Setting the Record Straight

Joanne Freeman: I really enjoyed that story that we just heard from Melissa about this bond between the Choctaw and the Irish. I think it really says a lot about the surprise and connections that can come out during tough times, and the incredible spirit of generosity that can result. Now I want to share another story, but this one’s pretty different.

Joanne Freeman: It’s still a story about a community going out of its way to give to another group in a time of hardship, but there are big differences in how the folks on the receiving end excepted that generosity. And this time instead of spanning the Atlantic, we’re going to stay in one city, Philadelphia.

Joanne Freeman: This story takes place in 1793, when Philadelphia was the capital of a brand new United States, and at the time one of the city’s biggest religious leaders was a man named Bishop Richard Allen.

Rich Newman: He’s a church builder, a civil rights leader, and a really important activist for civil rights in the early Republic.

Joanne Freeman: Rich Newman is going to help us tell this story. He wrote a biography about Richard Allen called Freedom’s Prophet. Now Rich says 1793 was a really important year for Allen. He had recently led a big walkout from the Methodist Church because he and other African Americans were fed up with segregation in the ministry. So Allen decided to build his own.

Rich Newman: Which will eventually become Mother Bethel, the lead church, and the African Methodist Church denomination. So in the early 1790s he’s trying to get African-American congregants to join his church. He’s trying to get white and black people to donate to the church.

Joanne Freeman: But while Allen is out trying to build support for his new church, the city is struck with a devastating disease called yellow fever.

Rich Newman: Yellow fever, as name would imply, is a bilous fever. So folks get high temperatures, they feel nauseous and sick. There is a yellowing of the skin and the eyes, and the thing that strikes you about the yellow fever is the physicality of it. It’s not something that’s hidden. When people are sick with it, they look sick.

Rich Newman: The city itself seems sick, so people start shutting off their homes. They close doors, they close the shutters. They don’t let people in or out, they yell at people passing by. “If you’re sick with the yellow fever, I’ll shoot you if you walk by from me.” So the city is in every way sick and people are really worried that it’ll fall apart.

Joanne Freeman: So how big was it? How many people were affected by it?

Rich Newman: It wipes out a big segment of the Philadelphia population. Philadelphia is the United state’s largest city at the time. It has about 50,000 people, and historians estimate that between four and 5,000 people may be more perished in this deadly epidemic.

Joanne Freeman: As yellow fever ravaged Philadelphia, people were scrambling to try and figure out how to treat people with the disease. That’s where a physician named Benjamin Rush comes in.

Rich Newman: Benjamin Rush is one of the leading physicians in the United States at that time, he had trained in Europe. He’s also a noted reformer and politician. He had signed the declaration of independence, and so he’s one of the main civic leaders in Philadelphia when the yellow fever strikes.

Joanne Freeman: So rush conjures this idea for how to help people who are infected, but it’s based on a belief that turns out to be very, very wrong.

Rich Newman: Benjamin Rush believed that African Americans were immune from the yellow fever. As a medical man, he was sure in his science, and it turns out that he shouldn’t have been because he was wrong. African Americans are susceptible to the yellow fever. But Benjamin Rush thought that because during the early phases of the disease and from reports elsewhere, that African Americans weren’t getting as infected as whites, and so therefore, they were immune.

Rich Newman: And because they were immune, this was probably an opportunity offered by God to let African Americans enter the public stage and help white Philadelphians recover from the yellow fever.

Joanne Freeman: So propelled by this faulty assumption. Rush goes to two of the most influential African American leaders in the city. Richard Allen and his friend Absalom Jones.

Rich Newman: And he asked them to kind of put all of their worries and qualms about getting sick aside and to assist the sick and the poor of Philadelphia. So this means going out into the city and finding people who are sick, treating them. If people have perished, getting them out of their houses, burying them, taking what they think are infected, articles of clothing.

Rich Newman: So African-Americans are tasked with burying some of these things, so that the city won’t have some of these leftover items to spread the disease. So Benjamin Rush really prevails upon African Americans to put their lives at risk and to help save the city of Philadelphia at this moment of crisis.

Joanne Freeman: Wow. And Allen basically agrees to help corral that effort.

Rich Newman: Yes. Both Allen and Rush are guided by a religious sensibility, which says this is a special moment perhaps offered by a just God, which will African Americans to prove their worth to Philadelphians as equal citizens. Because, one of the other things that’s going on at this time is that Pennsylvania is still in the early stages of an emancipation process. So both Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, who are in the abolition movement, agree that this might be a very special and providential moment where African Americans, and saving the city can prove their fitness for freedom and thus prove the worth of emancipation itself.

Joanne Freeman: So for Richard Allen, it’s kind of like killing two birds with one stone, or in this case, three birds. Allen believes the rescue effort will number one, ethically be the right thing to do. Number two, bolster their case for emancipation across the United States. And number three, help him gain support for building his new church.

Joanne Freeman: And so with Allen’s leadership, the African American community lends a hand and gets to work. And at first things seem to be going well. There was a sense of gratitude for their health.

Rich Newman: When they find out that African Americans are going to serve as nurses and pallbearers and aid workers, they call them to their private homes. They let African-Americans like Allen and Jones into their house, they let them touch their bodies. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones are trained in the art of bleeding, which Benjamin Rush is a big proponent of. They said that they bled 800 people.

Rich Newman: And I want you to conjure this image of African Americans holding onto a blade and touching it to white people’s skin. Not only at this moment of crisis for Philadelphia, but when you’ve got these big debates over slavery and freedom in the Atlantic world, the revolution in Saint domingue is going on at this time. And there are reports spreading throughout Philadelphia society.

Rich Newman: So when whites let African Americans like Allen and Jones into their home, and they let them aid their families and physically touch them, I think it’s a real genuine feeling of gratitude that they offered to black aid workers. And so I don’t underrate it at all.

Joanne Freeman: But things start to change. When a publisher named Matthew Carey enters the picture. And when Carey wrote something, people definitely read it. He was enormously influential in the publishing world at the time.

Rich Newman: But when the yellow fever strikes, he joins a lot of other white people of means in leaving the city. He heads out of infected Philadelphia. And when he returns several months later, he hears stories from a few people about African Americans who took advantage of the yellow fever, to exploit white homes, white kindness.

Rich Newman: Allen and Jones argue that these are libelous stories. They’re false, they’re sensationalized. But Matthew Carey sees an opportunity to not only tell a tale about a yellow fever, Philadelphia that will sell some pamphlets and make some money. But to weigh in on this debate over slavery and freedom.

Rich Newman: And so when he publishes his history of the yellow fever near the end of 1793, he celebrates a few black leaders like Allen and Jones for doing some heroic deeds, but he castigates most African Americans for engaging in what he refers to as pilfering and plundering of white homes, charging too much for nursing services, stealing outright from white homes.

Speaker 12: The great demand for nurses afforded an opportunity for imposition, which was eagerly seized by some of the vilest of the blacks. They extorted two, three, four, and even $5 a night for attendance, which would have been well paid by a single dollar. Some of them were even detected in plundering the houses of the sick, but it is wrong to cast a censure on the whole for this sort of conduct, as many have done.

Speaker 12: The services of Jones, Allen and Gray and others of their color have been very great and demand public gratitude.

Rich Newman: Allen and the black community are outraged. They think this is a false hood. It’s not based in truth. And so Carey’s pamphlet motivates Allen and Jones to write their own pamphlet, their own history of the yellow fever in which they, as they claim in that pamphlet, seek to set the historical record straight.

Rich Newman: And what’s amazing about the pamphlet is that first and foremost, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones directly take on Matthew Carey and this problem of black stereotyping. They say, we’ve read this pamphlet, the pamphlet has already gone through several additions. It’s selling like hotcakes. It’s a blockbuster in Philadelphia, and it’s telling falsehoods about the black community.

Rich Newman: So we want to correct the historical record, and set people straight. The second thing that Allen and Jones do in that pamphlet is tell a tale of black heroism. So African Americans were approached during the yellow fever epidemic they say. White leaders like Benjamin Rush wanted them to help out during this time of need, and African Americans put aside all of their personal reservations and risk their health to save the city.

Rich Newman: And in doing so, they interacted with a wide variety of white people who were desperately in need. And so what they ended up doing is talking about the way that brotherly love fell apart in Philadelphia during the yellow fever epidemic. Family member turned against family member, neighbor turned against neighbor, and many people who could, like Matthew Carey left to see, and African Americans who and large couldn’t, and eventually even if they could, there was a quarantine that kept people in Philadelphia.

Rich Newman: So African Americans, in Allen and Jones is rendering are the people who are left in the city and as a community, the only group that combines their efforts to help save white as well as black Philadelphians. And the thanks they get is this horrible pamphlet from Matthew Carey blaming them for exploiting the yellow fever to get personal wealth, to steal things.

Rich Newman: So they’re really upset. And in this pamphlet they attempt to turn that anger into something that will redeem African Americans in the public eye.

Speaker 13: We feel ourselves sensibly aggrieved by the censorious epithets of many, who did not render the least assistance in the time of necessity, yet are liberal of their censure of us. For the prices paid for our services were no one knew how to make a proposal to anyone, they wanted to assist them. At first, we made no charge, but left it to those we served and removing their dare to give what they thought fit. We set no price until the reward was fixed by those we had served.

Rich Newman: What Richard Allen does at the end of that pamphlet is he attaches a couple of addresses to the people at large, not just to Philadelphia. He addresses the nation in a series of missives, including a really important anti-slavery section, which is kind of a pamphlet in its own right, and it’s an entitled and addressed to those who keep slaves and approve the practice.

Rich Newman: And he says what we see in yellow fever, Philadelphia, a bald example of racism and racial stereotyping flows from slavery. And so this is a lesson to Americans that to confront the problems of the yellow fever, we have to confront slavery and racial injustice. So Richard Allen really uses the yellow fever pamphlet as an opportunity to strike a blow for the abolitionist movement as well.

Joanne Freeman: But Richard Allen wasn’t just thinking about the present for African Americans at the time. No, he knew that with this pamphlet he had a chance to cement something in history. So Allen goes with Absalom Jones down to the federal office.

Rich Newman: And they get copyright number 55 for the District of Pennsylvania. The pamphlet that Richard Allen publishes is the first copyrighted pamphlet in African American literature. So in a sense, what Richard Allen and Absalom Jones are doing is copywriting black public protest. This is an important moment for black protest because it puts before national political leaders, black anger and black solutions.

Rich Newman: Allen and Jones say no one certain purposes, if you love your country, if you love freedom, then clear your hands of slaves. Get rid of bondage and make sure that America lives up to all its professed ideas of Liberty and justice for all.

Joanne Freeman: Rich says, Allen’s demand for liberty and justice for all is by no means the only time of push for civil rights has coincided with a natural disaster.

Rich Newman: We might think of the yellow fever epidemic in 1793 as the first of several Katrina moments in American history referring to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in New Orleans where a natural disaster becomes the staging grounds for a brand morality play about-

Joanne Freeman: An awareness moment of sorts.

Rich Newman: Yes, an awareness moment of sorts, where African Americans in the world debate the deeper meaning of civil rights and civil wrongs. And it’s really striking when you go back and look at the yellow fever, the way that Allen and Jones talk about this natural disasters leading to kind of civic disaster where African Americans are blamed, abused, stereotyped. It sounds so much like what happens during Katrina and just like during Katrina, which is now a marker of black activism, right?

Rich Newman: Similar to the yellow fever is one of those moments where African Americans say to themselves, and to the nation, “It’s time to wake up.” So it’s a really powerful event for all of these reasons, because it isn’t just what you think it is. A natural disaster where people are challenged to do better, it’s a real challenging moment for democracy itself.

Rich Newman: And Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, hope that the gift that they give to white society will be one that changes them forever. And of course, sadly it’s not.

Joanne Freeman: Now you used the great phrase that in a sense, Allen and Jones were copywriting black protest. So thinking that way, not just about the moment that Allen was in, but thinking down the road towards the future, are there ways in which Allen’s activism and actually his generosity and the generosity of the black community in Philadelphia, they have an active influence on how future generations of black activists and leaders are conducting themselves?

Rich Newman: Without a doubt. The yellow fever pamphlet is this model of black protest for subsequent generations of civil rights leaders, African-American reformers and others. So you can go to Frederick Douglas, who is in the next generation of black leaders to find someone who reveres Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, particularly Richard Allen during reconstruction, Frederick Douglas writes a note.

Rich Newman: He says that what we really need now in the late 19th century is a man like Richard Allen, someone who claimed equal citizenship in the early republic, and would tell us what to do during the travails of reconstruction. W. E. B. Du Bois is another civil rights leader in the early 20th century who extols the virtues of Richard Allen’s activism.

Rich Newman: And so when he publishes his pamphlet, he’s not only thinking about impacting people in his own time and in his own community, he’s thinking about impacting people through time and through space. And we have evidence that African-American’s are circulating Allen’s pamphlet in the early Republic. And then when he dies, other additions will be published. And so we know that even Richard Allen himself is interested in this one.

Rich Newman: He is near the end of his life in the 1830s, he passes away in 1831, when it’s the last access to dictate an autobiography to one of his sons. And he instructs him to not only publish that autobiography about the building of his black church, and all of his gospel labors. He says, “Reprint that yellow fever pamphlet, so that the new generation of white and black abolitionists can read about all that we had done in the 1790s, to a protest for freedom.”

Rich Newman: So in that way, I would argue Richard Allen’s yellow fever pamphlet is the gift that keeps on giving to white abolitionists, black reformers and American citizens.

Joanne Freeman: Rich Newman is a history professor at Rochester Institute of Technology. He’s also the author of Freedoms Profit, Bishop Richard Allen, the AME church and the black founding fathers.

Brian Balogh: So Joanne, Nathan, where’d you get me for Hanukkah?

Joanne Freeman: Uh-oh.

Nathan Connolly: Nothing.

Joanne Freeman: Dang! I’m a bad gift giver Brian.

Brian Balogh: That’s okay. You give the gift of gab, Joanne.

Joanne Freeman: Aww, thank you. What a nice thing for you to say. Well, I’m going to, I’m going to turn that back around. And I’m going to ask you, Brian and Nathan, you know, we just heard these two amazing stories, but one of the things that sort of struck me as we were listening, you know, we’re talking about gift-giving, which isn’t necessarily the same thing, is charity. So, I’m wondering what you think about working your way through different kinds of gifts and what they mean.

Brian Balogh: It’s a terrific question. And yeah, just off the top of my head, my sense is that gift giving is at least supposed to be more spontaneous, more emotional, less concerned with kind of the longterm consequences unless somebody returns your gift to the store. That’s always embarrassing. And I would say in general, part of a personal relationship. I understand that people give gifts as part of business and office relations and all of that, but I think of gift giving as very personal.

Brian Balogh: I think of charity as maybe not in the 19th century, Joanne, but in the 20th century is involving organizations and in a way trying to achieve something through a financial contribution. I don’t know, what do you think Nathan?

Nathan Connolly: I mean, I think there definitely is a way for thinking about relationships and how you have on the one hand, relationships between populations. So, if you think about the Choctaw and the Irish, those are groups, and obviously this is going to be an interesting way to think through what kinds of advantages or disadvantages come out of that kind of gift.

Nathan Connolly: But you know, even on a more intimate level, I think between individuals and within families or you know, within small communities, this kind of giving has very rich and layered meaning. I mean, even when we think about something like philanthropy, I mean there’s a way in which people who have concentration of wealth are looking to effectively ingratiate themselves with certain populations, right?

Nathan Connolly: So, there’s a history for example of Andrew Carnegie or Madam CJ Walker as you know, business people who find ways of building institutions, be they schools or libraries as a way of demonstrating that they are, in fact entitled to their wealth because they do good things with it.

Nathan Connolly: Even more, small scale business people, like some folks that I studied in my first book on Miami, these are property managers and landlords. They were profound engines of institution building often through gifts. And gifts as you know, central as building a school a playground. But also things as intimate as providing a Christmas dinner for tenants.

Nathan Connolly: And you know, the underside of this and in the larger social network of this moment in the context of I would say rental property is that say if you give someone at Christmas dinner, they’re going to be less inclined to report you to the local housing Bureau if you’re a slow in getting repairs done. Right?

Nathan Connolly: And so, there’s a kind of way that the day to day social relationships that in some ways benefit the already well off, can be lubricated by these gifts. And it’s not to be completely cynical about it, but it is to recognize that that is one aspect of the gift relations.

Brian Balogh: Well, Nathan, this will make you even more cynical because I just read a terrific proposal for a book on income inequality, and our fellow historian, Kim Phillips-Fein is going to talk about the philosophy that undergirds Carnegie. Which is, if you don’t have income inequality, then you can’t have these wonderful things like libraries.

Nathan Connolly: That is right.

Brian Balogh: It will make you more cynical than what you just said because it’s embedded in the very philosophy of giving that unless you have this income inequality, you don’t get all these benefits and gifts and contributions and charitable contributions.

Joanne Freeman: You can take that back in time too, I’m so sorry, Nathan, I’m going to jump on the cynical bandwagon here.

Brian Balogh: Well, I hope you’ve already celebrated Christmas, Nathan. And so I can say.

Nathan Connolly: When there’s a powered wig involved, it feels less cynical for some reason.

Joanne Freeman: We’re going to be slightly post powdered right now, like we’re in the really late and early 19th centuries. You know, that’s a period when the enlightenment among other things sort of gave you this sense that you could do things to better society and you begin to get organized philanthropy efforts at that time. So on the one hand, the non cynical version of that is, “Oh, how nice people are trying to better society.”

Joanne Freeman: Of course the cynical part of that is, “Well now that we’re extending money and gifts, we get to say something about how the people we’re giving them to behave.”

Nathan Connolly: Right.

Joanne Freeman: Right? We sort of inserting ourselves into their private lives in some ways. So now we can “refine” these other kinds of people so that they are more like us.

Brian Balogh: So, thinking about the way we use gifts as a kind of social improvement, would we consider that to be as important to what became American culture as say the federal government or you know, the founding documents? I mean, is gifting really critical to the American way of life?

Nathan Connolly: Well, I’ll jump on that because I would be willing to argue that Americans on a broad spectrum are among those people, kind of [inaudible 00:49:47] with government. And so, I do think in the United States, over the course of American history, at least people have made the argument that we don’t need government because we have all of these voluntary organizations.

Nathan Connolly: We have all these charitable organizations that not only fill the gap but do it a lot more effectively. And by the way, that goes back to this very personalized relationship of gift giving that we started with. That’s the family. Again and again, at least in the United States, the rationale for not having the government do things is, well, the family should take care of that.

Joanne Freeman: Or the community, right?

Brian Balogh: Or the community. Exactly.

Nathan Connolly: Well that’s, I think, a good way to think about the holiday feeling around gift-giving, right? It’s not just about the kinds of uses to which you can put products and objects and goods and services to advance your position, but that there is a kind of cohesion that we experienced as family units and communities that come from the giving of one’s self or one’s time or even of a thoughtful gift for someone else.

Nathan Connolly: I mean, is there a way to balance or at least to minimize the possible harmful aspects of gift giving and really emphasize what becomes the more cohesive side of it?

Brian Balogh: First of all, one doesn’t have to accept the gift. And in fact one doesn’t always except gifts. And secondly, we haven’t talked about receiving gifts very much, but receiving gifts can be a rather uncomfortable thing. Precisely for the reasons you’re talking about Nathan. Precisely because, one asks, “Well what do I owe in return?” And so I don’t have a historical answer for you. I do think it behooves all of us to think about the obligations entailed in both giving and receiving gifts,

Joanne Freeman: The obligations and the fact that in some way or another, it’s easy to get power entangled in there, depending on the nature of the giving and receiving.

Nathan Connolly: Right, right, right.

Brian Balogh: On the other hand, and more in spirit with the season I hope, there’s a great joy in gift-giving and I hope in the case of the gifts I’ve given, expecting nothing in return.

Nathan Connolly: Well, I think, I think you’ve put your thumb on the magic word for this Brian, which is expectation.

Brian Balogh: Yes.

Nathan Connolly: I mean if the expectation that say a landlord in the Jim Crow South has about giving a Christmas dinner is that then his tenant won’t report him to the local housing agency, then we should be far less romantic about that than say the gift that is given without expectation. And I wonder if there is a way of understanding American history as a series of gifts that are given with greater or lesser expectations and that sometimes is the way to maybe parse what the differences between a philanthropist and you know, an uncle who’s giving a gift to a child is to say.

Nathan Connolly: Well, maybe you know, there are those folks regardless of how much wealth one has or even the relationship between two folks. Maybe what makes the difference between a gift that should be taken and one that shouldn’t, is the expectation that’s attached to it. And is there a way for to highlight the positive aspect of gift giving by focusing on that expectation part of it?

Brian Balogh: I think there is a way, although it’s not used that often, that’s anonymity. Some very huge gifts and some small, very meaningful gifts have been given anonymously.

Nathan Connolly: So this emphasis on an expectation actually reminds me of experience I had very briefly as a parent of public school kids in New York city. And we had the benefit of going to a very resource rich public school in lower Manhattan that had a very wealthy parent teacher association. In the hundreds of thousands of dollars, many times over, was the budget.

Nathan Connolly: And the budget was largely generated through a combination of people who worked in the philanthropic sector, who had kids who went to the school, the fund was managed by a disbarred stockbroker who had it in all kinds of important funds. And you know, it was basically understood that the parents should be close to or above 90% giving, you know, as a body and the way they were going to encourage this kind of contribution on the part of the families in this part of the New York city was to put a large sign or plaque on the wall of the foyer as the kids walk into the school that featured all of the names of the families who had given.

Nathan Connolly: And this is what worked in the philanthropic sector, and certainly would work in how parents would be encouraged to then give out of a sense of recognition and their kids would feel proud seeing their family names on the wall as well. Well, let me just tell you, this was not a popular initiative at all. And there was a real pushback from parents who certainly did not have the resources to both live in New York city oftentimes with multiple children and give regular or hefty donations.

Nathan Connolly: There were a number of people who said we give in ways that cannot be measured in dollars. “But we give in time, and in resources and skills and does our name go up on the wall as well?” Right?

Brian Balogh: Or did we even ask that our name go up on the wall.

Nathan Connolly: Right. No it’s exactly right. So, many of the kind of questions of recognition and public investment and the idea that money is the only contribution, and thinking about this thing that’s already come out of the show have much more informal contributions that actually again provide a sense of connection and you know, real community that there was almost a disconnect between those two different cultures.

Nathan Connolly: And I wonder about the extent to which we have enough time or space or energy in this particular moment of American history to honor that kind of giving, that kind of gift really.

Brian Balogh: That’s going to do it for us today, but you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode or ask us your questions about history. Send us an email to BackStory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter @backstoryradio. Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.

Joanne Freeman: Special thanks this week to the Johns Hopkins Studios in Baltimore. And thanks as well to James Scale, Sarah McConnell and Jamal Moon.

Nathan Connolly: BackStory is produced at Virginia humanities. Major support provided by an anonymous donor, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial foundation, the Johns Hopkins University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the national endowment for the humanities.

Nathan Connolly: Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund called the cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities and the environment.

Announcer: Brian Balogh is professor of history at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is Professor of the Humanities and president Emeritus of the university of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of History and American Studies at Yale university. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia Humanity.