Tag Archives: slavery

Happy Amos Fortune Day

In 1955, New Hampshire Governor Lane Dwinell would declare 20^th February Amos Fortune Day.
We join in this celebration of an exemplar of resilience and good citizenship.

We have reproduced the text of Governor Dwinell’s declaration below.

WHEREAS, AMOS FORTUNE, Negro, born in 1710 free in Africa, made a slave and sold in America, did by the strength of his character and by his industry surmount almost impossible obstacles to become a free and distinguished citizen of Nev‘ Hampshire, and

WHEREAS, said AMOS FORTUNE, though for many years a slave, did acquire an education above average for his time, did become an expert tanner and did purchase freedom for himself and three other slaves, and

WHEREAS AMOS FORTUNE did not only by his life exemplify the highest obligations of good citizenship but on his death in 1801 did bequeath to the church and school of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, sums of money to be used in the furtherance of religion and education, and

WHEREAS, the day, February 20, is part of America’s Negro History Week and American Brotherhood Week

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Lane Dwinell, Governor of the State of New Hampshire, in behalf of our people, do proclaim the day February 20, 1955 to be AMOS FORTUNE DAY, and I do call upon the citizens of New Hampshire to consider on that day their obligations of tolerance and good citizenship.

For more on Amos Fortune, please see last Friday’s post
For more on Negro History Week, see our post on the origins of Black History Month.

Bootstrapping Bootblacking Tarheel

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“As long as it is God’s will, I want this institution to move, for men to support their families; and God will let it live. That is what I am interested about and God knows it. I want this institution to live and she will!”—John Merrick

The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company is the United States’ oldest black-owned business and was for decades the largest. It was built by John Merrick and a consortium of black North Carolinians. Merrick was born into slavery in 1859. By age 12, he was working in a brickyard to help support his family. He would become a brickmason but opted to work as a bootblack because he wanted to learn about barbershops which thought would offer the best opportunity for entrepreneurship. He left Raleigh for the less established Durham for similar reasons. By 1881 Merrick would own a share of a barbershop and a growing real estate portfolio. In time, he would own as many as nine barbershops and co-own the Merrick-Moore-Spaulding Land Company.

His start in insurance came with his purchase of the Royal Knights of King David, a benevolent society providing burial insurance. In 1898, this became the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company. At the start, the company was on life support. For years, it depended on infusions of cash from Merrick and other prominent African Americans in the Raleigh-Durham area. However, through the dedicated and able management of Charles Spaulding—a young nephew of Dr Aaron Moore, Merrick’s partner in the land company—NC Mutual was saved and survives to this day.

Merrick was also an early investor in the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, a co-founder of the Bull City Drug company and the Durham Textile mill (which failed due to poor management soon after Merrick’s death). NC Mutual continues to serve thousands of North Carolinians.

By remaining resolute in a hostile environment, meeting the challenges of turning around a failing institution and being willing to try new and varied things despite/because of youth and limited education, John Merrick exemplifies the resilient entrepreneur.

For more on Merrick see R. McCants Andrew’s biography at UNC’s Documenting the American South

In honor of Black History Month, our regular Tuesday and Friday posts will highlight black entrepreneurs who have displayed exemplary success and resilience.

Thirty is the old sixty

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Final Resting Place of Amos and Vilot Fortune

Today we break from African-American firsts to tell the story of a man whose life was exceptional because of his own resilience. Amos Fortune was likely born in 1710 in Africa’s Gold Coast (now Ghana). In an era when the average person who survived their teenage years lived to be 70, Fortune survived until 91 in spite of the hardships and deprivations of slavery.

Amos was probably brought to America aboard the White Falcon, a slaver that put into port at Boston in July, 1725. There is no other record of him until 1752 at which point he belonged to Ichabod Richardson, a tanner in Woburn, MA (just north of Boston). He was likely first bought by a bookbinder named Fortune. The assumption is made because of the conventions followed in naming slaves and the fact that Fortune managed to learn to read, write and do arithmetic despite being enslaved. His skill as a binder is attested to by the fact he was commissioned to bind the books of the Jaffrey Social Library. That said, there is always the possibility that he simply pre-empted Frederick Douglass’ ingenuity. Richardson promised Fortune his freedom a number of times but died leaving an unsigned will— the desire to preserve his income from Fortune’s labor seems to have overridden his conscience. After Richardson’s death in 1769, Fortune would buy his freedom. He was 60 years old.

It is at that ripe old age that Fortune began to construct his own life. In just five years, he earned enough to buy a half-acre of land in Woburn on which he built a house. He also maintained the trust of African Americans, slave and free, and acted as an agent for several of them. He bought the freedom of a number of other slaves including two women whom he married (the first died soon after being freed) and a young child that he adopted.

In 1781, he moved to Jaffrey, New Hampshire with his second wife, Vilot (the his is literal, he was legally her owner). They set up a tannery, raised a barn and built another house on a 25 acre plot that they bought alongside a road now known as Amos Fortune Road. Fortune’s tannery drew business from as far as eastern MA. In time, despite having been warned out by Jaffrey because they presumed he would have become a charge on the town, Fortune would become the town’s first benefactor and a founder of the Social Library in Jaffrey. The bindings he did for the library remain intact over 200 years later.

His gravestone reads:
Sacred to the memory of Amos Fortune, who was born free in Africa, a slave in America, he purchased liberty, professed Christianity, lived reputably, and died hopefully. Nov. 17, 1801, AET. 91.
Vilot’s reads:
Sacred to the memory of Violate,[sic] by sale the slave of Amos Fortune, by marriage his wife, by her fidelity his friend and solace, she dies is widow Sept 13, 1802, AET. 73

In 1955, Governor Lane Dwinell (NY) would declare February 20^th Amos Fortune Day. We will post the text of that declaration next Wednesday.

In honor of Black History Month, our regular Tuesday and Friday posts will highlight black entrepreneurs who have displayed exemplary success and resilience.

Black History Month: Frederick Douglass—A Narrative of a Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of a Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave is easily among the most renown of American slave narratives. Within the Narrative the most remember scene (certainly among our favorite) is that detailing the process by which he learned to read and write. It is a tale of him overcoming the degradation of slavery, the deprivation of his circumstance and his personal resilience in finding a way to access what he intuitively knew would be a valuable skill.

We have excerpted a few segments below. The lessons are clear:

Recognize when one is falling into despair and resist it with action
Use even the slimmest of openings to overcome even the most toughest challenges
Look for creative ways to work around old obstacles
After developing a plan, be persistent in its execution

Shadow of Despair

I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.

Using the slimmest of openings

From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this, however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.

Creative Workarounds

I immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, “I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.” I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way.

Persistence

I used to spend the time in writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas’s copy-book, copying what he had written. I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write.

The full text of Frederick Douglass Narrative, Chapter 7 can be found at the University of Virginia’s Electronic Text Center

In honor of Black History Month, we will post an inspirational cultural item each day.

Black History Month: The Negro Mother

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Langston Hughes: The Negro Mother (1931-1940)

Children, I come back today
To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
Look at my face—dark as the night—
Yet shining like the sun with love’s true light.
I am the dark girl who crossed the red sea
Carrying in my body the seed of the free.
I am the woman who worked in the field
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield.
I am the one who labored as a slave,
Beaten and mistreated for the work that I gave&mdash
Children sold away from me, I’m husband sold, too.
No safety, no love, no respect was I due.
Three hundred years in the deepest South:
But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth.
God put a dream like steel in my soul.
Now, through my children, I’m reaching the goal.
Now, through my children, young and free,
I realized the blessing deed to me.
I couldn’t read then. I couldn’t write.
I had nothing, back there in the night.
Sometimes, the valley was filled with tears,
But I kept trudging on through the lonely years.
Sometimes, the road was hot with the sun,
But I had to keep on till my work was done:
I had to keep on! No stopping for me—
I was the seed of the coming Free.
I nourished the dream that nothing could smother
Deep in my breast—the Negro mother.
I had only hope then, but now through you,
Dark ones of today, my dreams must come true:
All you dark children in the world out there,
Remember my sweat, my pain, my despair.
Remember my years, heavy with sorrow—
And make of those years a torch for tomorrow.
Make of my pass a road to the light
Out of the darkness, the ignorance, the night.
Lift high my banner out of the dust.
Stand like free men supporting my trust.
Believe in the right, let none push you back.
Remember the whip and the slaver’s track.
Remember how the strong in struggle and strife
Still bar you the way, and deny you life—
But march ever forward, breaking down bars.
Look ever upward at the sun and the stars.
Oh, my dark children, may my dreams and my prayers
Impel you forever up the great stairs—
For I will be with you till no white brother
Dares keep down the children of the Negro Mother.

From The Collected Works of Langston Hughes

In honor of Black History Month, we will post an inspirational cultural item daily.

Love and freedom

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BHM Entrepreneurs: Free Frank (1777-1854)—Manufacturer

That Free Frank survived for seventy-seven years the bitter hardships, the disappointments, the limitation imposed on his life by a society that operated continuously and perniciously to defeat his efforts, attests to the strength and indomitable will of this black man in his determination to buy his family from slavery. By 1857, while over forty years had passed since Free Frank purchases Lucy, in 1817, this black pioneer had succeeded. Four generations of his family had been purchased from slavery. (page 163)

Free Frank was born a slave in 1777, the year after the Declaration of Independence. His mother was born free in West Africa. At age 18, his owner (likely his father) moved him to Kentucky to clear and farm a homestead.

Life on the frontier was often brutish and fraught with danger. Within those harsh surroundings Frank met and married Lucy, another slave. Because of the distance between their owners, Free Frank and Lucy would not live together for almost 20 years. They were still too close for either to run away.

Frank’s owner left the county in 1810. This was a most opportune time. Between 1810 and 1812 the price of saltpeter (a critical input for gunpowder) increased 6-fold because of the War of 1812. Frank lacked access to the tools used by other more sophisticated manufacturers. He nonetheless exploited the low barriers to entry, his own industriousness and deep knowledge of the county to earn the $1600 (about $30,000 in today’s money) needed to buy both Lucy’s freedom in 1817 and his own in 1819. It is likely that Frank also paid his owner an additional $1,200 in fees over this period for the right to his own labor.

Over the course of his life, Frank would buy the freedom of another 13 relatives for the equivalent of $341,000 in today’s money. He would leverage the frenzy around the Illinois-Michigan canal to become the first black man to found a frontier town and protected these accomplishments by demanding the right to legally sue.

By any measure, Free Frank exemplified resilience in the face of the challenges of life as a slave in the South and as a free man in Illinois.

In honor of Black History Month, our regular Tuesday and Friday posts will highlight black entrepreneurs who have displayed exemplary resilience.

What is Resilience

An exploration of perseverance, grit, and, of course, resilience

Tag Archives: slavery

Happy Amos Fortune Day

Bootstrapping Bootblacking Tarheel

Thirty is the old sixty

Black History Month: The Negro Mother

Love and freedom