Black History is Every Month: After “Open Casket”: What Emmett Till Teaches Us Today; Shirley Chisholm Deserves a Great Big S
philip panaritis
- "Back then, Mamie Till had famously insisted on displaying her son unembalmed and unretouched, his face grotesquely mutilated and swollen, just as his killers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, had made it. Unsparing photographs of the viewing and funeral ran in two Black publications: the national weekly Jet and the local Chicago Defender. They are often credited for galvanizing the freedom movement. Now, one of those photographs, showing Till’s destroyed face, lies beneath glass at the head of the open casket in the museum. You must stand on tip-toe and crane your neck to glimpse the image. The exhibit has the stillness and power of a martyr’s mausoleum."Shirley Chisholm Deserves a Great Big Statue Honoring Her in the CapitolA Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical ChurchesThe Black 14: Race, Politics, Religion and Wyoming FootballToday's approach to slavery, civil rights
"In reality, people fled in all directions — to Canada, yes, but also to Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico. Many arrivals in New York City were shepherded by a group who "would then forward them on to communities that were receptive and helpful," said Ned Benton, one of the John Jay College professors behind the recently created New York State Slavery Records Index. "And Albany was one of those communities."
How many people did the Albany nexus help? On average, one a day, although they often arrived in clusters. According to Paul Stewart, an 1842 report from Albany's Vigilance Committee noted that 350 were aided in the previous year; an 1856 report recorded 287 in the previous 10 months.
Those who supported the network often did so in mundane ways, providing a job, a place to flop or some other practical inroad into a new life up north. And they often did so in the light of day, contradicting the old cliché of runaways huddled in basements. Folks in need of clothes, for instance, visited the men's store on Broadway run by Lydia and Abigail Mott — sisters to the better-known Lucretia.
Or consider the tale of Charles Nalle, a freedom seeker who made his way to Rensselaer County sometime around 1860, found employment with a white man named Uri Gilbert and stayed with William Henry, a black grocer in Troy who sat on the Vigilance Committee. While Tubman did indeed swoop in after Nalle was arrested, saving him from extradition, Nalles' tale is otherwise beautifully ordinary. "He went to work every day," Paul Stewart said. "And this was the nature of his hiding, if you will, his refuge — he was in a different place away from the folks that had enslaved him, and he tried to create a life for himself, going to work."
