Antebellum Black Philadelphia and the Global Black Diaspora

Washington Square served as a gathering place for the local Black community in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

It has always been a place of burial for numerous groups - the Black Community, Revolutionary War soldiers, prisoners from the Walnut Street Prison, victims of the 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic.

African and Haitian descended peoples revered their ancestors here through pouring libations and the use of the drum. At times worship services were held here as well. The sound of the drum caused the local neighborhood to give the space the moniker 'Congo Square'.

As we walk from Congo Square, we pass by the location of the Walnut Street Prison and the former St. Thomas African Episcopal Church and it's Burial Ground.

All three..the Church, The Prison and the Burial Ground have been moved or destroyed.

We will discuss the energies of the space while considering the political actions of Reverend Absalom Jones and Black leaders as they activated politically perhaps in response to the hope of the Haitian Revolution.

The St. Thomas African Episcopal Church was one of the earliest Black churches founded in Philadelphia.

St. Thomas' founder, the Reverend Absalom Jones, not only led the church but worked together with other Black leaders to build Black political power through political remonstrations, petition writing, speaking and continue to support freedom seekers.

Following the Haitian Revolution, this political writing and remonstration picked up. The 1838 Census tells us that Catholic Haitians lived closed to each other. The records tell us they attended Old. St. Joes, a stone's throw from St. Thomas.

We can imagine a very active 5th street between Walnut and Spruce on Sunday mornings, just a block away from Independence Hall. There would be songs drifting through the air, and the sounds of drums resonating off the buildings.

And we would see Black people from across the Black diaspora, speaking French, Creole, English and maybe even Mende, walking to and from church, discussing international affairs and visiting the local burial grounds.

Black people then and now are not a monolith.

Then and now, we started in Africa and now come from all over the world.

Then and now, we speak a multitude of languages, and inhabit a multitude of colors.

We stop at J.P Burr's house to talk through Black Society, the lines between Black and White, and socioeconomic diversity in the free Antebellum Black metropolis.

Jean Pierre Burr was the son of Aaron Burr and his East Indian Housekeeper Eugénie Beauharnais. Burr and his sister Louisa were raised in Philadelphia and become leaders in the Black community.

The idea of migrating to a Haiti, a free Black country, grew in the minds of free Black people in Philadelphia. Ideas and people flowed back and forth, creating a sense of a global Black identity.

Louisa Burr was extraordinary for both her abolitionist work and for raising four children by herself after her husband died. In 1857, her son Frank Webb wrote one of the first novels of free Black daily life, The Garies and Their Friends. Burr's family was also involved movement to encourage emigration to Haiti.

J.P. Burr was most noted for his work as President of the American Moral Reform Society. He was a founder of the Demosthenian institute, which bought men together to share speeches and writing. The Demonsthenian's met here at Burr's house. These writings were published in a newspaper called the Demosthenian Shield.

in 1838 Richard Allen's wife Sarah lived here.

We pause to consider how Black people supported each other and how many buildings in this area were used as places of sanctuary.

We remember that supporting people to escape bondage was illegal in 1838 and had to be conducted in stealth.

This didn't stop anybody. We know that the volumes of freedom seekers were often in the hundreds per night and the homes throughout the city were used as places of sanctuary.

In the 1838 census, Sarah Allen lived here with 25 people, 6 of whom were not native to the state. As a very wealthy woman, Sarah Allen could have stayed in this house by herself. But she did not.

Many freedom seekers chose Philadelphia as their home. Black people who were bought here forcibly, like the 800 Haitians who arrived enslaved after the Haitian revolution, very quickly found sanctuary and become free in the Black Metropolis.

From a diasporic perspective we know that the Vigilant Committee was not only sending people further north to freedom, but world wide, to Liverpool, England and to Trinidad, as well as Canada.

 _{Old picture of 4th Street courtesy  The Free Library}  

Dr. Belfast Burton leaves Philadelphia for Haiti...

But comes back!

We stop close to his house at 198 South 4th Street to think about what it meant to move to Haiti.

Belfast Burton was a physician. He was born an enslaved person but friends purchased his freedom and he then indentured under a doctor who enabled him to attend classes at Penn's medical college. Despite his brilliance in medicine, Penn would not confer a degree on him because he was Black.

He attended St. Thomas church and he owned his home. He was fluent in French and English and become involved in the Haitian emigration movement. He moved to Haiti in 1825, but returned in 1830. In Haiti he purchased plantations and it's unclear how he treated the workers there. He was close to Rev. Jones and perhaps a rival of Rev. Allen for influence concerning emigration. (Julie Winch, 134).

Burton would have probably been influenced by international diplomat and leader of the Haitian emigration movement, Prince Saunders. Saunders occasionally lived in Philly and had deep ties to the Black Metropolis, beginning in 1818 when he gave an influential speech on Haitian emigration at Mother Bethel.

Saunders was involved in international politics from an early age.  He received his education at Dartmouth and started a school in Boston in 1816.  He married Paul Cuffee’s daughter and worked with Thomas Paul, leader in the Baptist church, to encourage African and eventually Haitian Colonization.  Together Paul and Sanders visited London and Haiti to meet with abolition and colonization officials. He became an aid to Emperor Henri Christophe in Haiti in the late 1810s. In Haiti he founded schools and introduced vaccinations, inoculating Emperor Christophe himself.    He lived in Philly from 1821-23. Even though the colony didn’t come to pass, Saunders became Haiti's Attorney General and died in Haiti in 1839. 

Map courtesy David Rumsey Collection

We now come all the way home. We honor the first peoples.

And acknowledge that this land is still in active colonization.

Stolen.

We also recognize that our peoples have intermixed and always lived together both in the Black Metropolis and the full region and

that we are also Afro-Indigenous.

Wanishe Ashe!

In 1793 eight native chiefs came to visit President Washington. This was during the height of the yellow fever epidemic and they caught a combination of small pox and yellow fever. They are buried here at St. Peters. But we must first acknowledge the land that was shared with us by the Lenni Lenape, and pray for healing of the wrongs to our indigenous ancestors, with special thought to the Conestoga.

The chiefs names are: Barkskin, Chief of the Penkishow Nation, LaGese, Chief of the Pottawamie Nation, Apuatapea, Piankashaw War Chief, Bigigh Weatons, Wabash Nation War Chief Toma, War Chief of the Pawania, Grand Joseph, Chief of the Veattonns Nation, Wapateet, War Chief of the Payagheya Nation, Little Elk

The history of the Conestoga is provided courtesy of The Library Company

Black Philadelphians traveled the world and were aware of the world.

We exercised our knowledge of the global financial system to push against the slave empire.

We pause at James Forten's house to consider the tension that existed between living well and free and still continuing to fight for enslaved brethern the world over.

James Forten is arguably the most famous of Black Philadelphia's leaders. James Forten made his financial fortune in the sailing industry. Black Philadelphians participated in all parts of the shipping industry as dock workers, sailors, and equippers. Sailors traveled the world and they would bring back with them news of Black people globally, at a faster pace and usually with a more accurate narrative than newspapers. Sailors helped to keep Black people throughout the Diaspora connected to each other. As a sail maker who made sails from cotton, Forten had a complicated relationship with global trade. When he started his business, cotton was sourced from Europe. But within a decade, the American south became the global provider of cotton. Cotton was produced using enslaved labor. This was not a truth that Forten could escape. Black Philadelphians were well aware that many major commodities were produced by enslaved labor. Aggregating collective buying power, the Colored Free Produce Movement sought to find other sources of goods in order to put financial pressure on the slave empire.

Francis Ellen Harper Watkins led the Free Produce movement in Philadelphia, which had a free produce store opened by William Whipper as early as 1834.

 Lithograph courtesy Library Company 

Global Liberation Theology and Global Black consciousness all found life and energy here in the Free Black Metropolis.

As as the physical center of the Black Metropolis, Mother Bethel AME is where we will stop and ask ourselves was Democracy rising or setting in 1838?