Beaten in the Year of the Advent Facing Racial Injustice on Public Transport (Part 1)
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February 5, 2021
This series will highlight the experiences of three African American Adventists who faced racial injustice in America while taking public transportation. Each of them reacted differently and got different results. Read Part 2 here.
Jabez Pitt Campbell stepped up to the counter to purchase a train ticket to Philadelphia. It was the afternoon of Wednesday, March 26, 1843, and the 28-year-old Black pastor was travelling from his home in Providence, Rhode Island, to preach in the City of Brotherly Love. The train would leave from Jersey City, make several stops, the longest in Trenton, and finally reach Philadelphia. Campbell handed the ticket agent the fare of $4 and asked if he could have a comfortable seat. The agent quickly assured him that no one paid more than $4 and Campbell would “be as well accommodated as any other gentleman.” Campbell smiled, thanked t
Antiracism s Ibram Kendi thinks big: Why not equality right now? Khari Thompson, Special to USA TODAY
Why Black History Month feels a little different in 2021
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The revolutionary spirit of Boston inspires Ibram X. Kendi.
But he’s not thinking about the Boston Tea Party or the ride of Paul Revere to warn that the British were coming.
And he’s not just driven by walking in the literal footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who attended Boston University as a doctoral student in theology nearly 70 years before Kendi joined its faculty last summer as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities.
Yes, there was slavery here
STAFF FILE PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS
Published: 2/4/2021 12:52:36 PM
In 1641, Massachusetts was the first North American colony to legalize slavery, which was at that time a common practice in New England. Africans and their descendants were enslaved by ministers and other prominent citizens in many local towns, including Greenfield, Deerfield, Northfield, Sunderland, Hatfield and Amherst.
The slave trade from capturing, buying and selling Africans to providing goods and services, such as ship-building, for those trading in human beings formed an important part of New England’s economy. The first slave ship from Massachusetts was launched in 1636, by the prestigious Winthrop family. Boston later became a hub of the trade in enslaved Africans.
Khari Thompson
The revolutionary spirit of Boston inspires Ibram X. Kendi.
But he’s not thinking about the Boston Tea Party or the ride of Paul Revere to warn that the British were coming.
And he’s not just driven by walking in the literal footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who attended Boston University as a doctoral student in theology nearly 70 years before Kendi joined its faculty last summer as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities.
No, Kendi – author of the 2019 best-selling book How To Be An Antiracist – has two mid-19th-century Boston abolitionists on his mind: Maria Stewart, a free-born Black woman he calls the mother of modern feminism; and the journalist William Lloyd Garrison, a journalist who published The Liberator newspaper from 1831 until the Civil War ended. Both advocated for the complete emancipation of enslaved people in America as early as the 1830s.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Sojourner Truth lived a remarkable life. After spending much of her adolescence and adulthood enslaved, Truth took destiny into her own hands at age 30. She fled to freedom, changed her name, and started life anew as a preacher, abolitionist, and women s rights advocate. Here are six facts you should know about this champion of equality.
1. Sojourner truth was born into slavery and first sold at age 9.
Sojourner Truth (née Isabella Baumfree) was born to enslaved parents in a Dutch community in Ulster County, New York, in 1797. After being separated from her family at age 9, she was sold three times to different people, one of whom beat her for speaking Dutch and not understanding their English commands.