[Last week I
followed up my Valentine’s
Day talk on Exclusion
& Inclusion: The Battle to Define America by highlighting
exclusionary moments and histories. This week I’ll flip the script and
highlight some of the inspiring inclusive figures on whom my book will likewise
focus!]
On four figures
who together embody the vital contributions African American slaves made to the
American Revolutionary effort.
1)
Crispus
Attucks: I had just started to learn more about Attucks when I wrote that
hyperlinked post, and will be the first to admit that I seriously downplayed
there the fact that he was a fugitive slave, having run away from his Natick
master ten years before his participation in the Boston Massacre (on which more
as part of next week’s anniversary series). Perhaps I thought that fact was
already well-known, but I don’t believe it is (certainly my sons have not
learned it when they’ve studied the Boston Massacre and Attucks as part of
their elementary school social studies units). And in any case, Attucks’ birth
and childhood in slavery (as the son of an African father and Native American
mother, both themselves slaves), as well as his subsequent escape from it and decade
of life as a fugitive slave, seem to me to be crucial to understanding his role
in one of the most significant pre-Revolution protests.
2)
Phillis
Wheatley: On the other hand, I said most everything I’d want to say about
Wheatley’s Revolutionary poems and arguments, and their close ties to her
experiences of slavery, in that hyperlinked post!
3)
Elizabeth
Freeman and Quock Walker: And ditto my thoughts in that hyperlinked post on
Freeman and Walker, and the way they and their allies put the Revolution’s
ideas and documents to use to gain their freedom and forever change
Massachusetts and America. I know of no single story that better models my
vision of an inclusive America than does that one!
Next inclusive
figures tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other inspiring figures you’d highlight?
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