Crossing Borders: Slaves in the Family
March 9, 2008
Rev. David A. Pettee

Good morning! I’m grateful for the invitation to join with you this morning. Some of you may be surprised to see me in clerical garb. I have been a member since 2002 with my wife Mindy and our children, Hannah and Sophie. I work in Boston at the UUA, entrusted with overseeing the credentialing process for those who want to be UU ministers. I have chosen to keep a low profile because I travel so frequently, and because in my job, I am seen as a gatekeeper by many interns. Being an intern minister is hard enough without someone like me lurking around!

In 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson noted in his first publication of essays that “a man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.” Last August, as I was turning fifty, I found myself chuckling at this metaphor. I’ve been riding a roller coaster that last two years. Welcome, to my mid-life crisis!

As a seventh generation Unitarian Universalist, I am an antiquarian. I believe that our collective history is worth remembering. Although many of us tend to think very little about the importance of memory (until we start to lose it) memory is basic to the lifeblood of our community. The remembering of our stories is essential for the survival of cultural folkways, as we seek to pass forward our most sacred values and aspirations.

My grandfather Pettee anointed me to remember our family history. I loved hearing about all our New England ancestors, the Pilgrims and the Puritans, including John Jackson, the first white settler in Newton. As the internet emerged, family history research became fast and easy. Two years ago, I upgraded my Ancestry.com subscription. I found that the 1774 Rhode Island Census was searchable on-line. I typed in the name of Edward Simmons, an eighteenth century Newport, RI ancestor. Four enslaved Africans, including two children, were in his home.

This story had not survived the passage of time.

More research ripped the cover off this can of worms. I recovered fifteen other Northern ancestors who enslaved Africans and Indians. I was horrified to learn that my ancestor John Mason gave the order to torch a Pequot Indian fort in 1637, burning 600 people to death. The few who survived the ‘Mystic Massacre’ were deemed too dangerous to keep around, and were sent off to Bermuda aboard the ship Desire. When the Desire arrived back in Massachusetts in 1638, Gov. Winthrop noted that the cargo included "salt, cotton, tobacco and Negroes." My heart sank when I realized my family shared responsibility for the arrival of the first African slaves in New England.

I spent more than a year actively engaged in this spiritual root canal. Before the task could be complete, I had to research an ancestor who was a ship’s captain who sailed out of Newport. I found John Robinson’s name in the manifest of the slave ship Greyhound, having sold a hundred gallons of molasses to a distillery in 1742. Coincidentally, John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace” was also the captain of a slave ship. His conversion took place in 1748, aboard a slave ship named the Greyhound.

John Robinson sailed to the Gold Coast, now present day Ghana. In Africa, he sold rum for slaves, and then set sail across the Atlantic to the West Indies on the dreaded Middle Passage. In the West Indies, he sold slaves to purchase molasses, before sailing north to New England, on the final leg of the triangular trade. If enslaving 500 human beings wasn’t evil enough, John Robinson was also a cheat. I only know as much about him as I do because he kept getting hauled into court. In 1745, a mother sued him because her son had been denied wages owed from a slaving voyage. In another case, Benjamin Ellery, the great-great grandfather of William Ellery Channing, sued John Robinson for overspending a credit line in Jamaica.

Early in my research, I phoned an African American historian. As I told him what I was doing, the tone in his voice changed. He suspected I would research my own family history, and stop. He urged me to learn about the ‘creative survival’ of the people of color whose lives had been woven with my family. Then, he challenged me to find a descendant of an African who had been owned by my family. I didn’t think this was even possible and the prospect secretly terrified me.

The more I learned about slavery, the more I realized how little I knew. After slavery was gradually outlawed in Massachusetts in the 1780’s, the memory of slavery began to be suppressed, and a toxic form of racism took root. Within a few decades, many white New Englanders didn’t have an analysis why their neighbors of color were so disadvantaged. It was easy to conclude that black people were responsible for their own misery, were deficient, and deserved segregation on the margins of society. Historian Joanne Pope Melish has argued that this amnesia has since evolved into a distinctive form of Northern racism. While there is an engagement with social justice issues on one hand, there is an almost deliberate disengagement with actual black people, on the other hand.

My research at the Massachusetts Archives revealed the 1754 Slave Census. Of the 114 towns that responded, 109 reported at least one slave: a 95% response rate. While Newton become an underground railroad stop, 13 slaves were recorded here in 1754. Slavery was mentioned in Newton city histories published in 1854, 1880 and 1930. Abolitionist Francis Jackson wrote the 1854 edition and he devoted eleven pages to the topic. By 1930, however, the historian Henry Rowe concluded that one paragraph was adequate to cover the history of slavery here.

Slavery was embedded in the economy of every community in Massachusetts for nearly two centuries at the same time that New England dominated the colonial transatlantic slave trade. We have inherited this cultural amnesia. What we do with this inheritance is up to us.

When the full scope of my legacy had been revealed, I knew I had to return to the scene of the crime. I began planning a trip to the slave forts on the coast of West Africa. I placed my faith in our fourth UU principle: a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. I reflected upon three questions. What is the role of repentance in Unitarian Universalism? What would I find in the slave dungeon? What would I do with what I learned?

Now, over a year later, when I am quiet, I can still hear the sound of the surging surf, pounding the rocks beneath Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. For a time, this building lay at the heart of the largest involuntary diaspora in human history. From the outside, instead of feeling sinister, the mood of this whitewashed structure is sterile and bureaucratic. Our tour started with a descent into the cramped dungeons that served as holding cells for thousands of Africans, before they were endured the Middle Passage.

My feelings are still hard to put into words. More than a million people were held in these dungeons, all bound for the same purpose: to cross the Atlantic to serve as slaves. On the walls are grim marks where people sought to scratch their way out. A dark and humid underground tunnel led to the "Door of No Return" where those who survived this imprisonment were loaded into canoes, and then on to waiting ships.

We ended the tour in the palaver, the room where negotiations for lives took place. I went numb when I realized that I was standing in the same room where my ancestor had once stood. I looked out the same window and saw the same things that Capt. John Robinson, bartering human beings for rum, saw two hundred and sixty three years before. The seductive comfort of two and a half centuries vanished. The eerie sense of timelessness left me without words, and unspeakably sad.

After the tour, Mindy and I made our way to the beach. I took out a bottle I had brought from home, and poured out water I had collected from Narragansett Bay. As this water merged into the Bay of Guinea, I could sense the liminal presence of my own ancestors, and I said a prayer of repentance. The prayer represented my deepest sorrow and apology. I committed myself to remember that apology without resulting action would be a mockery of good intentions, only adding further insult to the memory of those whose lives had been destroyed by my family.

I did not know what I would find in Africa, either in the slave fort or in the recesses of my own heart. On the cover of the Order of Service is an image of a bird looking backwards. This is the Akan symbol of Sankofa. Literally translated, it means: "it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot." There is a remedy for the hopelessness that can come with the difficult racial justice work that our faith calls us to do. We must be willing, in community, to search for the truth wherever it may lead.

Unitarian Universalists don’t often speak freely of conversion. Yet, my pilgrimage resulted in something unexpected: an empowering sense of liberation. Liberation from the fear of speaking about the living legacy of slavery and white privilege with people of color; liberation from the fear of making a mistake or saying the wrong thing; and finally, liberation from the bondage of my own spiritual paralysis. I had often felt guilty for the atrocities committed by my ancestors. As we prepared to leave Ghana, I knew that I needed to make meaning of the grief, that lay beneath this layer of guilt. I knew I could this by working with others to change our future, by refusing to turn away from the past.

Upon our return, one unfinished task remained. I began searching for a descendant of an African who had been enslaved by my family. One day, while examining the probate inventory of my ancestor, I noticed the name of Cuff Simmons. Cuff was an African name. Over time, only one conclusion was possible: Cuff Simmons had been enslaved by my ancestor, Edward Simmons. Defying the odds, Cuff’s descendants held onto a tiny piece of land in Newport until 1940. After following the trail of land deeds from RI to New York City, I finally located the right family. I nervously placed a call. When Patricia affirmed that she had heard of Cuff Simmons, I could barely respond.

In July, I flew to Queens and spent a day with Pat and her family. As we greeted one another, I realized that I had been so naive to imagine that this journey was mine alone. I shared everything that I had learned about our common history, warts and all. But the news wasn’t all horror. Through my research, I was able to introduce them to one of their own, a forgotten ancestress, an extraordinary abolitionist and a close confidante of Frederick Douglass. It was an unimaginable privilege to bring back into memory an inspiring story of hope. This was an act of reparation.

On Columbus Day, our families met in Newport. I thought of Dr. King, who dreamed, “that one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” This miraculous day changed my life and ministry forever.

In closing, one good challenge deserves another. At GA last year, a Responsive Resolution was passed that urged all UU congregations to research their own histories and uncover the links and complicity with the genocide of native peoples, with slavery and with all types of racial, ethnic and cultural oppression past and present, to be able to move toward the goal of accountability through apology, repair and reconciliation.

Those who were members here in the late 1960’s know that FUSN played an important role in what is now known as the Empowerment Controversy. FUSN was among three UU congregations who voted to use endowment funds to purchase Black Affairs Council bonds. Across the UUA, the Empowerment Controversy lead to the departure of many people of color. President Bill Sinkford was among those who left, and among the very few who ever found his way back home.

I first heard about FUSN’s history in this controversy at the UUA. Not here. I find this remarkably curious and it got me wondering. What are the invisible dynamics from this controversy that have disrupted the task of creating the beloved community? What are the consequences of having this pivotal story lie just beneath the surface? What would happen if those who left knew we were revisiting this story? Others seeking to address the legacy of the Empowerment Controversy have invited those who wish to do so, a chance to offer their oral history. Could this process bring some overdue healing?

Let me make this plain. This is hard work. Patience, forbearance and a readiness to forgive is required. As President James Garfield shrewdly noted: “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” Despite the uncertain risks of taking on this kind of pilgrimage, I have faith it is worth the effort. As I have come to know for myself, a willingness to face and remember history will bring untold blessing. May it be so. Amen.