Jeremiah Burke SandersonSanderson, Jeremiah Burke

Born into the free black community in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Jeremiah Burke Sanderson (1821–75) became a leader in the antislavery movement during the 1840s. From his barbershop, a popular meeting place for African American men, he sold issues of the Liberator. He also joined the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society, later becoming its secretary. After a successful lecture tour of the Northeast, he addressed the 1845 meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1853 he was appointed to the National Council of the Colored People and attended several black state conventions after moving to California in 1854. He remained active in politics, promoting the causes of black people against Jim Crow laws and of black education in California for the rest of his life. Kathryn Grover, The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (Amherst, Mass., 2001), 170, 172–75, 180, 231, 276, 314; Jack Salzman, ed., Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 5 vols. (New York, 1996), 5:2385; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:387–88n. to Frederick Douglass

New Bedford, Dec. 20, 1848;

Dear Douglass:—I have recently attended a Quarterly Examination of our city High School. It has suggested a few thoughts in regard to prejudice, progress, &c., which I wish to record, and which I hope may not be uninteresting to you or your readers.

Among the spectators at the examination, I noticed Mrs. Paulina Wright. She has been delivering a course of lectures here to ladies upon Anatomy and Physiology, and they are spoken of in high terms. You may be aware that Jno. F. Emerson, Esq., is the Principal of this school. He is a true friend of the Anti-Slavery cause. In this his amiable wife is ONE with him. Long a witness of their devotion to that cause, I can never speak of them but with gratitude. Years ago they felt themselves obliged, for conscience' sake, to come out of a pro-slavery church, which admitted to its holy communion those who traded in the bodies and souls of men, a course which exposed them to popular prejudice, and subjected them to the loss of many old associations and dear friends. But his long experience, acknowledged ability and deserved reputation as a teacher, have enabled him to retain the place of Principal in our High School.

Of the original pieces and recitations presented by the pupils at the examination, I will speak of one, because it moved me at the time. It was Whittier's poem, "Massachusetts to Virginia," written in '43, during the Latimer excitement. It was recited by a lad, George Wing. That boy, if he lives, will be an abolitionist—an advocate of justice.—You remember the Old Dominion had sent the bloodhounds up to Massachusetts, around the hearths and homes near Bunker Hill—hunting human freedom amid the graves of the fathers. They had seized Latimer, and put him in a Boston jail; a Boston lawyer was base enough to hire himself attorney to a Virginia slave-catcher. The people were deeply excited. Whittier felt that the very stones would cry out. He spoke in that poem in language that thrills one to read it.

What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved
False to their father's memory—false to the faith they loved;
If she can scott at Freedom, and its Great Charter spurn,
Must WE of Massachusetts from Truth and Duty turn?
We wage no war—we life no arm—we fling no torch within
The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin:
We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can,
With the strong upward tendencies and God-like soul of man!
But for us and for our children, the vow that we have given
For freedom and humanity, is registered in heaven—
No slave-hunt in our borders, no pirate on our strand—
No fetters in the Bay State, no slave upon our land!

These are but a few lines from the poem. It was refreshing to the heart to hear it.—That such pieces are selected for recitation in our school, is significant.

Thank God, in New Bedford schools there is no prejudice against color tolerated. The pupils, white and colored, study and recite together. As a consequence, a sense of equality is cultivated—a spirit of emulation is awakened among all classes. Side by side, all receive instruction. Minds and morals expand simultaneously under the generous hand of culture. The great truth, that God is the Father of all, and has made of one blood all the nations, is early impressed. Yet in many towns and cities of New England, it is still thought proper by the "wise and prudent," to prohibit colored youth from enjoying equal school privileges. For several years past, in the city of Boston, with its reputation for wisdom and morality, the friends of justice have been laboring to secure for her colored citizens an equal participation in the advantages of her excellent public schools. How just the demand, that industrious, upright, tax-paying citizens should have their children enjoy the benefits of those institutions for whose support they are equally taxed. To deprive them of this is unjust. To colonize them into separate schools, whether under an indifferent or superior supervision, is both unjust and insulting.

In 1845, the managers of our Lyceum established a rule, colonizing the colored people who attended its lectures. A large number of its members remonstrated against it.—Their remonstrance was disregarded, and they withdrew from the institution. Subsequently, those managers endeavored to secure the services of Ralph W. Emerson, Theodore Parker and Chas. Sumner—among the most learned, eloquent and popular lecturers of this country. Each of these gentlemen at once refused to lecture before an institution, established for the improvement of the people, while its managers enforced a rule insulting and degrading to a large number who so greatly needed its benefits. My heart reverenced them for such a noble rebuke of the injustice. It has not been forgotten by the people of New Bedford, nor without effect upon them.

In 1846, the "Lecture Association" was formed by those who protested against that rule of the Lyceum managers. The association was opened to all equally and unrestrictedly. It is a standing protest against caste, and has been well sustained. When I mention as among those who have lectured before it—Messrs. Osgood, of Providence, Hale, of New Hampshire, Clark, Channing, GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. , Parker, Phillips and Sumner, of Boston, and Weirs, of our own city, nothing more need be said of the lectures. Since the Association was formed, the managers of the Lyceum have rescinded the unjust rule. Places of popular amusement and instruction are now freely open to all. Among those who attend them, none conduct themselves with more propriety than our colored citizens.

Some time since, several ladies visited our city and attended a place of amusement. The performer, supposing that he could do it with impunity, alluded insultingly to them. They left the performance. The next day, the editor of one of the papers, Mr. H. Tilden, Esq., rebuked the performer, assuring him that the intelligent people of New Bedford will not sanction such conduct.

I know the disadvantages you labor under in New York in regard to schools. We feel as suffering with you. New England has yet much to do. Massachusetts, though in advance of the rest of the States, must cease entirely from injuring and insulting her colored citizens, than whom, she has none who more truly love her institutions—none who will more earnestly try to deserve her care and protection.

I have hope. We see our youth coming up with improved culture and humane sentiments, under a deeper conviction of the evils of war, intemperance, slavery and caste—when public attention is aroused, as it never before has been, to these questions—when minds are filled with the thought of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"—when literature is becoming instinct with their spirit, abolitionists look most hopefully to New England.—While they labor, and pray, and wait for the "good time coming," as the shepherds to the star in the East, they look to New England to go forward.

Yours for Truth,

J. B. Sanderson.