To welcome dr. Rita roberts, who is a professor of history. History and biography all the way in california. She teaches courses on the history of 16th through 21st century African American history, black intellectuals with the politics of race and the modern civil rights movement. She holds a masters degree and phd from the history of california berkeley. This evening, she will discussing her book. It is on the screen here. I cant wait to call you my wife. African american letters of love. This book illuminates the struggles of African Americans who spent the civil war trying to hold their families together, family members extreme. Despite harsh laws against literacy and legal practices, this work explores how African Americans found ways against all odds. Thank you. I am so delighted to be here. This is one of my favorite research places. I want to thank olivia who has been so instrumental in coordinating all of this and heather rockwood. I dont know if you have had met heather yet but we met on email. Thank you all. I want to thank my dear friend who is the president of the Massachusetts Historical Society for her support and longlasting friendship. It is exciting to visit with you and with andrew, your significant other, who is a good friend. We have been there and have retained our friendship. I am so excited to be here. Gavin just told you in my book is about. I was going to talk about that. I just want to stress that this book challenges the notion that African Americans had of modeling this experience. It is important that we know that. So Many Americans have a very light understanding. It is a very poor understanding and certainly, if they do know anything, it is very one dimensional. I challenge the notion that African American experience was onedimensional. It is multidimensional, dependent upon where one lives, dependent upon whether one was free or enslaved, whether one was enslaved on a large plantation or in an urban area, or in louisiana or in the south. So much is dependent upon where one lived in terms of what their experience was and whether one was enslaved or free. The experience is not monolithic and i try to stress that in the book. What i do also try to make sure is that everyone who is mentioned in this book, African Americans demonstrate a large number of their determination to live their lives with purpose and with dignity, as far as possible, even in oppressing circumstances. I wanted to make sure that this book would tell their story in their own words. I really think that is important. I wrote the book. People ask me all the time, why did you write this book . I have been doing other things. I tend to focus on freed blacks, mostly. I am writing this huge project in the upper south, mainly but i am using one family and trying to tell the whole story from the mid17th century. It is very rare to know that they were freed blacks in virginia in the 17th century, of course. Tried to trace their lives all the way to the 1990s, just to see how they navigate the racial terrain, more than that, to see how they live their lives, how they manage to do that. You are probably wondering what my sources would be. Property records. These individuals, we are not sure if they were actually slaves or not but they were treated like indentured servants. They were given land, actually, when they finished their service after seven years. Many find the stipulations in the contract. I am trying to trace that. It is not easy. It is taking me a long time. I have been working on that. In the meantime, i have been asked so many times to give a talk about, quote, African American history to all kinds of organizations. For example, the National ColoredWomen Association invited me to speak at their regional talk, san gabriel california, and talk about African American history. It is a big topic. How do you do that . I started narrowing down, how do you tell people a little bit. Give them information. Fill in the gaps of their knowledge or history and not be how do you do that to a general audience . Often, professional people fulfill without knowledge of history. I thought, i will do what i do with my students. I will pass them out and have them read them. I started doing that. Catherine, the historian, knows that that is a device to get students thinking and talking. I did the same thing. I started using letters. I continued to be invited to organizations all over california. I just thought, okay. I am going to write a book. I just keep writing this book in my head. I decided to write a book. I was writing the letters and to tell the story of the African American experience. I chose the civil war era because it intrigues me. It is a fascinating period in American History and you all know that we are still fighting the war in some ways. The war is very much with us. I am a 19th century historian so it made sense that i would focus on the civil war. Naovely, i thought it would be a really Quick Research project. Five years. I will do this in five years and then i will get back to my real work. I will continue to do the others as well. All i needed to do was synthesize my own work, synthesize the work of my colleagues and there would be a book. Well, i found that it is not easy to find a commercial press. I wanted a commercial press because i wanted to use Images University images tend not to have the money for or the interest in and i wanted the images. If you know anything about this book, if you have read this book at all, you have seen the photographs. I found a press that wanted 75 books, demanded that. They had 75 photographs. It was not easy finding this press. First, i found out, you need an agent. You cant just write to a commercial press and think that they will talk about you. Maybe in academic. I started looking for an agent. I sent my manuscript and i said, let me read. Too scholarly, too much. Not my goal. Id cited that i was going to figure out what i can do to make an agent really find my book appealing. I had already started doing the research. In 2012, a good friend of mine told me you need to go to the Massachusetts Historical Society and read the letters. I was here in the summer of 2012. I already knew my title. After reading the titles, john writes in his letters to his fiancie, i cant wait to call you my wife. She is writing to him. I will tell you a little bit more about it later. He is letting her know, i really do love you. So, 2012, i started this project. At the same time, i was teaching full time, coordinating a program, undergraduate fellowship, started it, coordinated it. 10 years later, two years with covid. Archives are all closed, including yours, im sure. Most of the archives are closed for two years. I had collected quite a few letters. Many of them were public, some from the archives, some already digitized. All this took much longer. Just being totally unrealistic. Originally, i had 500 pages or more. I had six chapters. I think the agents just thought, this is too much. I said i want this to appeal to the general public. I thought, she is on another planet somewhere. I kept sending it out. It took a long time and i found the perfect agent. She calls me up during covid and said, i hope you didnt sign with anyone. I said no. She said, i love your book. We talked and she decided to represent me. Then, i think it was around may 2021 covid i cant remember exactly what things happened. I contacted my agent and i said, i am going to cut this book in half. She was shocked. I said, maybe i shouldnt do this. Her response was disbelief. She told me, are you sure . I said, i think i really need to narrow down. I have public and then i have private letters. Two chapters each of public and private. Divided in antebellum civil war and postcivil war and then i thought, let me make it more focused on the private letters and focus on family and that is what i did. Obviously i was on the right track. The title was always one that i knew would be important because i had to tell you, i was sitting in the Massachusetts Historical Society archives library. There is a downstairs. I was reading to these letters and i looked up and i just wanted to shout. Those of you that have studied in an Archival Library knows that nobody is interested in your work. They could care less if you found your title. They have their own project. I was looking around. I got my title. No one cares. Anyway, when John Washington says, i cant wait to call you my wife, this title resonates so much with the enslaved African American experience. Most African Americans were enslaved, 4 million in 1860. The vast majority were enslaved. We need to understand what slavery is. Slavery essentially means one human being or an institution, a school, university, or a church, owns another human being or several human beings. It means human beings are commodities. They can be bought, sold, traded, passed down in wills, inherited. The american legal system ensure herbs ensures that slaves were more. The american legal system not only insured that enslaved individuals were more property, they insured that enslaved individuals work in less. Racial slavery defines the american slave system. Enslaved individuals had no formal power over themselves, their children, their wives, husbands. They could not direct at all what was happening to their own children. Babies, teenagers. The slaveowner had complete control. They could not provide for the welfare of their children. The legitimization of miracle bonds. We need to understand that. This meant that slaves could be traded and you were not breaking a contract. It would not interfere with the process of slaveowners. When John Washington says, perhaps unwittingly, i cant wait to call you my wife, unwittingly he might be challenging. He is challenging the system that denied the legitimization of families. In this way, he reflects the experience of most enslaved people. The letters show that African Americans in slavery consistently rejected the system. They were more commodity than human. They did this in so many ways. Establishing family was one of the primary ways. They refused to allow a system to deny them a basic universal expression of humanity, engaging and courting, forming community. They did so without legal sanctions. They challenged this notion that they were more property than human. They throughout the entire period of enslavement, the evidence is definitely in the correspondence. They show that African Americans engaged in monogamous relationships. They assumed that the relationship would be permanent as far as possible, although the threat of sale had over the heads of every enslaved person. They were aware of the precariousness of their relationship and at the same time, they persisted in these relationships. Again, this is part of the expression of who they were as human beings. Just a few examples i will show you and then leave it up to you to ask me questions. We see in this exange between adam and Emily Plummer you have been looking at the book. Tgo back to the book. I love that cover. I fell in love wi that cover. They itback and forth to e other excuse me. They are on two different plantations. Slaveholders tendedtolike their slaves on different plantations. Adam knows how to read, barely and write barely. Emily is illiterate. Her slaveholder is writing for her and then she has a good friend, a seamstress and a white woman who writes for her. At the end, it looks like she is writing for herself. It is fascinating. I just included a few for the African American life and slavery. Emily is moved and then moved again and then moved again. Adam is in a rather he is with the calvert family in maryland. Lots of money. Your fear is the slaveholder will lose money or moved to mississippi, separate family or any number of things can happen. Enslaved people were always wondering, what is going to happen to me, what is going to happen to my children and my spouse. Emily is moved. She is moved again and she is there exchangi tters. Adam must have written to her and said something outhat he was in despair. He just did not know if ey could go. Emily, april 28 writes back, i want you to tell me why you wroten so many letters. I was very happy to hear you say that i am part of your life but i am very troubled by it. She has good reasons. Many times, enslaved people were aware that there slaveholder would want them to marry someone else in terms of producing more children. She is kind of not sure what is then, she signs it again. The formality of 19thcentury letter writing is so she was saying, your afnate wife. Adam writes back, you have to read through the lines. He iscally telling her, i did not intend for you to be he sa the same day i was thinking about you in my heara few minutes a little boy came d brought your letter. He said, i received it with open hands, a joyful heart and you are mistaken that i do not wish to be with you and the children. Their letters are like this throughout. They are constantly keeping abreast of what is going on. Emily has most of the children. Two of the children are separated. One of the older ones is send various places but not too far. The younger child is left behind when emily is forced to move. Eventually, emily and her children move so far away that adams slaveholder allows him to catch the train and then he travels and, by foot, walks to sea to see his wife and children. The family was not central. Harriet newby is another example. Can we keep the image not on me but on the slides . Dangerfield newby was owned by his white slaveholding father and he was a child of the concubine, they are called. Sorry. He was the child of the concubine we wont say slave mistress because the mistress is usually the white wife. Dangerfield newby s father decided that they would all move to ohio. Dangerfield was an adult. He had a wife and he had children. The wife was not owned by Dangerfield Newby s slaveholder. Harriet is left with the children. Dangerfield is determined that he will raise the money working as hard as he can. He is hoping that he can raise the money. It is not enough, not even to pay for his wife, let alone the children. He is writing all the time, saying, i thought i should never see you on this earth. She keeps telling him, you have to come get me. She lets him know that he will be sold and separated. He becomes so desperate. In the fall of 1859, harriet letters are found on him. He is so desperate, he thinks he can end slavery. I think john brown thought someone is writing a really good book on him right now. I am really looking forward to learning. There is this sort of argument. Was he mentally unstable . John brown really thought that this would be a catalyst tour. He was right in that regard. So, harriets letters are found on dangerfields body when he is shot by the virginia militia. Family is central. It is evident between children and parents. We have 10yearold annie who writes to her dad. This is the only image we have. She writes to her dad. Her dad went to england because he is sought by the state of virginia, the federal government, actually. He is considered a suspect in conspiring to bring about the john brown raid. It was an insane thing to do, dont do it. John brown did not have an understanding of how slavery was protected in the south but john brown went in anyway. Frederick douglass escaped to a great city. He writes to her dad. She says to her father, she knows that he is proud of her and she brags about her ability i will just read a little bit. She said, my dear father, this is rochester, december 7, 1859. I am proceeding in my german very well. I am in the first reader and i can read. I expect you will all have a german letter from me in a short time. I have learned another piece and it is about slavery. I will speak it in my school. My piece is this. This is not the man for me who buys himself a slave. He whose noble heart beats warm for life and liberty, human form, that is the man for me. It is in the garland of freedom, more verses for it. Mr. Brown is dead. That man said he must die and he took him into an open field and a half a mile from the jail, hung him. Then the german women like him very much but i had gone ahead of him and he had been there longer. They all send him love. Tell me about the family. Your affectionate daughter, annie douglas. 10yearold annie, like others, a different type of exhibition. Nie is quite positive that her dad cares about her even as she brags about learning german. Jermaine logan receives a letter from his former slaveholder. She has no idea she is writing on the eve of war. I am trying to find it. Sorry. I thought i had it marked. She is writing. Her name is sarah. She is writing on february 20, 1860, right on the eve of the civil war. I now take my pen in hand to write you a few lines, to let you know how we all are. I am a cripple but i am still able to get about. I write you these lines to let you know the situation we are in, partly in consequence of your running away and stealing our fine mayor. We got the mayor back. She never was worth much after you took her. I am determined to sell you and i have had an offer for you but did not see fit to take it. If you offend me 1000, i will give up all claim i have to you. Write to me and let me know if you will accept my proposition. In consequence of your running away, we had to sell 12 acres of land. I want you to send me the money, that i may be able to redeem the land that you are the selling and upon receipt of the abovenamed sum of money, i will send your bill of sale. By this time, Jermaine Logan has gone to school in new york, fled to canada for a while, came back to new york, has a huge congregation in syracuse, new york. He is quite a prominent abolitionist. He and douglas are pretty good friends. Incredibly, incredibly well read. As you will see, eloquent. I am reading excerpts. The letters were much loer. Syracuse, new rk, 1860. He is now the minier of a presbyterian church. 20 february, sarah wrote, duly reived. You are a woman but had you a womans heart, you could never have insulted a brother by telling him that you have sold his only remaining brother and sister because he put himself beyond your power to convert them into money. You sold my brother and sister an12 acres of land because i ran away now you have the meanness to ask to return or, in lieu thereof, send you 1002 enable you to redeem the land but not redeem my poor brother and sister . He goes on and on like this. It is a very strong letter. He does not fool around. He lets her know that he does not respect African American families. When the war came in, it is really overwhelming not just among enslaved people but also free as well. Enslaved people take advantage of the disruption of the war and they go looking for their family members. In fact, union captains had a hard time understanding why they were disappearing when they came involved in the war in 1863. They were going to look for their family, to save their family members. We are searching for family members from refugee camps to refugee camps, were ever they were. Like couples everywhere, black couples engaged in courtship and married during the war. It is the beginning of the war when John Washington declares his love for annie. John washington escapes, crosses a river. Union soldiers tell him to come up. He does not escape. At first, he becomes an assistant to a Union Soldier officer. It is an exciting story i tell about in the prologue. It is kind of fun to tell. The letter includes a line that says, basically, i really want you to be my wife. Annie has found out that john is going to parties. Not a good idea. They are supposed to be engaged. Evidently, she is chastising him for it, criticizing him for it. He writes, i really want you to be my wife. You are the only one. He writes like this in a several letters. It is a nderful letter, a wonderful communication between e two. They do end up getting maied during the war. Then, there is Sergeant Major lewis douglas. Their love letters are beautiful, just absolutely beautiful. He is from a prominent abolitionist family and they ite so eloquently at you just want to keep writing more and more. First, they are supporting and then, soon, they are becoming very much involved. During the war, he writes to her and he is not sure if she is committed or if it toys with him and he lets him know that he loves her very much. He essentially says to her, i want to marry you. This is a soldier in the war. I want to marry you strictly because i lo you. My love for you has stood the test. A portion of the time, i was not even having the pleasure of a letter from you. I based the hope on such a foundation that my love and your love remains. In this particular slide i am showing, she is worried about him getting killed in tion. He actually fights and he is hurt very much, so much so that they cannot have children. He writes to her and lets her know, i shall always love you. Never give me up for dead. My fear that i may be recorded dead has happened a lot. When i am not, it is often the case in battle. He says, i love you and so on. It is a beautiful letter. I followed the Douglass Family through the civil war and then after the civil war. In 1869, pamelia and Lewis Douglass married and they are written up and all of the major newspapers and told about this wedding and that is the way the book ends. Thank you. [ applause ] questions . How did you find the letters and the pictures . The thought of the civil war time it was more prolific but the thought of it, that was a beautiful, beautiful picture. I am proud. How did i find the letters . In places like this, the Massachusetts Historical Society. They are now in a virginia archive but there are many other letters and work to be had here, library of congress, the national archives. Some are digitized. The letter letters are digitized. Everywhere. I went to one archive, who wrote a masterful work on Frederick Douglass and told me about walter evans. Evans had a collection. The douglas is had a scrap book and amelia and lewis letters. I sat there and read them on the table in savannah, georgia. I went from california there and sat there for a week going through his material. His materials are now at yale. They are everywhere. There are a lot of letters. I could have added more and i would still like to do that. I did not want to make the book overwhelming. I wanted to give examples of diverse experiences. I think i did that. I am fascinated by that woman who wrote the letter to jermaine. How did she find him . If he ran away, how was she able to get the letters to him . He was not really in hiding anymore. He was writing for abolitionist papers. He was quite bold like Frederick Douglass. Eventually, someone binds him so he does not have to worry about constantly on the run but he was saying, i dare you to come after me. In this letter, he says i have many people who would come appear and protect me from people like you. Do you know if reverend wilden was ever able to find his brother and sister . I do not know that. It is a really interesting story because it seems that his mother was actually free and kidnapped and that did happen. The children should have all been free. There is also a question online of the family, if you know the fate of the wife. Dangerfield newby . What about his wife . If you know the fate about the rest of his family . No, i dont. You said something about how the civil war brought freedom but it also created this enormous number of refugees and disruption to family life. Is that part of your story . Yes. This is a war like no other war because enslaved people were not going to sit around and wait to be rescued whenever union lines were nearby. They snuck away through the union lines. Now, imagine if you are a general in an army and you are trying to conduct a war with little children, older people following you . It is disruptive. They started creating camps. They called them contraband camps. It was called that for practical reasons. I call them refugee camps, and they were. They were not property. I want to stress that. Those who were men were put to work and eventually were part of the union army after 1863. The women were also often put to work as cooks, nurses, and so on. Northerners go down, norn teachers, black and white, mostly white teachers, go down and start teaching. All of these women, mostly women, older men, how to read and write. And they are overwhelmed by the number who want to learn how to read and write. They shouldnt have been surprised. Its a literate society. Most whites know how to read and write, at least in the north. By that time, the level, the degree of abilities are varied, but we dont know for sure how much. Its very hard to get numbers in the mid19th century on literacy, but the enslaved population and basically were denied access to to learning to how gaining literacy. But we now know that about. 5 to 10 actually did know how to read and write and if one person knows how to read and write in a group they can share with others whats going on. And thats what happens. And so these refugee camps became schools. Doctor roberts and so this books been out for a little while. Yes. And youve gotten some lovely notice, man. Say about it and youve presented a few places. And i wonder what peoples reaction has been to your overall theme about what youre really talking about is the basic humanity of these people. And do you have any stories that you could share or about audiences reaction to this . Well, its really interesting because ive been talking to the general public and i was in a kind of posh town club in pasadena and one lovely woman was telling me how much she enjoyed the book, but she thought it was going to be just a love letters. Bunch of love letters. Its just going to be, you know, just a easy book to read. And she said and it was the history book. And i liked it. And i, of course, said, oh, im so glad. Thats one. But i found that letters, just whether i talk to general audiences or my students, just enthralled those who are listening, i, i used to have students literally reading some things and they cried. Theres, theres this letter between god and laura spicer and her husband. And we know that we dont have we have his letters. We dont have her letters, but we can into it. What he is saying and let me just read a bit of it for you, because its so eloquent. I cant improve on you. He they had been parted for over 20 years and they thought that they were both dead. They thought each one, each other was dead. And then they find out after the civil war they are not. And this is when i cry and my students cry and so he writes to her, he writes back to her, and he says, i read your letters over and over again. I keep them always in my pocket if you are married, i dont ever want to see you again. I would much rather then you know, shes not i would rather you get married to some good man for every time i gets a letter from you, it tells me all two pieces. And he says, the reason i havent written to you in a long time is because the letters disturbed me so much. You know, i love my children. They have three children together, and i. I would come and see you, but i know you could not bear it. I want to see you. And i dont want to see you. I love you just as well as i did the last day i saw you. And it will not do for you and i. To me, im married and my wife and i have two children. And if you and i meet, it would make a very dissatisfied family. But it keeps it keeps writing to her. Now imagine her art is towards a heart wrenching. So they decide theyre not going to meet again. But then he writes to her again and he says, send me some of the childrens hair in a separate paper with their names on the paper. Will you please get married as long as i am married, my dear, you know, the lord know both of our hearts, you know, it never was our wishes to be separated from other, and it never was our fault. Oh, i can see you so plain at any time id rather anything to had happened to me most than ever have parted from you and the children as i am. I do not know which i love best, you or anna. If i was to die today or tomorrow, i do not think i would die satisfied. Till you tell me you will try and marry some good, smart man that will take good care of you and the children and do it because you love me, not because i think more of the life i have got than i do of you. And it goes on. Yeah, its part heartbreaking. Hard to read. And this is the postcivil war period. These are happenings we dont usually read about and we dont think about the fact that people found each other in refugee camps thinking the other was dead. We have stories. Freedmans bureau kept records of those who came through different refugee camps. The mother who was barefoot, Walking Around this is april 1865, looking for her, maybe later looking for her baby and after interviewing her, they they discover this baby was no longer a baby, had to have been over 20 years. And would say, has anyone seen my precious baby going from camp to camp . And they couldnt get her to stay, to take care of her, to get shoes for her. She was determined to find her precious baby. This is the part of the american story that we all need to know as well. Thank you. This course course, as you know, examines the development of the us. Well, first state the way americans have gone about making social provision for themselves. Social