Freedmen's University Podcast

A manicured park located at the helm of North Augusta‘s main thoroughfare – West Forest Avenue – features a monument commemorating the lone white causality of the Hamburg Massacre. As it happens, this violent 1876 event actually left seven men dead, six of whom were black.

References:

• Captain Doc Adams interview PDF downloaded from https://henryshultz.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/sc-in-1876-doc-adams.pdf
• History of the monument https://www.scpictureproject.org/aiken-county/the-hamburg-massacre.html/amp
• A racist article listing terrorist as the "only citizen" to die in Hamburg riot https://www.northaugustastar.com/archives/take-a-trip-to-calhoun-park/article_949efd33-8a81-5410-89b1-5d732f84b4ad.html 
• https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/hamburg-massacre/ 
• https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/hamburg-massacre-1876/ 
• Massacre Day Holiday https://fcit.usf.edu/project/b-massacre/ 
• The trial following the Boston Massacre http://www.john-adams-heritage.com/boston-massacre-trials/

Episode 2 Sandy Cornish Story

Key West, Florida, late 1840's.

You're going through your daily routine.  Grocery lists.  Your wife's to do list.  You're trying to keep up with everything going on in town.   You've got a hundred things on your mind.  Well, one day a bunch of strange men start chasing you?!  You're like what do these people want with me!?!?!  These men know that you are a freedman, but they want to claim you as their slave anyway.  Even Freedmen, who were no longer, slaves had to fight for their freedom in America.

Sandy Cornish was born during a time that American citizens spoke daily about the value of human freedom.  In the Declaration of Independence, the nation declared that human rights were given by God and that no man has a right to alienate a man from his God-given Rights.  The founders, however, were unable to guarantee god given human rights to slaves.  Despite being born in America just three years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Sandy Cornish was born a slave in Maryland in 1793.  He remained enslaved, with no rights, for 46 years.

His master hired him out to work in Florida and there, in 1839, he was allowed to purchase his own freedom.  Slaves often worked regular jobs, but their paychecks were sent to the slave masters.

In 1839, Florida was a territory. It had been a Spanish colony for many years, but Andrew Jackson led an invasion called the Seminole Wars to bring Florida under American control.  Unlike Americans, The Spanish allowed slaves to work for their freedom.  Many Americans, however, intended blacks to be slaves for life.  Florida joined the Union as a slave State in 1845.

Sandy Cornish worked hard and saved enough money to buy freedom for himself in 1839.  

He also bought freedom for his wife, Lillah Cornish.

Many people today compare marriage to slavery.  They say that traditional marriage is intently patriarchal and oppressive.  Freedom for Lillah Cornish did not come from Congress, the Underground Railroad, or Civil Rights Activists. For her, freedom came from her husband's diligent labor, beyond what was required by his slavery.

One unfortunate day, he lost everything in a house fire, including his freedom papers. 

Six men attempted to kidnap him and sell him back into slavery.  Kidnapping was a significant fear for free black men during slavery.  Olaudah Equiano was also nearly kidnapped by lawless men in America.

This episode's "would you rather" question... Would you rather be handicapped or enslaved?

In Port Leon, Key West in the late 1840s, Sandy Cornish was running to the public town square.  In front of everyone, he pulled a knife and cut the muscles in his ankles, he stabbed himself in the hip, and he cut off several fingers on his left hand.  He would never fully recover from those injuries, but he was also worthless as a slave to the kidnappers.  They left him alone and free.

Conservative culture wars claim that capitalism is inherently good.  It is not.  There is good capitalism and bad capitalism.  Good capitalism is demonstrated by Sandy Cornish as he worked diligently on his own farm to do business in his community.  Bad capitalism is when people attacked him in an attempt to sell him as a slave.  This bad capitalism directly contradicts Exodus 21:16. Jesus said that you should love your neighbor as yourself, but if your view of capitalism is unloving to your neighbor, then you shouldn't do it.  

Most Southerners didn't own slaves.  That's true.  It's also true that most Southerners were poor and couldn't afford slaves, but many wished that they could.  Slaves were expensive.  Congress abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 and that was a good thing, but it made existing slaves even more valuable.  So, the attempt to kidnap Sandy Cornish was some thirty years after the ban on importing slaves from Africa.  At the time, he would have been around fifty years old!

How much could you get for a fifty-year-old male slave in 1850?  Probably more than $20,000 today.

Again, many Southerners didn't own slaves, but many also wished that they were wealthy enough to own slaves

This kidnapping attempt was during the build-up to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

He became a prosperous farmer and one of the richest men in Key West.

What's does it mean to be a man, a real man?  One of my favorite preachers, Dr. Voddie Baucham, once said that people often judge manhood by three B's, not Nannie Helen Burrough's three B's either.  (If you're not sure what I'm talking about Google it, but we'll come back to that later. ) The three B's in the culture that he was talking about are the billfold, the ballcourt, and the bedroom.  As if being awesome at those three things makes you a real man.  No.  You can be poor and still be a real man.  Sandy Cornish could play sports with his injuries from the kidnapping attempt, but he was definitely a real man.

A real man loves God and loves his neighbor.  

Accordingly, Sandy Cornish became a prominent leader in the Freedmen's town of Bahama Village in Key West AND he established Cornish AME Church which served the community and provided shelter during hurricanes.  I'll A real man takes care of his wife's freedom and provided for her.  Freedmen make men free.  A real man isn't so connected to his hometown of Maryland that he couldn't move to another state to be free.  

Lessons from the Freedmen:

• Like Sandy Cornish, we should work hard to keep our families together.
• Like Sandy Cornish, we should work hard for the economic freedom for our families.
• Like Sandy Cornish, we should get out of our comfort zones and relocate, if necessary, for the success of our families.
• Like Sandy Cornish, we should use our freedom to be a blessing to others and build up our communities.

It's Spring, 1850.  Congress is stuck in a heated debate over how to organize the new territories gained from the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican American War.  Some Northerners in the Whig Party are pushing for more Free States, but Southerners are pushing for more Slave States.  
 
You are a Black Christian living in New York.  You mainly focus on your ministry and your newspaper, but this debate has your undivided attention. Congressman James Mason of Virginia has just written a bill that strengthens the sixty-year-old Fugitive Slave Law that George Washington had signed.  You are especially concerned because you ARE a Fugitive Slaves from Maryland.  Your parents ran away while you were a child.  You were raised as a free person in New York.  You are a well-educated author and the pastor of a multi-ethnic church, but if this bill passes, you could be captured, chained, and sent to a cotton field.
 
This frightening scenario became a reality for Samuel Ringgold Ward when Congress passed the Compromise of 1850.
 
Someone may ask, “What’s a Freedman? What do you mean?  Who are the Freedmen?
 

Freedmen are people who were enslaved but have been set free from bondage.  This is where we get names like the Freedmen's Bureau. We all know a little bit about slavery from history class, but let's dig in a bit.  Right? Samuel Ringgold Ward was slave and Slave or free, were the only two classes that mattered to a Black man in those days.  Now, I know we struggle with the New Jim Crow.  We still struggle with the Old Jim Crow, and we still have to deal with police violence, but Samuel Ward said that you can't imagine life as a slave!

If you're a parent, and your baby has ever been sick.  Man! Right? Like, you can't think of anything you want more than for your baby to get well.  Right?  Not so for a slave.  Samuel was a sick baby.  Because he was so sick, he was allowed to stay with his mom, because the slave master can't get much money from selling a sick slave baby.  So, his momma was stuck in her prayers.  Okay?  If you pray that your baby gets better then your baby’s gonna get sold, but if you pray that your baby stays sick then your baby can die.  What you gonna do?  Samuel Ward said, You whose children are born free, can't really understand what his parents endured.  

So, for Samuel Ward's parents, it didn't matter if people called you Black, or Negro, Colored, or African American.  It only mattered if they called you a Freedman!  They knew that they could be killed or tortured for running away, but they put their lives on the line and took that chance.  They ran away as a father, mother, and baby.  #BlackFamily

So with that in mind.

• We are not Black or Negro.  Why label anyone by the color of their skin?!?! 
• We are not African-American, either.  Our fathers did not immigrate from Africa, so why label us as though we are African immigrants?

So who are we?  We are the descendants of the Freedmen. 
 
Okay, so why Freedmen’s University?
 
Once a Freedman, Samuel and his family were still dirt poor, and like many of us have had to do, ...they stayed with relatives.  The relatives they stayed within New York City were also the parents of the famous preacher, Henry Highland Garnet.  A feminist activist once told me that the nuclear family has never been part of the black American experience, I completely disagree with that!  A lot of times the family is all we had!

Samuel Ward's first lessons came from his father while they were working in the garden.  He later attended public school in New York and like Francis Grimke, he also wrote about how there is no time in America where a Black person isn't reminded that they are Black.  They often ask, why do you keep bringing up race?  Samuel Ward said that whether it was lunchtime, sports, walking down the street, or especially if he ever protested anything or looked for a promotion, somebody reminded him of his skin color!

This was the life that Samuel Ward lived as a Freedman.

We could've called this Freedmen's Institute or Freedmen's College, but we didn't want to focus on one small aspect of the Freedmen.  People will often reduce a Freedman like Sojourner Truth to women’s rights, or they may reduce Harriet Tubman to the Underground Railroad.   Robert Smalls has been tragically reduced to his just his escape from Charleston Harbor, or in probably the worst example, George Washington Carver has become the Peanut Guy.  We have no intention of doing that.

The word ”University” means the sum of all things or “the whole”.  So, the sum of the stars and galaxies are found in the universe. Instead of reducing our heroes to a quote that is useful in making our point, we wanted to take a look at their world.  To find out what was important to them and how they lived.

At sixteen years old, Samuel met a very influential and powerful Black preacher by the name of David Ruggles.  Ruggles was a very active abolitionist who also opened his home to a runaway slave named Frederick Douglass. Douglass was married in David Ruggles's home. Frederick Douglass would later refer to Samuel Ward as the most eloquent of the abolitionist preachers. 

Samuel Ward got a job working for David Ruggles.  That year Samuel Ward said, “It pleased God to answer the prayers of my parents, in my conversion.” Six years later, he was licensed to preach the gospel by the New York Congregational Association. Samuel did not see Christianity as the White man’s religion.  Instead, he understood the Bible as the greatest enemy of slaveholders.  Quoting Deuteronomy 23:15, Samuel Ward denounced the Fugitive Slave law as a violation of God's Law.  He said that [The Fugitive Slave] shall have the law of Almighty God to protect him, the law which says, “Thou shalt not return to the master the servant that is escaped unto thee, but he shall dwell with thee in thy gates".
 

A recurring theme in the writings of the Freedmen is a strong devotion to Christianity as well as the frequent use of Bible verses in their arguments.  Black American history is decidedly Christian.  Anyone who talks about black history and doesn’t mention Christianity is really doing a disservice to their hearers because Christianity is entrenched within the Black American Experience.  I mean, Samuel Ward's argument against the Fugitive Slave Law came straight out of Deuteronomy! Almost everybody had that Grandma back in the day that could “get a prayer through”.  The movement of the abolitionists in the 1800s was a Christian movement.  The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s found pastors and ministers at the forefront. Therefore, on this podcast, we won’t shy away from the Christianity of our forefathers.

The professors at Freedmen's University are the great heroes of the past and they teach whatever lessons they want. One lesson that they frequently teach is that Freedmen Make Men Free.  They are never satisfied by their own freedom, but other men must be made free as well.

Despite Samuel Ward's efforts, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress in 1850.  The next year, government officials intended to enforce the new law in Syracuse at an abolitionist convention. William Henry, called Jerry, was a runaway slave who was captured and imprisoned at the convention.  Samuel Ringgold Ward and the other abolitionist were not having it. In what is known as the Jerry Rescue, Samuel Ward participated in a raid to recapture William Henry and set him free.

Malcolm X rightly condemned Black pastors who preached non-violence in the face of violent oppressors. Proverbs 25:26 Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked. Proverbs 25:26 ESV Again, Freedmen make men free.  Would your pastor take up arms to free a man who was wrongly imprisoned?  Samuel Ward did.  He immediately fled the US in 1851.

Samuel Ward was also involved in politics, but he was not a Democrat.  During his time, the Andrew Jackson Democrats pushed hard for the expansion of slavery.  He was not a Whig.  The Whigs were the remnants of the original Democratic Party leftover after Andrew Jackson's split and they were often pro-slavery. He was also not a Republican.  The Republican party was founded in 1854, but Samuel had fled the nation three years earlier from the Jerry Rescue.  Instead, he worked diligently for the Anti-Slavery Liberty Party.

Freedmen's University is non-partisan because Black History is Non-Partisan.  Don't hear what I'm not saying. There are plenty of solid Democrats and Solid Republicans in Black history, but Black history itself isn't on one side or the other. People usually have a political bias and they try to force that on others. Over the years many of our great leaders have been reduced to political talking points by both Republicans and Democrats. We have been blessed by both parties and oppressed by both parties.  Our history is full of prominent Republicans and prominent Democrats and to reduce any of them down to just a political talking point seems like an insult to their legacy, an insult to their knowledge, and ultimately an insult to their Humanity.  If we are to honor our forefathers, we should at least take the time to understand what they had to say about many of the issues that was the struggle with today.  You don't have to be Conservative to be Christian and you don't have to be a Liberal to be Black.

There are many lessons that can be learned from our forefathers. The Fifth Commandment teaches us to honor father and mother, so we are devoted to honoring our forefathers by bringing modern light to the beliefs, experiences, and teachings of the Freedmen.