No Mountain High Enough

ED: Dora Franks was one of the many people still enslaved on a Mississippi plantation in the summer of 1865. For her, salvation didn’t come in the form of a soldier.

BRENDA STEVENSON: Her brother, she said, sneaked into the house, and said, get ready. You’re free now, and I’m taking you with me. And he did.

ED: This is Brenda Stevenson, a historian at UCLA. She’s written extensively about stories like this one– stories of former slaves attempting to reassemble families that had been torn apart many times over, going back many generations. It was a daunting task, considering how far and wide the Southern slave market stretched, and how many different kin connections a freed person could have.

It was not uncommon for an enslaved person to have started a family on one plantation, only to be sold to another, and forced into a child bearing relationship with a new partner. I asked Brenda to describe some of the tough choices that freed people faced as they tried to piece their families back together.

BRENDA STEVENSON: There were thousands of people who hit the roads and went to find family members– tens of thousands, actually. And of course, there were hundreds, and even thousands, who advertised for family members, who asked, do you know where my family members are? I am located this place. I was sold at this time. This was my master at this time. My mother’s name was this. Can you help me to find her?

There were people who had people write letters for them– those who were literate– to ask their former masters, do you know who bought my mother? Who brought my brother, my sister, et cetera, et cetera. So people really did feel as if they could connect. And they wouldn’t allow themselves to think that they could not.

ED: Would they find any collaboration with former masters and mistresses and speculators and such?

BRENDA STEVENSON: Well, they would write to the former masters. And sometimes the masters would cooperate. But remember, the master class at this point, is also devastated. And they are trying to reconnect their families. They are trying to get their sons back, who had been off at the war. They’re trying to figure out their finances.

I don’t think that it’s uppermost in their mind that they’re trying to connect these persons who were enslaved, who no longer are working for them, that they don’t have control over. We do certainly find some instances where people said, you might look in this area, or she was bought by this person. That was much more likely to happen, however, if the person actually arrived at the former master’s home and asked.

ED: Would that not have been resented, and maybe even dangerous?

BRENDA STEVENSON: It could actually be dangerous. And I think the former slave who was looking for a family member had to be very careful, and had to decide what was the best way to approach this plantation. And that’s why, for example, this woman, Dora Franks, her brother climbed into a window and said, get your things together. We’re leaving.

And so people often would have to use a clandestine way to actually get their relative.

ED: Now there was an amazing story here in the liberation of Richmond. One of the leaders of the United States colored troops– or actually, one of the chaplains– stood up and started giving a talk. And a woman in the audience stepped up and says, I’m your mother. He had been taken away from her at an early age.

And so there he is, marching back into Richmond, and his mother recognizes him. And they patch up. It seems sort of too good to be true. But it sounds, what you’re telling me, Brenda, is that these stories happened all across the South.

BRENDA STEVENSON: They did happen all across the South. And these were amazing stories of just people’s prayers being answered, and their desires coming true. There was a lot of anxiety around it, too, whether or not you would meet a relative– a cousin or a sister– and become romantically involved. And that becomes some of the folklore that comes out of the post-slave era, is that people would be reunited and not know that they were blood related, and that kind of thing. So there’s a lot going on here.

ED: Were the churches of help? The African American church had been one way that people could sort of maintain contact with people who’ve been sold away, and still wanted access to the church where they went. Was that one of the networks that would be useful?

BRENDA STEVENSON: The churches would be a useful network, because people in the churches often were literate, and they are the ones who could help to write the notices for the newspapers, write the letters to former masters, also to former slave traders, to try to find, connect people with their lost loved ones. The churches also were interesting, too, because they insisted that former slave couples get married.

Slaves could not legally marry. And so they instituted these group marriages. And they insisted, in many places, you have to marry. You cannot just live together any longer. And I think that that’s sort of an interesting thing that happens as a result of the war.

ED: You mentioned the large scale marriages that the Freedman’s Bureau would enact. Were all the participants in that eager to do so? Do we have any sense that these were enforced marriages on the parts of the Union Army who were just determined to bring progress– as they saw it– to the South?

BRENDA STEVENSON: There were some people who resisted, mostly men. But there were a few women too who decided that they were not going to stay with their husbands– that they had been forced into these relationships by their masters, and they were not going to stay with them. But there were some tragedies, as well.

There’s a story of this man who talked about his father– Henderson Beckett– who talked about his father. They lived in Texas. And his father had had a family in Florida, and then was sold to Texas, and had several children.

Well, when the war ended, the father went back to his family in Florida. And of course, that was heartbreak for the family that had been created in Texas. So these were difficult decisions that had to be made. But I think what’s most important is that we understand that the institution of slavery, as harsh as it was, did not kill this desire to have family, and that family was really at the core of the social and psychological lives of these people.

ED: Brenda Stevenson is a historian at UCLA. She’s the author of Life in Black and White– Family and Community in the Slave South.