Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lydia 20240705 : vimarsana.com

Browse apparel, books, home decorations and accessories, it is something for every cspan fan and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations, shop now or anytime at cspanshop. Org. We have the professor of philosophy at Colby College and until she pivoted, most of her scholarship was on the 19th century german philosopher, hegel, she has two books on hegel, tonight she will be speaking on her new book published in the fall of 2022 with many, many, many accolades, i recommend you take a look at them and also take a look at her website to see the many blurbs and meaningful statements that talked about her contribution to scholarship about lydia child. The book, a radical american life, was published in the fall of 2022. There have been a few biographies but none as fresh, now im personalizing, not as fresh as this one to a scholarship of a woman who really should get more attention and who came right here from medford. Tonight we welcome professor lydia mullins. Welcome. [applause] thank you so much. Thank you for being here and thank you especially to the keynote for that lovely introduction and also to meg bowen who was one of the people who invited me and helped facilitate all of this. I should say that when i first launched into this project, it was such an exciting and new world for me and then when i discovered that they had done so much to honor her legacy here and curate things, some of which is on display tonight, it was electrifying to me, the first time i came here i just couldnt believe what i was seeing, actual things that child wrote and touched and lived with, so you will see in the back, you can look afterwards, too. Just precious items, one is a flower book that she made, she was also in addition to Everything Else that she did beautifully, a very talented drawer. She loved flowers, this is something i will come back to in my remarks later, so i wanted to be sure to say that. So, she sketched this book of flowers and included poetry and famous people writing about flowers and she was collecting it for her daughter who never arrived. And she finally decided to give it to annise. So there is a very touching letter that she writes that essentially says i have spent many years of my life loving flowers, drawing flowers, reading about flowers and now since the starter never arrived, i want you to have it. That is one of the item, the other, i also love, and i want to talk about it for a second because im going to read some passages that include things about her father. One of the other objects back there is a bible that he gave to her and the inscription says, Lydia Francis, presented as a reward due to a merit, and a proof of parental affection. I just adore that. As evidence of a personality and of a relationship which i think was not always an easy relationship, but he lived a very long life and she took care of him in his old age and i love that token of respect for his merit but also his affection has survived here. All of that to say it is such an honor for me to be here, amongst those objects and also amongst all of you who live in the very place or near the place anyway, where she was born. I teach at Colby College in waterville, maine. Which is just a couple miles from a place called norge walk, maine. And some of you will know that child spend some of her teenage years there, after her mother died when she was 12 years old, she was sent to live with a sister who had married somebody and moved to maine and that wasnt part because, it was just very clear that her father was not up to single parenting, a very precocious teenage girl. So, yesterday as i was leaving Colby College, i thought, this is amazing, im leaving this place where she came from medford, going back to medford to give this talk. So that felt like a lovely synergy. It takes a long time to get here from norge walk but not as long as it did when child was making the voyage as a very young, as a 12yearold, so i often wondered what that trip was like for her. What i want to do tonight is to give you a kind of arc of her life, so i want to read a couple of passages from my book that talked about when she was here and what she would have experienced here and then im going to talk a little bit, and read a passage from the middle of her life and especially about her conversion to abolitionism and if we have time, i would like to close with a couple of passages from much later because i think part of what is happening everywhere, but in medford perhaps, especially, is that we know that she is famous for one thing, not going to mention the name of this poem, not yet anyway, and that was a poem for children and we kind of put her in a box of childrens literature, or we dont think of her as having gone beyond that, what was a very early and ernest love of writing for children. So i want to be sure that thats in the context of what was a very full life and also a life that had a lot of controversy and pain and a lot of dedication to trying to address Racial Injustice in this country. Those of you who have read the book know that this book is really personal to me, i came to writing about child at a moment in my own life where i felt like it was important for me to figure out what my duties were as regard to my country. And what it means to be an american citizen now, what that asks of us, and i am a philosopher, and i teach moral philosophy, so i come to childs life with some very Big Questions about moral philosophy and really about how i should live my life. In one of the reviews that my book got recently, the reviewer said Something Like, whenever you read lydia mariah child, you feel like you have to change your life. This is what happened to me very literally, and giving you this arc, also to give you a sense of what her story has meant to me as a moral philosopher but also somebody who is trying to think hard about what my obligations are to my country. So im going to start a little bit, just setting the stage of what medford was like for her and what kind of child she was and she lived here and then i will move on to the moment where she really engages with the abolitionism which i think was really the cause that shaped her life the most. So, she was born in 1802, im going to pick up a few years later. As her world began to take shape around her, little Lydia Francis began to recognize her immediate family. In addition to her parents, there were four older children, of her siblings, probably converse came into focus first, he was almost seven when she was born, one baby had died between their births. He seems to have taken being displaced by a younger child well and emerging early in his Little Sisters memory as an affectionate and attentive, even as other family members were perhaps too busy to pay mind to her. Their father had by now fought his way out of poverty through the system of apprenticeship and had at long last become a prosperous baker. He was even famous, his medford crackers, a buttery, crunchy, laborintensive biscuit were sold throughout the northeast and exported in large quantities even to england. The family lived in a twostory house across the street from a local cemetery not far from here. Where at least one ancestral lydia was buried. Next to their house was a bakery, a sign hanging in front for passersby to see. Having overcome his own humble origins, converse francis senior, her father was in a position to be generous with those still fighting for a place in american prosperity and he was. His daughter later recalled how the night before thanksgiving, 30 humble friends of the household including the washer women, the barry women and the apprentice bakers were summoned to the francis residence for dinner including chicken pie, pumpkin pie and heaps of donuts. It was a model of liberality she never forgot. Then on thanksgiving day itself, the francis family apparently went over the river and through the woods to their grandfathers house, where there were cousins and pumpkin pie. That memory stayed in her mind until she turned it into verse, putting medford on the map not as the birthplace of one of americas fiercest reformers, but as inspiring one of its most sentimental poems. There is still a river in medford, there are no more woods. What impression of slavery that she have as she grew . Her father, once reported, detested slavery with all its apologists and all its forms. This may have been because he had witnessed its effects in medford itself. A 10 minute walk from the francis home over the same river and a bit farther through the woods. Was an elegant residence known as 10 hills farm. Its owner, isaac had been bored in antigua where his father, a native new englander had made a fortune on the slave train. When the family returned to new england, they moved to medford and brought the humans they enslaved with them. Royal had close ties to britain and fled the country on the eve of the revolution, but the mansion remained, as did the two Story Building were his slaves had lived within earshot of their masters voice. Theres almost no record of what became of his slaves after he pled but what is known is remarkable. Belinda sutton, one of the black women he left behind, successfully petitioned the massachusetts government for payment from the royal estate and in compensation for a lifetime of forced labor. Clear evidence that black americans understood what justice for all entitled them to, even if the Founding Fathers themselves would never see it that way. But, the rest, did they stay in medford . Did Lydia Francis see them in town and hear them talk about their past . Did her father point out 10 hills farm to his children, recounting the shameful history of the money that built it . If he did, he never mentioned it. The francis residence and bakery no longer exists as they were then but the royal mansion still does. So do its slave quarters, they are the only remaining example of their kind north of the mason dixon line. There was another story of slavery in medford that she must have known as well, at the turnofthecentury, a different medford family had owned about 20 slaves. One named caesar was sold to a medford native named mr. Abraham who lived in the south. When he took himself and then returned to medford to visit some years later, he brought caesar with him. Caesar had now experienced slavery in the south and he did not want to go back with some encouragement from locals, he attempted to flee but was quickly caught, bound and imprisoned on a southern township. But in the commotion of his capture, caesar had managed to alert sympathetic bystanders to his plate. Before the ship could sail, his allies appeared to the governor of massachusetts himself to make use of new massachusetts laws to obtain caesars freedom. This was exactly the kind of story that enraged southern politicians. The north complained had agreed to assist in returning fugitive slaves as a part of the constitution. That massachusetts and other states had passed laws providing a kind of loophole that allowed caesar to go free was evidence, they claimed, but northerners had no intention of abiding by their pledge. As a girl, Lydia Francis would not have known about these legal technicalities but she surely would have known of caesar, who, a local historian reported, subsequently worked his trade in medford several years with great approbation. The only childhood memory of slavery that Lydia Francis recorded was of celebrations that marked the end of the International Slave trade. That date was commemorated annually by a parade led by black bostonians. As an adult, lydia still remembered how viciously their celebrations were caricatured by boston newspapers. 10 hills farm, caesars escape, parades in boston, through these and other incidents, lydia fashioned an impression of slavery that was both complex and limited. She knew slavery had recently existed in her own world. She knew it existed elsewhere. She knew some people were trying to end it, some to escape it, and some to prevent it. And some to preserve it. But in her developing young mind, it probably still felt very distance, stem abstract, still like nothing that could affect her life very much. Let me just finish a little bit on this, on her early years. Though the official education in medford was somewhat limited, Lydia Francis had an advantage over other children. She had an older brother who loved books. In her earliest memories, he was never without one in his pocket, poring over it at every moment of leisure. Then there was his little sister, watching him with adoring attention as only little sister scan. What was he doing . What book was that . What did those words mean . Perhaps he recounted stories from novels the local teacher lent him, perhaps he spun tales from history books or posed questions raised by a recent foray into baptist theology. Perhaps the parents were just as happy when congress got their youngest child out from underfoot by reading to her. Soon, she was reading to him. Soon, she was reading everything in sight. Converse was probably the first person to notice that his younger sister was extremely bright. So, a kind of secret society was born nextdoor to medfords famous bakery. When i came home from school, i always hurried to his bedroom and threw myself down among his pile of books, lydia recounted years later. For any text beyond her childish comprehension, she had a ready tutor. What does shakespeare mean by this . What does milton mean by that, she remembered asking. From all indications, converse loved it. Her curiosity and admiration must have been a welcome relief from their parents judgmental frugality. He was patient with his little pupil, only occasionally getting way to the universal tendency of older brothers as she put it, to bamboozle their younger sisters with bad information. Until lydia was called out to help hang wet laundry, or converse was needed to roll out the next batch of crackers, they existed blissfully in a little world of their own into which no one about us entered. It was a small vision of heaven. Recollection of those hours together, his sister wrote, after his death, to fulfill me with gratitude to god for the gift of such a brother, such development as my mind has attained, she continued, i attribute to the impulse thus given by his example and sympathy. So, the story goes on, converse was so bookish, this young bakers son was so bookish that the Family Doctor finally said to his father, he is going to be of no use to you in the bakery, you might as well send him to harvard. So, they did, he enrolled in harvard and went on to be a theology professor at harvard, he is also an amazing child of medford, he has a very auspicious and impressive history as a scholar himself. But it was soon after that, as i said earlier, their mother died and lydia was sent to live with his sister in maine. When she returned to boston to live with her brother again, she had turned from a prodigious reader into a prodigious writer. So by the time she was 22 years old, she had already published a very successful novel, it wasnt only successful, it was scandalous. It was about a european settler, a white woman marrying a native american warrior. She was voted by that book into bostons literary circles, she was literally celebrated by people, she got to meet lafayette when he came through and was at the governors ball. She quickly followed that novel with another one, she started writing stories for children. She started editing one of the first periodicals for children called the juvenile miscellany, which was this wonderful concoction of stories and poems and riddles and games. It was quickly popular up and down the east coast, there are records of children in the south waiting for it to appear and the mother is saying, i know what that noise is, the juvenile miscellany must have come. So it was a very popular and again, very early american kind of publication, there hadnt been anything like that published for americans yet. Then in 1829, she published something referred to as the american frugal housewife. I love the subtitle of this book which is dedicated to those who are not ashamed of the economy. So, it is definitely an indication that she was growing impatient with the boston high society, worrying about Table Service and linens and beautiful dresses, she had begun already to feel like that was not the world she wanted to be in. But this was an amazing book, and it makes great reading even now, it is full of recipes about bread and stuffing a goose and how to treat a sprained ankle. It encourages people to drink beer at the family table, obviously the water wasnt trustworthy. And it sold out multiple times and its very early years, it went through Something Like 30 printings, and it was the kind of thing that people remembered all the way into their adulthood, and to know, that a housewife collage her career. By the time she was 30, she was the 19thcentury household name in the united states, beloved both for her novelistic abilities, but also for her ability to give household tips and to write for children. So, there are wonderful accolades published about her all the way through her late 20s and early 30s and also around that time, she married someone named David Lee Child who was a former freedom fighter, he had gone to europe and got involved in some conflicts there, always on the side of justice. He was a lawyer, editor, he was a publisher and he was a financial disaster. He was the kind of person who always had fabulous ideas that would immediately involve borrowing money. So, you will hear very quickly and what im about to read, very soon after they got married, they were in a lot of debt. And in 1830, after she has already become famous in these ways, she met a man named William Lloyd garrison. And some of you know that he was probably the most important white abolitionist in the boston area and he had specifically moved to boston to build on the foundation that had been laid by black abolitionists like david walker and Mariah Stewart and the paul family, there was a thriving group of black abolitionists who met at the african meetinghouse which was right behind the statehouse. So, essentially with the idea to start a newspaper that he would call the liberator, and to try to convert white bostonians to abolitionism. It is so important for us to remember that to be an abolitionist at that point in history was to be a radical. Most white northerners were very comfortable with the existence of slavery. Many who opposed it for various reasons still did not think it should be abolished. They may be thought it should end gradually, or maybe there should be time limits on it, or maybe certain kinds of people should be enslaved, but there wasnt there were very few people who thought it should be ending immediately and without compensation to enslavers, so you would imagine people would say that is just not going to work. The economy will collapse. What is going to happen to two or 3 Million People who have been enslaved if they are suddenly emancipated, where will they live, how will they eat customer all of these questions were insurmountable to your average white northerner. But, garrison had become an abolitionist, he never thought there should be any gradualism about ending slavery at all, so he came to boston to try to convert others. There have been very good books published recently that make the point very clearly, to be an abolitionist, even to the radical like that, did not mean that you believed in racial equality. So, there were many white abolitionists who thought slavery should end but it did not mean that they thought africans and their descendents were there equals. So they still didnt want black americans in their churches or schools or in public transportation. There was a lot of violence actually in the north, in the 1830s as abolitionists became more vocal, people felt very threatened by their message, not only of abolition but in some cases racial equality. Child herself, once she converted to abolitionism with garrison, did embrace the idea of racial equality which made her even more radical among her peers. So, i wanted to pick up a little bit with what happened to her when she met garrison. So, garrison came to boston looking for recruits. Looking for people who could help spread the gospel of abolition, he no he knew of childs work, he praised her, as being equal in wit and wisdom to Benjamin Franklin himself. He knew she was a talented novelist with a bend toward social justice, he knew she was capable of giving readers practical advice on how to change their lives. Maybe she would write for him, first she would need to become an abolitionist. Soon, after arriving in boston, garrison proposed that they meet. Decades later, child still remembered garrisons effect. I was then all absorbed in poetry and painting, soaring aloft on psyche wings into the and serial regions of mysticism, garrison got hold of the strings of my conscious and pulled me into reforms, it is of no use to imagine what might have been if i never met him, all dreams vanished, Old Associates departed and all things became new. I could not otherwise, so help me god. So after that point, what she describes as a conversion experience, she was left with the impression of what to do. And if any of us have had a conversion experience, whether it be religious or to some other kind of truth or some moment of social justice, we know that it can feel very appending, you can suddenly realize that you cant live your life the same way anymore, but how should you live your life, and what should you do to try to attack whatever monstrous evil you have been convinced you need to take more seriously. One of the things i admire most about child is that i think she just sat down and took an inventory of her talents and her capabilities and her skills and decided that from then on, she was going to dedicate all of those to this cause. How, child asked herself, could she take on a monstrous, multifaceted evil that the best minds of her fledgling country had failed to defeat . David, her husband, at least most of the time had his journal and his legal practice. Garrison had his liberator, samuel, a fellow convert had his pulpit. What did she have . Child took stock of her talents and abilities, at some point during her research, she settled on the idea of a book, a book that would disseminate fax, dismantle arguments and make it impossible for her readers to live the same way again. Soon, it became clear what child in particular as an author had to offer the cause, her reputation. She had established herself as a reliable source of homey but aspirational advice. Her readers knew her to be frank but compassionate. But, when they trust her through a transition from housecleaning tips to abolishing slavery . Would they follow her from treating dysentery to curing the disease at her countrys core . I imagine child at her Kitchen Table searching for her books through sentences, perhaps she thought again of the powerful men she passed every day on the street. Men whose arguments she knew and whose power she no longer feared. Reader, i have deceived you not to throw down this volume as soon as you have glanced at the title, she wrote, her handwriting graceful. Read it, if your prejudices will allow for the very truths sake. She thought of the women who cooked from her recipes and read her stories to their children. If i have the most trifling claims on your goodwill, four hours of amusement to yourself or benefit to your children, she wrote, read it, for my sake. I imagine her looking around her frugal home and turning back to her paper, read it. She wrote. From sheer curiosity to see what a woman who had better attended to household concerns will say upon such a subject. So, what did that woman say . You are going to have to read the book to get the answer to most of that question. But, what came out of that was a book called an appeal in favor of that class of americans called africans. Which is a kind of firehose, historical, political, economic, moral, and intellectual reasoning about every kind of excuse that people had used to keep them from caring about slavery and in it, the last chapter begins Something Like, while we pesto our earnest this probation in the south, let us not flatter ourselves that we are any better than they. And she went on to attack northern racism. As you can imagine, this is not what your average bostonian wanted to hear. Probably not in medford, either. So, im going to pick up again and tell a little bit about what happened as the book is being published. Sometime in 1833, child left the small house in roxbury where she and david after another move had settled and made her way to the city. With her, she carried a manuscript entitled an appeal in favor of that class of americans called africans. As the printers laid out her text and inserted her images, it became ever clearer. In the appeal, child was attacking her nations economy, threatening its unity and defining its religious leaders. She was calling her politicians hypocrites and her neighbors racists. The audacity of the appeals every page was exacerbated by the fact that its author was a woman. As she checked her manuscript one last time, did she wonder if she had gone too far. The backlash that followed the appeals publication likely surpassed childs most pessimistic predictions. The british reformer, harriet described child as a lady of home society was exceedingly proud before she published the appeal and to whom society has been an extremely contemptuous ever since. Mrs. Child was denounced, her fellow reformer later wrote, the politicians and statesmen scouted the woman who had presumed to have criticized so freely the constitution and government of her country. Women had better let politics alone. One bostonian proudly refused to read the appeal because he feared it would make him an abolitionist. Another through the book out of the window with a pair of tongs. I think what hurt the most was the juvenile miscellany, forced to resign after 1834 after angry parents canceled their subscriptions in droves. The childs financial situation was now dire and child had now sacrificed the literary reputation that might have saved them. Things would get worse before they got better. Soon, antiabolitionist moms would rage from pennsylvania to maine, child would find herself healed, spiriting them across the city and hiding them in safe houses, through it all, neither she or her husband would make enough money to keep them solvent. And yet violence and poverty would not be the greatest challenges to her conversion. She could not have known this, but the end of slavery was still 30 years away. Nothing threatens a conversion like delayed change. Life gets in the way, old habits get in the way, failure and discouragement and defeat get in the way. Never living the same way again, it would turn out would be the challenge of Lydia Maria Childs life. I imagine a gentle boston dinner party in which converse francis, her beloved brother is asked awkward questions about his sisters new book. He answers as best he can, he returns home to his vast library now among the largest in greater boston, paralyzed by soulsearching. Had he indeed gone wrong in cultivating a young girls intellect just as his parents had worried . What harm had he unleashed on the world by letting his little sister milton and shakespeare . He wrote her a letter which is now lost, but childs response conjures its admonishing tone. You asked me to be prudent and i will be so. She concedes. But, she quickly warns, it is too late for what the world calls prudent. I have examined the cause of the slave thoroughly and felt his wrongs to deeply to be prudent in the worldly sense of the term, she wrote. I imagine converse francis reading the letter and closing his eyes, head in his hands, i imagine tearful children being told they will no longer be receiving the juvenile miscellany since there beloved editor had turned out to be a dangerous radical. But, while the less tolerant parents were not looking, trusting perhaps too easily in a familiar author, the damage had been done. I well remember an earlier reader that miscellany wrote to child decades later, the zeal with which it was circulated by a little group of schoolgirl abolitionists, of which i had the honor to be one. We can only imagine what rippling effect the schoolgirls had on their society as they grew to adulthood and raised children of their own. Other effects of childs efforts would not need conjecture. Thomas higginson, one of the financers of john browns bloody abolitionist insurrection 25 years later gave child credit for his youthful conversion to anti slavery work. Massachusetts senator, Charles Sumner cited childs influence in starting him down the road of passionate abolitionism that would lead decades later to his being beaten unconscious on the senate floor. And one of the proud bostonians who refused to read the appeal, fearing it would make him an abolitionist, he was a respected minister whose income dependent on keeping his wealthy congregation happy. His wife and daughter had been converted by child arguments. I imagined them emboldened by the appeals female author. I envision the minister as he sits at dinner, pursued by evidence of racial equality as he tries to escape to his bedchamber. How many more people among bostons Polite Society sat at dinner parties hearing their host rage at mrs. Childs audacity, wondering to themselves whether she was right. Among the outraged parents who counseled cancel their subscriptions, how many had second thoughts . We will never know and child never did either, but people did not throw the books out of windows with tongs. So, im going to skip forward then quite a bit, given the time. In the intervening years, child really tried everything you could possibly imagine to try to undermine slavery. So, in one of my favorite episodes, they moved to north hampton, massachusetts to farm sugar beets in an attempt to undermine the plantation sugarcane trade, so it was a kind of agricultural activism. That unfortunately was a failure and they went bankrupt at the end of that but its another example of someone just trying everything to fight for what they believe in. As i mentioned in that passage, there were a lot of mobs in the 1830s, she and david were often involved in those and in many cases, the women would surround the abolitionist speaker who was under attack and sort of shepherd him toward an exit because they correctly assumed that people would be less likely to attack women so there was real physical bravery as well. She also continued to write, and one of my favorite episodes, after john browns raid in virginia, she got into a war of words with the governor of virginia and both his letter to her and her reply and his reply, and her letter were all published in the press and then published as a tract and it sold 300,000 copies, to the 19th century equivalent of going viral. And she was the kind of person who knew how to articulate arguments and also to seize the moment in a certain kind of media landscape. She saw that moment after john browns raid had upset people enough that people were really paying attention that she could then issue all of these arguments that she had been honing for 25 years, in a way that really got peoples attention. During the war, she helped raise money for the union army, but only after lincoln finally stopped using Union Soldiers to return fugitive slaves to their enslavers. So, as long as that was going on, she said i will do nothing to support this war, it was only after that ended that she really threw herself into war effort. Including, and this was the part i want to read in part because it is something i think a lot about, and again, trying to imagine what i as a White American was trying to think about, the way i should live my life, the kinds of lessons i want to learn also from her example, not only of what she got right but also what i think she got wrong. I want to read you a little bit from a later episode in her life, something that i think a lot about how it relates to activism today. So, this is toward the end of the war, and as the emancipation proclamation went into effect, there were indeed millions of formerly enslaved people who were essentially refugees. So, they had no income, they had no possessions, no food, there were schools established to try to teach them but there was a great need just to enable them to live the kind of life they had been promised by emancipation. And child was full of ideas about how to try to fix this, she had assistance in that and she had several other initiatives that i want to talk about. But one thing she decided to do towards the end of the war was to compile something that she called the freemans book, and this was going to be a book that would help newly emancipated black americans learn to read essentially. So i want to read to you a little bit about what that book was like and some of the questions that i think it raises. So this is towards the end of the war. Before long, child had a plan, she would create a primer to help newly emancipated americans learn to read, it would not be like the primer she learned from as a girl. Instead of stories of american president s and revolutionary war battles, she would fill it with biographies of famous africans and their descendents, and in its pages, she would show the free people that others like them had been inventors, poets, scientists, politicians and military leaders. As they read the stories, spelling out one word after another, they would learn facts that would raise their hopes and arm them against prejudice. The more she thought about the idea, the more she liked it. Soon she was resolving my poor brain into a committee of ways and means to figure out how to publish it at her own expense. She began compiling the books chapters, harriet jacobs, some of you know published incidents in the life of a slave girl, agreed to contribute. Frederick douglass granted child permission to tell his story however she saw fit. She rewrote some of the biographical sketches of black heroes like Phyllis Wheatley that she had included in her appeal 30 years ago. Recasting them in easier language for early readers. She also included stories that africans resisting the slave trade and of fugitive slaves daring escapes. To assure her readers that they had other white allies, she included authors like garrison and john greenlee. But perhaps most important, she quoted Frederick Douglasss eloquent outrage, the poet Francis Ellen Watkins harbor lyrical recitations and the agonized poetry of an enslaved man named mingo to his wife before bloodhounds tore him apart as he tried to flee. Black americans would make clear, had recognized the atrocities done to them, articulated them and fought them, they had not been helpless or submissive or ignorant. In the table of contents, child made their authors, schmitz visible by putting asterisks next to their name. Compared to other primers for similar purposes, child was once again bracingly progressive. By contrast, other readers made no effort to cultivate pride in african culture or enslaved peoples resistance. By comparison, child was rare indeed. But, despite all of the childs passionate good intentions, i have come to think of the essays she herself wrote in the book as among her most problematic publications. This is because encouraging free people by honorable examples of men of their own color was not child only aim. She had two others and they should give us pause. The first of these, child acknowledged to a friend, was to convey moral instruction in a simple attractive form. For child, this did not mean a discussion of the 10 commandments. In fact, the freemans book also differs by the almost total absence of theology. Instead, moral instruction to her meant cultivating the habits of respectability that were then as always, cornerstones of her worldview. So, child now as ever, the frugal housewife set about giving advice, how to patch warm clothing, white wash houses, talk to children and plant gardens that make the poorest cabin look beautiful. Why all this homey advice . Because, quite simply, the state of slaves everywhere dependent on it. In spanish colonies, child reminded her readers, people were still enslaved. If you are vicious, lazy and careless, she warned, their masters will excuse themselves for continuing to hold them in bondage by saying, look at the freeman of the united states, what idol vagabonds they are, how dirty their cabins are, how sloppily they are dressed, this proves that cannot take care of themselves, that they are not fit to be free, but the rivers, child promised, was also true. If your houses look neat and your clothing are clean and whole, if your gardens are well we did, then all the world will cry out, you see that they can take care of themselves and it is a sin and shame to keep such men in slavery. Simple cleanliness in short meant everyone could win by being respectable, black americans could improve both their own lot and that of others. She meant it as encouragement. But she also knew better. Child had shown herself throughout her life to be intensely aware of the poisonous reach of racial prejudice. She knew that a simple equation, act respectably and you will be respected, was false just as often as it was true. In the same essay, she admitted as much. For a good while it would provoke many of your former masters to see those who were once there slaves acting like freeman. She wrote, they will doubtless do many things to vex and discourage you. This, as she knew, was a wrenching understatement. And what was the psychological cost of asking emancipated black americans to believe this would work . How could such a demand not add a crushing psychological burden to an already desperate struggle for physical survival . And looking over childs 50 year career in the public eye, this is one of the lessons i find most searing. White americans like myself must stop combining private agony about Racial Injustice with the desperation to convince its victims that it doesnt exist. The second of childs problematic names was, as she also wrote to a friend, to inspire her readers with forgiving feelings towards their own masters. So, while in some chapters she did include references to kidnappings and floggings and childrens sold at auction blocks, she sometimes presented a notably sanitized version of events. Childs desire to promote forgiveness also raises a more philosophical question. What is the value of forgiveness without repentance . Given the chance, those who enslaved black americans would likely reenslave every one of them. What in these circumstances did it mean to forgive and what does it do to victims of atrocity to be encouraged to forgive when the perpetrators are eager to reoffend . One more episode is worth recounting here. Childs letter to frederick douglass, asking permission to use his story in the freemans book does not survive, but his reply to her suggest a question she apparently raised. Child, it seems, had read somewhere that douglas had reconciled with his former enslave her, thomas auld. Was this true . No, douglas replied, it was not. The story of the interview between us is a newspaper story for which i am in no way this model, he wrote. Any such meeting could not fail to be awkward, he continued. But, douglas seemed to reconsider, still i should be glad to see him especially if i could do so simply by meeting him halfway, she wrote. Then again, maybe not. I do not, he continued, fancy making a journey to see a man who gave me so many reasons for wishing the greatest distance between us. I learned from my sister that he says he would be glad to see me. Then came an extraordinary promise, he has but to say so to me by letter and considering his age, and forgetting his past, i will make you visit. What is going on in this letter . What had child written to such vacillation by one of americas most assertive intellectuals, we will never know, but heres my guess. Child asked him if he could assure her readers, themselves newly emancipated that americas most famous fugitive slave had forgiven the man who had enslaved him. In fact, they did meet again. His last autobiography he gives an account of the meeting that was all child couldve wished for. He first recounts everything done to him. It is a long list. He then admits his own fame had made the otherwise unremarkable life an object of international outrage. I had by my writings made his name and deeds familiar to the world in four different languages. He told douglas he did not blame him for running away. It was not quite an apology but it was close enough for douglas. In return douglas offered a defense of the behavior that was generous to the point of implausibility. And regarded him as i did myself, he wrote, a victim of the circumstances of birth, education, law and custom. By the time this account was published in 1881 child was no longer alive to read it. She had been surely she wouldve rejoiced in this report of reconciliation. But douglas was lucky, if we want to call it that. Auld had offered douglas one of the things that makes reconciliation possible, and admission of harm by the wrongdoer. But 16 years earlier, as childs freemans book was published, most former slaves confronted the opposite. Far from acknowledging slaverys evil, former enslavers were doing everything in their power to reinstated. Given this reality, im somehow glad douglas is reconciliation came too late for child to use it in the freemans book. Quite simply its absence kept her from telling her readers that following douglass famous example, they were expected to do the same. And then im going to just and with a couple of images from her death and some thoughts about that. Child spent her last decade writing about reconstruction and its failure, publishing raley early in independence and alerting readers to the existence of the ku klux klan, trying them to not feel like the word end of the project. Theres a famous quote where she says, people work she was then living would come up to her and say, arent you glad you lived to see justice done to black americans . And she would say, if i do live to see justice done to black americans, i will be happy. Again, that was not what her fellow americans wanted to hear. They had poured blood and treasure into this war, they didnt want to hear that it had not solve the problem. But she was convinced that until actual Racial Justice was achieved, slavery would always reassert itself in another form and if youre she was right about that. The last thing she published was a book that argued for religious tolerance, there is a wonderful introduction to it that encourages people of all faiths to think of themselves as pursuing a common vision. So, just a last image from the end of her life. This is after her husband had died. When lydia child died in wayland, massachusetts at the age of 78 her friend sue discovered she had given instructions for funeral. There was to be no grand Memorial Service and no lien i think from a public. No lines of curious strangers stretching past the coffin. Speaking of coffins, she wanted the plainest when possible. Also, she wanted no flowers. To me, that is the saddest part. All her life she loved flowers, grown them, tended them, spread joy and beauty to friends by giving them away. Before her own memorial she wanted none. It was in short to be a very quiet and inexpensive funeral, she wrote in her will. A wish she wanted her friends, which i trust will be scrupulously observed. A few newspapers sent reporters to her modest home where the funeral was held. The reporters were, it seemed, a little disappointed. Given her National Standing and international reputation, the framingham gazette judged, how strange that there should be a coffin without a single silver handle and not a bouquet of flowers in sight. And surely it wasnt right that the public was prohibited from paying their respects to an author so many had loved. The boston sunday Herald Correspondent also noted the coffin and lack of flowers appeared moved by how beautiful the deceased looked laid in a simple black dress and white cap. But all in all, the gazette reporter concluded, it was a peculiar funeral. Still, the locals mustve been somewhat starstruck to see Wendell Phillips and john arriving into her home. They are a small group of friends and family, phillips, who had been one of the most important orators of the Abolitionist Movement spoke. His hand on the coffin of the woman who had almost 50 years later sent him on his lifes path. He remembered the early self imposed hardships her convictions had caused her. He reminisced about the frugality that had allowed her to so much to others. But struggle and thrift had not resulted in a dreary life, he assured his listeners. On the contrary, her intelligence, wit, and love of beauty meant that despite everything her life had often bubbled up with joy. He struggled to encompass the span of her attributes. Modest, womanly, simple, sincere, solid, real, loyal, to be trusted, equal to affairs yet above them, he said. A hand ready for fireside help and a mystic loving to wander on the edge of the actual. All of this she had been in more. Her neighbor, and his journal put more simply. How we shall miss her, he wrote. Local farmers carried her to a grave freshly dug next to david. The weather had mixed sun and clouds. Now as her body was lowered into the earth a rainbow appeared to the east. On her tombstone were written davids words. You call us dead, we are not dead. We are truly living now. Toward the end of her life child imagined death in many ways. Perhaps it would simply be like falling asleep into an eternal rest. After a lifetime of struggle and sacrifice, that sometimes sounded perfect. Or perhaps a glorious revelation of the truth she longed to understand. Was the secret of the world, as she had long suspected, music . Or perhaps geology . Had little been right that this was a world of confused shadows . Would dying to spell those shadows and allow her to see the light . Finally to know, to see, to understand, that, she had often thought, would be a kind of heaven. But there was one more vision of the afterlife the child sometimes imagined. And afterlife in which she could keep working. In her last letter to a friend she mused once more about her failing body and diminished spirits. Her limbs were stiff, slow and sore. Her heart was bruised but disappointment and loss. Her powers she knew were ebbing. But surely, if she could shed her mortal flesh, her spirit would be free and her energies renewed. I think there is more work for me to do in the universe, she speculated. And that i shall enter upon it with renovated powers. The first time i read this, i looked up and out of the window. I wish i could say i saw a rainbow, i didnt. That doesnt mean it wasnt there. Imagine lydia marie child still at work in the universe inspiring, encouraging, exhorting, convicting, admonishing, urging those of us still bound by space and time to meet the challenges of our moral lives. All right, i thought, lets do this. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you very much. I love to take some questions. Before i do that, i do want to say i have books for purchase. I slept them all the way from maine on public transportation. Almost the entire way. Please buy them if you would like to. If you dont im going to throw them in the river and i mean that river, the over the river and through the river, if you like to purchase one, my beloved husband, will be happy to help you with that. One of the things i love doing, inspired by child, is to use book sales as fundraisers for organizations that child would have supported. And so any proceeds from the books tonight im going to give in part to the advert Historical Society and also to the royal house of slave quarters. They are usually dirty five dollars. I can give you an authors discount of 30. If you like to do that, jim will be outside afterwards. Otherwise id love to hear your questions. Again, since we are being filmed, if you wouldnt mind waiting for the microphone and then putting it up to your mouth, that would be lovely. Thank you, that was fascinating. And you mentioned at the beginning that this work, this project had a powerful effect on you, lifechanging effect. Is that something you can speak about . Absolutely. Yeah, i have really shifted, i tried to do what child did insofar as i have tried to look at what my strengths and skills in my experience allow me to do. And then, to dedicate as much of that energy and skill that i have to the kinds of causes she was so dedicated to. That has caused me to reorient the way i do my finances. Is changed the way i for my syllabi. It has changed the way id spend a lot of my free time as far as the organizations i support by volunteering as well. And i think it is changed just the way i feel about will kind of work i need to do in my own mind and heart as well. I think it is very easy for someone like me to feel like, im very busy. I have a lot of things i have to do. And i dont have time, really, to devote myself to the things that are obviously going wrong in my society. I just learned to check that impulse and myself and ask myself, how much the value of the things i am busy with actually have. If i could give one other example, one of the things i sometimes say child has inspired is a kind of moral paranoia. I feel like if someone like child couldve gone through the first almost 30 years of her life with really good intentions, in a city that considered itself progressive and all of those ways, and not seen the obvious evil of enslavement, what am i missing . What is it that is right in front of me that i am not attentive enough to . One of the things i have become more aware of and determined to try to turn my attention to is the mass incarceration system in this country. It is, in many ways, a direct outgrowth of slavery. It resembles enslavement in many ways. Whatever we think the mass incarceration system should be doing, whether its proportionately punishing people for wrongdoing, or keeping our communities safe, or actually making People Better , it seems to be failing on all of those fronts. And so, i also try to be inspired by child in so far as when she was first alerted to the evils of slavery, the first thing she did was spend like three years just reading, just informing herself. I definitely have been doing that, trying to inform myself about that is a moral atrocity that is going on in our country that many of us are not paying enough attention to. Thank you for that question. Thanks for your presentation. Am curious, if she and david ever had children of their own . I mean, she wrote so much for other children. And, im also curious about her involvement with the Womens Suffrage Movement in the connection. Thank you. They did not have children. They wanted children. So something wasnt working, reproductive science being what it was in the 19th century they wouldnt know what it was, i think. They certainly expected to have children. In fact i think i mentioned that the book there that she drew the flowers shed hoped to give to a daughter and they never had children. And that was a kind of lifelong sorrow to her. She was very clear about that in her later years that she didnt have children to take care of her in her old age which was certainly an issue then as well. The womens suffrage question is such a fascinating episode of her life. In the 1830s she was very involved in what was a major schism in the Abolitionist Movement over the question of whether women should be allowed to speak in public. Very early, very radical abolitionist, i feel like harrison was so far ahead of everyone on most issues that also on that one he was like, of course women should speak. Of course were not going to tell them they cannot say with their consciences move them to speak. But as the movement grew and started to attract more conservative members, especially clergy, some of them grew very uncomfortable with that. By that time there were people like angelina grimki and Mariah Chapman who were electrifying female speakers and were at a certain point filling whole theaters in boston delivering this message. The clergy essentially at a certain point said, i hate to say its hilarious, but it is sort of sent hilarious letter they wrote that said do you realize that womens character is being completely ruined by their involvement in this movement, if we dont send them home, the evil that will follow cannot be measured or whatever. So they essentially offer the Abolitionist Movement a deal, they, the clergy and conservative members would join the movement but only if the women were sent home. At which point there was a major split in the Abolitionist Movement and the American Antislavery Society went one way and i forget what the other people call themselves. So child really lived a very painful moment of that history. She herself did not speak in public. She was very good arguing, there are records of her destroying people, peoples arguments on the stagecoach, but she didnt like to speak publicly. But she was very clear she wanted to defend other womens right to do that. At the same time, she was always more comfortable advocating for others rights than her own and was explicit about that. And much later after the war was over and people like Susan B Anthony really were pushing for suffrage, there was another terrible schism in the Womens Suffrage Movement that many of you know about which is that when the 15th amendment was proposed, which would grant suffrage to black men not women, people like stanton and anthony decided to oppose the 15th amendment. They did it in just viciously racist language in some cases. They would try to scare people out of voting for the 15th amendment by making them feel afraid of what would happen if blackman had the vote. When that happened, child distanced herself entirely from anthony and stanton and aligned herself more with people like lucy stone and Francis Ellen Watkins harper and other women who are working for suffrage at that point. But in her late 60s and early 70s at that point, she was clear she was tired and she was caring for an ailing husband and hungry health herself. She wrote some amazing articles about womens suffrage, again for the independent, but wasnt as involved in it as she was in abolition. I am kind of interested in whether or not she asked for or had editors that would read her manuscripts and give her advice. I was thinking about douglas not being asked to do that. I dont know whether douglass insistence on getting men the vote and not having women as part of the i dont know whether it wouldve been an ally but he just wanted to get the vote first for men because he thought it would be too difficult for women to get the vote and for men to get the vote. So, i dont know what relationship that had to their relationship. Well, douglas himself was very early absolute supporter of womens suffrage. He was at the stanton falls convention. He was very progressive on the question of gender and womens suffrage from very early on. But it is true that later when these very gas and i mean its another terrible example of progressive being pitted against each other, when it became clear that it was going to be one or the other, and you are right, people would say look, the public isnt ready for this. They can maybe handle black men getting the vote but definitely not black men and women. One or the other but not both. Douglas decided, as the child, child was very clear about this, it was more important for blackman to get the vote than women. And she said that in part because what was going on in the south. Because of the racial terrorism going on during reconstruction. She said, if blackman dont get the vote and representatives of their own in the government, they will be continued genocide, essentially. And so she aligned herself with douglass position at that point as well. Was that something popular or not done . You mean like editing a newspaper . A treaty . If people edited things for her . I actually dont know a lot about that. Ive never seen any record of people editing her things for her. Im not sure about that. I think that the way books were produced was so different than, and i dont know the people kept good enough records. If they did, i havent read them. I dont have a great answer to that question. Thank you for all of this. Can you just speak to, i believe she ends up going to new york, and that she worked for garrison, is that right . Can you speak about that . Such a great question. Such a thorny question. Was she working for garrison or not . I am doing an audiobook of the book now and i was just recording the chapter in which that question exactly becomes very painful. Yes, she did, at the end of the beat farming experiment when it was clear husbands farm was failing, she went to new york to edit the national antileave slavery standard which was the journal of the American Antislavery Society. She was also the first woman to do anything like that, to edit a weekly political journal of this sort. It was a very tricky question, whether she worked for garrison. The technical answer was no. Because garrison had the liberator. The National Antislavery Standard was supposed to be independent of garrisons direct influence. He wrote for it, but it was not supposed to be, he was not supposed to be in charge of it. There was one very painful episode when she had decided to come out in favor of disunion, so she had decided the time had come for the north to secede from the south because it was clear that the norths attempts to get slavery to and in the south were not working. So she published an editorial in the National Antislavery Standard arguing that. A couple of weeks later garrison in the liberator said, at the next American Slavery Society meeting, the main item on the agenda will be disunion because we have now decided that disunion is the standard by which every persons patriotism and loyalty to the cause will be judged. This was a major overstep on garrisons part. He should not have been dictating the agenda of the American Antislavery Society. And he should not have been laying down another litmus test for what it meant to be an abolitionist. So child actually rebuked him in print. Which, as you can imagine, the new york newspapers loved, because here we can see again the abolitionist inciting among the abolitionists, the child was very clear she wanted people to oppose slavery according to their own conscience. She felt like garrison was trying to dictate to people what kind of abolitionist they should be. She always felt like even if that would never work, and that it was a mistake, because you needed people to do things out of their own conscience. That caused a kind of, i wont say rift between them because they reconciled pretty quickly. But, in fact, it was her way of saying i dont work for you. I am in the employment of the society which is not the society that youre running. It was a lifelong collaboration, she was one of the last people he saw before he died. So they remained friends. But i do think, when you see these relationships, and i would include her marriage under this category, dedicating yourself to fighting and entrenched injustice is really hard on relationships. Even the best people can really be at odds with each other over disagreements on how to reach people. That probably doesnt surprise anyone in the room. Maybe two more questions if folks have more questions. Weve got one here. Yes, i finished reading your book just this morning. Wow. And they dont usually read books that are long but i just want to tell people, it is very much worth getting a hold of. And im glad to hear youre recording it. This would be, i could easily do three or four more nights of experts excerpts from this. I want to thank you also for taking childs example personally. And i find her a source of courage for myself. When i feel a little down, i think, look at the things she coped with. She had a lot of difficulties that you didnt dwell in the talk, but her life was hard in a lot of ways. And she was equal to the difficulty. That is pretty amazing. Thank you for saying that. I have other the people say, and i think i feel this way myself, in a way, someone said to me recently, its not even that she is so much an inspiration, because its clear to me, anyway, that i dont have what it takes to be someone like her. But, it is still, whatever i can do, to try to emulate some of what she did. And also the other thing is to lift up the voices of people who do have that kind of courage and conviction so that even those of us who dont have the kind of tenacity and courage she did can contribute what we can. Thank you for that. Its going to be a very long audiobook too, so dont be daunted by it. One last thought . Last question back here. And then well wrap up. Im just fascinated by the words the you are using about conversion, converting to abolitionism and to the competition with the preachers and the clergy. And, it just kind of struck me just how, especially in the book, how much abolitionism is like a religion and it really seemed like a religion to her. I know she also struggled with her own religious beliefs. Im just wondering maybe, do you think abolitionism is a kind of religion for her . Interesting. In general. I think i would say not quite because she did have the kind of spiritual vision that was even bigger than abolitionism. She had been very influenced by emmanuel swedenborg who had this complicated but also platonic sort of idea that all truths are interconnected and the great force in the world is love. And, if we can just love each other more purely, we will see the truth better in some of the conflicts that lexus will otherwise follow a. I think she saw abolition is the foremost example of what needed to change for that vision to be realized. But she also was very involved in arguing for the rights of native americans and also as i said, women, she worked hard in her years in new york on prison reform, but also to try to improve the lives of impoverished women. I think her broader spiritual vision was her religion as it were, she never joined a church after she left the swedenborg and church, but her publication was an articulation of this spiritual view under which many of the injustices she spend her life fighting would have fallen. Thank you all so much. [ applause ] thank you to her videographers as well. If you are enjoying American History tv, sign up for a newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule upcoming programs, the presidency and more. Sign up for the American History tv newsletter today and be sure to watch american