Facing Our History: the Cape Ann Slavery Project

Facing Our History: the Cape Ann Slavery Project

Sermon by Reverend Janet Parsons

If you stop to think about it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Cape Ann residents would be involved in the slave trade in the 19th century. After all, people here made their living from the sea: fishing, trading, shipbuilding, and privateering, which is a more polite word for piracy. We get a kick out of having our original organ, now on display in our Historical Room, that was supposedly liberated from a British ship by privateers and then donated to this church, perhaps to lessen the guilt, or perhaps to remove the evidence. Having it is a little bit naughty – gives us a little color.

The Cape Ann slave trade was known as the ‘Surinam’ trade. Cape Ann supplied salt cod to the sugar plantations down in South America, the story went, and the ships returned with their holds full of molasses and rum. But in fact, some merchants and vessels did not limit themselves to the supply of food and beverage, but trafficked in enslaved people.

There are at least two, probably three, documented instances of slaving voyages that originated in Gloucester in the 1840’s. And in two cases, the captains or the investors had ties to this church. It turns out that our history contains more color than we realized.

In May of 1842, the schooner Illinois was preparing to take on a load of enslaved persons in Benin, in West Africa. Suspicious, the British port authorities searched the ship, but chose to believe the story that the many casks full of drinking water were in fact full of a cargo of palm oil. The ship loaded slaves during the night and set sail.

The next morning, the British spotted the vessel, sailing under a Spanish flag, and gave chase. Fearful of being caught and charged with piracy, the captain, a man named Joseph Swift, chose to run the schooner aground on the West African coast. He made it to shore and escaped. It is estimated that around 350 Africans drowned as the ship broke up on the rocks.

According to records, Captain Joseph Swift was baptized here in this church on December 2, 1810. The Schooner Illinois had other ties to this church as well. One of the major investors in the vessel was Benjamin Kent Hough, Jr., who grew up down the street in the Sargent House, and whose father is memorialized on one of our stained glass windows, located ___________________.

In November of 1842, another schooner out of Gloucester, the Leda, delivered a cargo of enslaved people to Brazil. B.K. Hough, Jr. was a part owner of this vessel, and it was captained by William Pearce, Jr., who was the grandson of the William Pearce who is also memorialized on the stained glass window I just mentioned.

The Leda made another voyage in June of 1843, and delivered another 270 slaves to Brazil. The ship was observed by the British, who had attempted to capture her. The ship was abandoned, according to British documentation, and the captain, William Pearce, Jr., made his way home on a Swedish vessel. *

Most of this information, and more, has been hidden for many years, swept under the rugs of history. A local researcher, Lise Breen, has made it her mission to unearth these stories, so that we can know the truth about Cape Ann’s involvement in slavery and in abolition efforts. We know now where enslaved persons have lived, and who owned them. We know more about the slave trade: the ships, the captains, the investors. We know this now because our church and the Unitarian Universalist Society of Rockport have partnered in grantwriting in the past three years in order to fund Lise Breen’s research. We have received grants from the Essex National Heritage Area, from the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Woburn Grant fund, and from the UU Fund for Social Responsibility. Some of the funding has gone to Lise, and some is being used to design a website that tells the stories of people and places involved in the history of enslaved people in Cape Ann. The website is in its final development phase, and will be available to the public soon. We fervently hope that this will be a valuable teaching tool for all ages as we all confront our history, and the role some of our prominent citizens and institutions have played in the oppression of people of color across the centuries. I will have a computer at coffee hour to show you the website.

We should be very proud of our congregation’s role in bringing this hidden information to light. We can be justified in saying that we are acting on the right side of history, shining light, bringing forth the truth. We are upholding our fourth Unitarian Universalist principle, affirming a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

We could pat ourselves on the back for our actions, and be done. After all, we’ve done something good, right? The research has been done, the website will share it, and…

And…what? What is next?

Well, what comes next is that we have to own this part of our history. No one is claiming that the church owned the slave ships, of course. But the reality is that people who had very strong ties to this church were involved. The original William Pearce donated at least some of the land our building is built on. The captain of the Illinois was baptized here, when this building was very new. The Pearce and Hough families donated a memorial stained glass window around 100 years ago, proving that the ties to the church remained long after the slave trading. We have to assume and to acknowledge that some of the money earned through the slave trade would have found its way into our coffers. This church benefitted from the money earned by enslaving human beings. There is really no way around it. Money that flowed into Gloucester made its way into the banks, into the stores, shared by the investors. And that money would have been used for charitable donations, including the funding of this church. There is really no other way to look at it.

Last week we talked about the need for a church to create safe space, but at the same time, to create brave space. And stories such as I have shared here this morning call us to that brave space, call us to face our past honestly, call us to accountability.

As I think I have shared here, about five years ago I discovered that an ancestor of mine had owned a slave. He was a farmer in upstate New York, and when the American Revolution was brewing he set out for Canada. My mother found his household inventory in a book about the settlers of her hometown in Nova Scotia, and it included mention of a slave. I was shocked. It had simply never occurred to me that my forebears could have owned human beings.

This discovery changed things for me. I had never felt personally involved in the story of slavery in the United States. And then I found out that I am involved.

This is not about guilt. European Americans such as myself are often concerned about being made to feel guilty. We try to reject feelings of guilt over slavery. Often, in our effort to push away feelings of guilt, to try to keep ourselves in a comfortable, safe place, we end up pushing away any response whatsoever to our history, to our involvement.

But if we don’t want to feel guilty, how, then might we feel? How should we feel?

In fact, since my own discovery, I realize that I do not feel guilty. However, I do feel accountable. Finding out about my ancestor brought me into this history in a new way. It forces me to own my history in a different way. I feel accountable. I feel called to find ways to change things today, usually in small ways, but to try to contribute to making this country safer and healthier for all of our people.

Slavery is an enormity that cannot be overstated. It is this country’s Original Sin. We try to hide the shame, and minimize the brutality and violence of our past. We keep sweeping it under the rug. And as I always tell people when events of the past are swept under the rug, they do not go away. They might appear to stay hidden for a time, but ultimately, all that happens is that it gets lumpy there, under the rug.

It seems almost daily that we see the results of our unwillingness to confront the great sin of our country’s past. We see it in the police brutality, in the protests, in riots over Confederate statues, in the casual dismissal of people of color. We see it in the persistence of rumors that our first president of color is not a citizen, or is a Muslim: in other words, that he is not one of ‘us’. And what we are really seeing, through all these incidents, all this unrest, this refusal to trust and accept people, is the wound that was created at the very beginning of our history on this continent. It is a wound that will not heal, that cannot heal, as long as we refuse to confront the damage that has been done.

There is a country that has done much work in facing its past, in becoming accountable for its racism. I am speaking, of course, of South Africa. South Africa, vilified in the international community for many years as it practiced apartheid. In 1995, faced with the very real possibility that the country could tear itself apart, South Africa established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to confront the human rights abuses that had taken place in its society. As part of the Commission’s work, people were invited to come forward to express their regret at having perpetrated abuses. They sought reconciliation, and through reconciliation – ‘re-conciliation’ – forgiveness. The chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had this to say about the Commission’s work: “We have been incredibly privileged to have been part of a process of seeking to heal a traumatized people. Many times I have said, ‘Really, the only appropriate response is for us to take off our shoes, because we are standing on holy ground.” (In Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Raymond G. Helmick, S.J., and Rodney L. Petersen, eds., Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2001, p. xii.)

The United States has so far refused to give itself this chance to stand on holy ground, to confront our past, to hold itself accountable, to create a brave space. The horror of slavery remains a wound, a trauma, that does not heal on its own.

Is now the time for turning?

Earlier we read together these words:

“It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking with old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong, and this is never easy…It means saying: I am sorry…But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways.” (Jack Riemer, On Turning, Singing the Living Tradition, #634)

Can this church help create a time for turning? Can we use our knowledge, our history, to create opportunities for reconciliation?

It’s easy for us to say, we cannot fix what happened. It’s not our fault, and oh, of course, we never would have acted in such terrible reprehensible ways. It’s easy to say, we can’t fix what happened, so there is no work for us to do. But we have a choice: to turn away, to hide the past and refuse to acknowledge it, or to turn toward our knowledge, accept it, and hold ourselves accountable.

Back at the beginning I asked, ‘what’s next? How can we move forward, animated and motivated, not by guilt, but by accountability? How can we create the brave space we need to work to heal the wounds that continue to fester?

And the answer is not yet clear. Sometimes we throw a stone in a pond and the ripples expand outward. We will think together about ways to be accountable, ways to show up for the people who have borne and continue to bear the consequences of actions taken long ago. Our actions do not have to be huge. But holding the knowledge of our past, motivated by the knowledge, we can take more responsibility. Here are some ideas to get us started: We can show up at demonstrations. We can help immigrants. We can donate toward scholarships for children of color. We can say, “Yes, this is my problem. Yes, I will do what I can, over and over, in ways large and small.”

My friends, once we learn something, no matter how uncomfortable it can make us, we cannot unlearn it. Once we know something, we cannot unknow it. We can pretend to forget, pretend that it doesn’t affect us, but within our deepest selves we hear the voice of truth, of integrity, calling us to be accountable. To be brave. To work for reconciliation – re-conciliation – to do all we can to help heal the wounds that so many try to ignore.

We are not made to ignore the damage, to ignore what we have learned of our history. We are called to respond. We are called to be healers.

“A man is walking away, down a long road,

while behind him someone is calling, calling.

Will he turn?

Sometimes we are the ones calling –

or think we are.

But always, underneath that,

we are the ones being called

by the facts

by life,

by God.

Will we turn?”

(Mary Morrison, in Reconciliation: The Hidden Hyphen, Pendle Hill Pamphlet, 198.)

May our knowledge turn us ever toward the problems, toward Love, toward the Holy.

May it be so,

Amen.

* With thanks to Lise Breen for her research. Additional project support for Cape Ann Slavery and Abolition provided by Mike Ciolino of VerveBoston to create the website: www.capeannslavery.org. Thanks also to Janet Young, Dick Prouty, Jerry Ackerman, Doug Smith and Kelly Knox from Gloucester UU and to Reverend Susan Moran, Susan Beattie, and Joe Rukeyser from the UU Society of Rockport.

Reading – from “Re-conciliation: The Hidden Hyphen,” by Mary Morrison (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #198, 1974.)

Reconciliation is an easy word to say, smooth and flowing, speaking itself almost as gracefully as a dance. Why, then, when we try to live out the word, do we often – perhaps usually – find it moving in quite a different way, more like a karate match than a dance?

The word is a much sharper one than it seems, for there is a hyphen hidden away in it. Re-conciliation. The “conciliation” part of the word is a cousin to the word “council” and carries the sense of “together4.” The “re-“ part, however, implies a break. Gathering together has to be done again in the face of some kind of break, some kind of relationship-disaster. A wound has already been given and taken somewhere, somehow, even though we may not know exactly where or what it is – the first karate-chop, perhaps.

Re-conciliation: with the emergence of that hidden hyphen the word no longer flows smoothly. It is a razor’s edge, painful, dangerous, cutting; a narrow ridge along which we walk, dizzied by the headlong fallaway of the land to both sides of us; a tightrope on which we desperately balance – all uncomfortable images and all true.

They are true because they describe our time and our state, in which…we see a break in our relationships wherever we look – with the earth, with society, with our tradition, with our siblings, with our children, with ourselves. It is an excruciatingly uncomfortable time, in which, if we stop and think, we see ourselves to be living right on top of that invisible hyphen, on the razor’s edge in the middle of separation.

Nothing could feel less like what we think of as a reconciling time. Yet perhaps it is exactly that; and what is more, it may have a good claim to be the only kind of time that is reconciling.

To explain what I mean (Morrison continues) let me draw a mental picture:

A man is walking away, down a long road,