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What to the American Slave is the Fourth of July?
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An abridged version of the July 4 1852 oration delivered by Frederick Douglass to the Rochester (NY) Ladies Anti-Slavery Society.
Donna McDaniel Sets the Facts Straight about Paul Cuffe
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Donna McDaniel’s letter, "A closer look at sea captain Cuffe’s colonial aspirations, Quaker ties," on the March 6, 2008 Boston-Bay State Banner’s editorial page corrected misrepresentations in an article, "Sea Captain Paul Cuffe Makes Waves in Business."
An Interview with Margaret Hope Bacon
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Angelina Conti’s interview with Margaret Hope Bacon offers insights into this popular Quaker historian, writer, and activist’s life and work.
American Anti-Slavery and Civil War Timeline
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The Independence Hall Association presents a helpful timeline.
In Light and Shadow: Friends and Slavery
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Paul Kriese, presented this message to members of the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage on July 19, 2006 at
“I am the vine, you are the branches…now what fruit shall we bear?” (John 15)
Introduction
The vine is the knowledge that “there is that of God in everyone.” The branches demonstrate the various paths that this ‘knowledge’ takes. The fruit (witness, faith stance) will look different when it is presented to others.
Human experience lives in light and in shadow. The George Fox song suggests that “there is an “ocean of darkness” and an “ocean of light.” We need to look to both of these experiences to understand the different witnesses recorded and held. The history of the Religious Society of Friends is a compilation of different ‘branches’ bearing different harvests from the same ‘vine’. The experience of Friends in the
Authors' Reflections
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Donna McDaniel (left) and Vanessa Julye (right) at work in the FGC offices with project editor Kathryn Grover on the Fit for Freedom manuscript.Our research reveals surprising, perhaps to some shocking, levels of ambivalence and ambiguity in Friends’ relationships with African Americans throughout our history. We believe Friends today will see their own thoughts and struggles reflected in those who have preceded us.
The book will reach for the truth about Friends who, even as they strongly advocated for the freedom of enslaved African Americans and education, were reluctant to invite African American membership in their own Society. “They will give us good advice,” wrote Samuel Ringgold Ward, an African American abolitionist who escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad. “They will aid in giving us a partial education—but never in a Quaker school, beside their own children. Whatever they do for us savors of pity, and is done at arm's length.”
