, she hired an attorney to sue the railroad. After the first lawyer was paid off by the defendants, she hired a well-known white attorney to help her win her case. At the end of 1884, she won the case, but this decision was struck down three years later by the Tenessee Supreme Court.

Galvanized by her experiences, she became a writer for the Evening Star, writing articles about her experiences living under Jim Crow. In 1889, she began working for Free Speech, a magazine promoting desegregation.

In 1892, she organized a successful boycott of white businesses -- and an exodus of black families -- in Memphis after three of her black friends (who owned a grocery store) were lynched due to their store being more profitable than the white-owned grocery store in her area. The owners of the white grocery store made up a story about the owners of the black-owned store (Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart) raping a white woman, and a mob of white men got them taken out of the local jail and to an open field, where they were lynched.

Ida, horrified by the events that took place, put forth the following to her readers: "[There is] only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons". Ironically enough, Ida too was threatened with violence, and she later bought a gun to protect herself with. Just three months after the lynchings took place, the offices of the Free Speech (which were housed in a local church) were burnt down. 

After moving to New York City (and later to Chicago less than a year later), she wrote magazine and newspaper articles, pamphlets and treatises on racism. She later became the head of the Anti-Lynching League.

Ida married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1893, and the couple had 4 children. She continued advocating for desegregation and equality for both blacks and for women, and gained the admiration of Frederick Douglass and members of the Suffragette community. Like a lot of women advocating for social justice while trying to bring their own children up in a better world, she was often wanting for more and more time, but in the end, Ida's determination led her to great success, and she was invited to travel the country and to the UK, where she spoke on lynchings and equality on invitation by Catherine Impey, a Quaker. 

During her trips abroad, Ida gained support for anti-lynching policy. While many in Europe were reluctant to believe such things were going on at first, an invitation to speak at Pembroke Chapel in Great Britain changed all of this. After her engagement, the reverend, C.F. Aked, decided to attend The New York World's Fair, where he saw reports on lynchings.

Ida Wells-Barnett died on March 25, 1931 in Chicago, IL.

Molly Williams, the first recorded female firefighter on record in the United States, began her life as a slave in New York City in the late 1700s. She was held by Benjiman Aymar, a merchant, and she worked as a part of Oceanus Engine Company #11 starting in 1815. Called "Volunteer 11" by those she worked and lived with, Molly gained a reputation for being smart, tough, and a great firefighter, and was once called "as good a fire laddie as many of the boys" by another member of her company. She often went above and beyond what was expected of both herself and the other firefighters in her firehouse, and her efforts at saving lives (and property) were particularly noted in 1818, when she was one of just a few rescuers working a fire during one of the worst blizzards in NYC's history.

In addition to gaining her own reputation, Molly's courage also paved the way for a number of other female firefighters in the 1800s and later.

Rose Fortune, future law enforcement officer and businesswoman of Canada, was born into slavery in Philadelphia, PA in 1774. In 1783, her parents fled with her to the British side of the American Revolution. The British promised freedom to slaves and former slaves seeking a new life, and Fortune's family -- one of Black Loyalists (freed and former slaves who escaped their plight by fighting alongside the British) -- heard the call.

Fortune's family later moved to to New York City, and from there made their way to Nova Scotia, where they eventually settled. In the late 1700s, while running a successful luggage transport business,  Rose became a policewoman for the Annapolis Royal. Self-appointed and determined to keep the good life she had built for herself, she worked to keep both her clients' bags and the city streets safe.

A serious businesswoman with a toughness that made others respect her, Rose often wore mens' waistcoats over her dress, and her hand-painted shoes bore heels that were a few inches high. She commanded attention wherever she went, and had a long life as a successful entrepreneur.

Rose Fortune died 1864 at the age of 90, and she is buried at the Royal Garrison Cemetery. The husband of her granddaughter Ambrezene Francis took over the family business, which was black-owned for over 100 years, until 1960.

*photo credit - AAR

Mood:  bright

After being enslaved by Ambrose Smith for over 5 decades (he had purchased her at an auction not long after her birth), she was released in 1857 after Smith died. His daughters granted Clara her freedom, and upon doing so Clara immediately headed west to find the rest of her family, all of whom were split up at different times by the slave trade. She especially wanted to find her daughter Eliza Jane, figuring she would have been caught up in the gold rush, and Clara's instincts led her to Colorado.

Clara Brown secured passage as a cook in the employ of Colonel Wadsworth and a group of gold rushers in Leavenworth, KS in 1859, and because she had led the harsh life of a slave for so long, the journey proved easier for her to make than others traveling with them. Upon arriving in Colorado, Clara moved to Denver and worked as a baker. She later opened her own laundry business for the mining community, and made a mint! She saved her money, and from there relocated from town to town in a search for her daughter before finally settling in Central City.

She opened another laundry business for miners in the town, and invested in several mines. As her financial acumen and business skills earned her more money and freedom, she began using her good fortune as a way to help others. She ran her own Sunday school, helped people down on their luck (including 16 former slaves), and held religious services at her home.

In the early 1880s, she learned that Eliza Jane was alive and well in Iowa, and the two were reunited nearly 50 years after first losing touch.

Clara Brown was inducted into The Society of Colorado Pioneers in 1885, and died later that same year. She is buried in Colorado's Riverside Cemetery.