op-ed: know your black history – funding freedom: the power of black philanthropy in the fight for freedom

Black philanthropists are rarely mentioned in American history. Yet the power of black philanthropy was an essential element in toppling slavery in the U.S.

Black philanthropists purchased freedom of enslaved blacks. As soon as colonial blacks were able to obtain freedom they began to purchase their relative’s freedom and later the freedom of other black people. As more free blacks helped more slaves gain their freedom, the increasing impact of free blacks and their philanthropy became a direct threat to slavery and white rule. Eventually, in many Southern states like Mississippi and Louisiana, it became illegal to free slaves.

Early black philanthropy was all the more impressive, because slavery prevented so many individuals from being able to accumulate large amounts of wealth. However, there were black men and women—mainly businesspeople—who accumulated enough wealth to engage in individual philanthropy.

Black philanthropists freed slaves via the Underground Railroad.

Stephen Smith was born to a slave mother in Pennsylvania around 1795. He was indentured to white lumberman Thomas Boude at an early age. Smith’s business acumen was so impressive that Boude let Smith run his lumber business. By the age of 21 he was able to buy his freedom and pay off his indentured servitude for $50. He then made his fortune in the lumber and real estate business in Pennsylvania. In the 1840s he branched out to sell lumber and coal in Philadelphia. Smith was an avid abolitionist and contributed money to the abolitionist publications the Freedmen’s Journal and the Emancipator. He and his partner William Whipper helped smuggle slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad. Because Smith ran his own railroad line he was able to hide runaway slaves in railroad cars he used to transport coal and lumber. After the Civil War Smith continued his philanthropy by supporting Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth, Home for Destitute Colored Children, and establishing Philadelphia’s Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Persons, which was renamed for him after his death in 1873.

Stephen Smith

William Whipper

Martin Delany helped to found The Philanthropic Society of Pittsburg in 1834. Besides establishing schools for black youth, during Delany’s time with the Philanthropic Society of Pittsburg it served as a “station stop” on the Underground Railroad for blacks escaping to the North.

Martin Delany

Delany was one of America’s first black nationalists and a fervent abolitionist. He was born in 1812 to a slave father and free mother in Virginia. She fled with her children to Pennsylvania because she wanted her children to have a formal education, which was illegal for black people in Virginia.

In the 1830s Martin Delany became an apprentice physician. He was accepted into Harvard Medical School along with two other black students in 1850, but was dismissed after only three weeks after white students petitioned to have the black students thrown out. Delany was undeterred. He became a publisher of the newspaper the Mystery in Pittsburgh, and helped Frederick Douglass publish and promote the North Star in New York.

Believing that American abolitionists would never accept black Americans as equals he led an emigration commission to West Africa to explore the possibility of a new black nation in 1859. At the outbreak of the Civil War Delany returned to America where he recruited thousands of black troops and convinced Lincoln to form an all black Corp led by African-Americans. In 1865 he was commissioned as Major of the 52nd U.S. Colored Troop Regiment, the 1st black field officer in the U.S. Army. During Reconstruction he served on the Freedman’s Bureau in South Carolina.

In most black communities pooled resources were the source of black philanthropy. This pooling of resources started in black churches and spread to mutual aid societies, benevolent societies and fraternal orders. These organizations offered guaranteed burials, offered member families support, establishing schools, hospitals and relief for the poor and aged and helped people return to Africa.

Black philanthropic organizations offered member families support. Charleston’s Brown Fellowship Society was founded in 1790 and Woolman’s Benevolent Society was founded in Brooklyn in 1818. These societies not only helped members but devoted portions of their resources to assisting “needy blacks who were not members.”

Black philanthropists publicized and promoted abolitionist activism. Besides activists line Delany and Smith who funded, published and promoted abolitionist publications there were activists like James Forten. James Forten was born free in Philadelphia and was a Revolutionary War hero. By 1830 he had amassed a fortune as a sail maker. He was a member of several benevolent societies and contributed heavily to abolitionist activities including supporting William Lloyd Garrison’s antislavery publication The Liberator.

James Forten

Black philanthropists used their wealth to fund education. This increased black literacy and access to news of revolts and resistance. Free blacks were barred from public education in most part of the country. The education of blacks was deeply feared by slaveholders. After 1830s in most states in the South it became illegal to teach slaves to read and write. Newspaper accounts of resistance and incendiary pamphlets such as David Walker’s Appeal were blamed for Nat Turner’s and other revolts.

The Philanthropic Society of Pittsburg (described above) along with the African Dorcas Society of New York and Philadelphia established free schools for black youth. The latter was founded in 1828 by a group of free women of color who were the wives of prominent New York businessmen. Slavery had been abolished in New York in 1827 and the organization started by gathering clothing and shoes for poor black children who could not attend the free school. The New York Presbyterian Hospital now sits on the sight of the original school.

Dorcas African Free School

Marie Couvent, kidnapped as a child from Guinea and enslaved in Sante Domingue purchased her freedom and made a fortune in real estate in New Orleans. She also was a slave owner. In her 1837 will she left land and an endowment to fund a free school for orphan children in New Orleans, which opened in 1847. White New Orleans residents fought an 11 year legal battle to prevent the school from opening. Today it is known as the Bishop Perry Middle School.

Born in New Orleans in 1810, philanthropist Thomy Lafon, like many black entrepreneurs made his fortune in real estate. He made substantial donations of money and land to the Marie Couvent School in the 1840s, the Underground Railroad, and the American Anti-Slavery Society. In his will he left sizable donations to Charity Hospital, Dillard University and the Sisters of the Holy Family, an order of black nuns. He established Lafon’s Old Folks Home, which still provides service to the elderly.

Paul Cuffe, the son of an Ashanti African man named Cuffe Slocum who was kidnapped from Africa at the age of 10, and a Wampanoag Indian woman named Ruth Moses, made his money in shipping. Cuffe’s father purchased his own freedom after only three years in the Americas. Working as a carpenter, farmer and fisherman he was able to leave his family 116 acres of land when he died in 1772.

Paul Cuffe

Paul Cuffe signed onto whaling boats as a 16 year old and later built several boats with his brother which he used to haul cargo along the Eastern coast. Eventually he was able to purchase several larger ships which he manned with relatives and all-black crews. He eventually did business in Europe and Africa. Fed up with his town’s refusal to allow an integrated school, but determined to make sure his children had an education, he built and funded a school on his own land in Westport, MA and allowed all local children to attend.

From the growing ranks of free blacks came more philanthropists agitating against slavery. This momentum snowballed into a formidable cycle of philanthropy and resistance. In the few states that free blacks were allowed to vote, they opposed restrictive laws against the free black population and slaves.

Black philanthropists served as living examples of black freedom and power, in defiance of slavery and white rule. They posed such a threat to slavery that whites funded back-to-Africa efforts.

Black philanthropists also funded back-to-Africa efforts, but as a way for African Americans to achieve the freedom and equality they deserved. In 1807 Paul Cuffe’s shipping interests brought him in contact with the African Institution of Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York which helped American blacks return to Africa. The African Institution was interested in helping free blacks emigrate back to Sierra Leone. A colony of free blacks had been established since 1787 by the Sierra Leone Company of Great Britain. In 1811 Cuffe voyaged to Sierra Leone for the first time, and by 1815 he personally paid to settle 38 African-American colonists from Boston there.

In the 1800s black philanthropy and white philanthropy converged, even if they were for diametrically opposed reasons.

One place this convergence occurred was within the American Colonization Society (ACS). The ACS was founded in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey. The American Colonization Society helped found Liberia in 1821 and moved more than 13,000 black Americans there. One wing of the group was evangelicals and Quakers who supported abolition. The other wing of the ACS were represented by founding members like John Randolph, Bushrod Washington (a nephew of George Washington) and Henry Clay who wanted to strengthen the institution of slavery. Clay strongly favored the export of free people of color to African to help “rid the South of troublesome agitators who might threaten the plantation system of slavery.” Two American presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison also were proponents of Clay’s argument to “ease the race problem.” Clay’s side of the organization saw free African-Americans as a “perpetual excitement” to slaves that threatened the slave society. The presence of free blacks was so feared during the early 1800s that many Southern states made it unlawful for them to reside in the states.

Paul Cuffe (the philanthropist mentioned above), a Quaker and a free African-American who agreed with the idea of establishing a nation for free blacks in Africa was so put off by The American Colonization Society’s racism that he never joined.

Black philanthropists used their wealth to strengthen the black community, helping it persevere and unite against slavery and injustice.

Biddy “Bridget” Mason was born a slave in Georgia in 1818 and given to Robert Smith and his wife as a “wedding present.”Smith and his wife converted to Mormonism and moved in 1851 to San Bernardino, California. Smith had been counseled to free his slaves before he went to California. In 1850 California had been granted statehood in the Compromise of 1850 which made any slave brought to that state free. Helped by friends, Biddy and Smith’s other slaves escaped to Los Angeles where locals prevented Smith from taking them to Texas (then still a slave state). She and the other slaves petitioned the Los Angeles Court, which granted their freedom.

Biddy “Bridget” Mason

Biddy Mason spoke fluent Spanish and worked as a nurse and midwife in Los Angeles. She saved her money and amassed a small fortune. She became one of the first black Americans to purchase land in Los Angeles and also invested in commercial properties in the city. Her philanthropy helped found the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1872 and she was active in helping various charities that helped feed and shelter the poor in Los Angeles. Later, her grandson Richard Curry Owen would become one of the richest African-Americans in Los Angeles. She died in 1891 and is buried Evergreen Cemetery at Boyle Heights in Los Angeles.

Black philanthropists freed other blacks, bolstered the ranks of the Union Army, and spread news of resistance and revolt. Black dollars funded freedom and began a relentless cycle of philanthropy and resistance. Black philanthropists strengthened their black communities with their bold example and by funding a myriad of social services. They alleviated poverty, promoted education and advanced the cause of abolition. Even the extreme step of moving free blacks to Africa failed to stop the onslaught of resistance and agitation that had been unleashed.

The power and initiatives of black philanthropy was essential in the toppling of slavery in the U.S. It is long past time that these and other unacknowledged black philanthropists should be held up for their personal and collective contributions of bravery and sacrifice to end this evil system and improve our society.

Biddy Mason Park in Los Angeles

*Nick Douglas is author of: Finding Octave: The Untold Story of Two Creole Families and Slavery in Louisiana. Available on amazon.com He also can be contacted on his blog: www.findingoctave.tumblr.com