In April 2021, Avis Wanda McClinton received a box from an archivist at Haverford College. The former steelworker and Black community activist from North Hills, Pennsylvania, has spent the past 10 years memorializing and activism. Recognize unmarked African American burial sites in Quaker cemeteries. She tore open her box and pulled out a copy of a document that was over 200 years old.
The bundle concerned the Quaker guarantee of freedom, also known as the Manumission, to 413 enslaved African Americans who were freed by contract in the Philadelphia area between 1765 and 1790. As she reads out their names… Polly, Acro, Firas, Diana, Juliet and her children — McClinton saw promise and possibility in their lives. “They were real people, just like you and me,” she said.
McClinton joined the Quaker faith in the early 2000s, when he believed all Quakers were abolitionists. In 1780, Pennsylvania, led by Quaker abolitionists, became the first state to mandate the gradual emancipation of all enslaved people. However, his 339 releases, although fewer than his 413, as a single document sometimes freed multiple slaves, are irrefutable evidence that Quakers tolerated slavery. .
as Community Liaison and Quaker Preservation Activist for Haverford University In his project, “The Exiles: Those Enslaved by the Quakers,” McClinton asked questions that no one had answered before. “What happened to the deportees?”
Last November, Howard University in Washington and 339 Manumissions and Beyond, an advisory group led by McClinton, revealed the fate of 413 Philadelphians who were once enslaved and then faded into national memory. Mr. McClinton inched closer to that answer when he signed a memorandum of understanding to do so.
A hard-won manumission
Germantown Quakers denounced the practice of slavery in 2016, despite being one of the first proponents of abolition. 1688 — Quakers enslaved people.The Philadelphia Annual Meeting (PYM), the organizing body of Quaker congregations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, crime to be denied 1774. 1776 Slaveholders were required to provide proof of emancipation or risk being expelled from worship.
“The process of convincing many slave owners to free their slaves was a long one.” Note David Sutten Lopez, Haverford University graduate student. This included 111 disciplinary proceedings against Quakers who engaged in the slave trade between 1757 and 1776.
Even after the Quakers were expelled, the Society of Friends still “didn’t welcome free black people as equals into the congregation,” says the former history teacher, Quaker, and member of the 339 Manumissions & Beyond project. Dennis Gregg says. They were asked to sit in separate sections.
Controlled but not secure
McClinton is concerned about what life will be like for the newly deported people after the emancipation takes effect.
First, termination does not necessarily occur immediately. These were non-binding documents, she stresses.
Another issue facing newly incarcerated people was community and social support. The Howard University research team investigated what kind of institutional support (such as money and land) the Quakers provided to recently expelled people, and whether Quaker leaders punished members who disobeyed. We plan to investigate.
Knowing that these documents were written in the late 1700s, McClinton pointed out that national emancipation was still about 75 years away. “They weren’t safe! Anyone could just click over their head and be sold back into slavery!”
“God commanded me to take action.”
As the only black person to participate in Haverford’s Manumitted Project, McClinton formed a multiracial advisory committee called . 339 Mani Mission and Beyond The project (consisting of nine members, including Satten Lopez) will launch in late 2022. Its goal is to reveal the full identity and fate of those named in the document. Two members have been proven to be descendants of slave laborers. However, as far as the group knows, Kitty Taylor Mizuno is the only direct descendant. Administrative documents list slave labor.
One of the documents is signed by her maternal great-grandfather, Jonathan David Evans, a rum and molasses importer who lived from 1714 to 1795. Based on a document he signed on his January 7, 1779. , Sixteen years before his death, he had enslaved two people, a woman named Celia and a man named Cesar.
Mizuno met McClinton 20 years ago while working on a Quaker committee for racial justice and equality. In 2022, McClinton invited Mizuno to 339 Mani Mission and Beyond project. After learning that his ancestors participated in slavery, Mizuno feels “God inspired me to take action.” In a recent letter to Haverford College’s alumni magazine, Mizuno wrote: “I think about how the privileged lifestyles and assumptions of slave-owning families continue to be part of our family culture today.” To date, the story of Celia and Cesar’s life after emancipation There is no book with any information or notes about whether they had children.
“Black Ellis Island”
Project member Stephanie Leonard, a former member of the Ambler branch of the NAACP (now based in California), sees a different opportunity. In addition to identifying people who left bondage for freedom and fulfillment, this research will lay the foundation for what she calls the coveted “Black Ellis Island.” Leonard is the mother of biracial children who trace their father’s blood to an Irish village. But when it comes to her own side of the family, she tells her sons: Can not do that. I don’t know if her mother can do it. ”
guided by michael ralphProfessor Cameron Schrier, Dean of African American Studies at Howard University; Natalie Frédéric Pierre, With the help of Howard, an assistant professor of history and a team of undergraduate and graduate students, the researchers plan to compile a comprehensive “book-like” dossier for 54 victims. be. Both your first and last name are listed on the document.. Students will (ideally) create genealogy records for all of her 413 people, including descendants, and organize them in a format compatible with publicly accessible genealogy databases.
“This isn’t just a five-year story, it’s a 25-year story, and that’s where Beyond comes from,” McClinton told Quaker and University of Tennessee students this fall.
Swarthmore College also has an educational institution, McClinton said. Perhaps the New England Annual Meeting will do the same. and the Baltimore Annual Meeting. and the New York Annual Meeting. and Carolina Annual Meeting. She said other Quakers may try to find former enslaved people who have gone unknown. “This is part of really looking at the more complex and true history of our country,” Sutten-Lopez said.