Following history on the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail
By JUDITH FAIRWEATHER
Humbled. Uninformed. Deprived. Enlightened. Engaged. Enthralled. These are words to describe how I’ve been feeling since my latest Temporary Tourist excursion.
Back at the end of July, I journeyed down to Great Barrington, ostensibly to take some photos of the preview of the W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite and Memorial Park (I found it impossible to simply take photos and was compelled to write a story that my compassionate editor in her benevolence allowed to run). Once there, I discovered a memorial now getting off the ground after almost 40 years in the making. I also discovered something called the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail guide — a map of the sites pertaining to African Americans in our area who played pivotal roles in our state and nation’s history.
Looking at the 40 Massachusetts sites on the map (and an additional eight sites in Connecticut), I encountered names I had never heard in my 44 years of living here and 12 years of public education: Mum Bett, the Rev. Samuel Harrison, Agrippa Hull. I learned things that I never knew. For example, there was a Berkshire County chapter of the NAACP founded here in 1918, which sent residents to participate in the 1963 March on Washington, registered voters during the Freedom Summer of 1964 in Alabama and Mississippi, helped create affordable housing in Pittsfield and organized sympathy protests at the former Woolworth’s in Pittsfield to protest the refusal of the chain to serve African Americans at their lunch counters in the South.
Where was all this information when I was in school? How is it that I have lived here for so long and yet remained so unaware of this important facet of our history? I resolved to embark on a journey to change that.
My first stop was to learn about a very prominent man, Col. John Ashley, who lived with his wife in Sheffield in the late 1700s. They owned five slaves, one of whom would come to be known as Mum Bett, Mumbet or Elizabeth Freeman, depending on the source. There, in their fancy parlor, Ashley hosted the great thinkers of the day, including Sam Adams and Ethan Allen. Ashley chaired a grievance committee of those unhappy with relations with England. They drafted the Sheffield Resolves, which predated the Declaration of Independence and contained the concept that all people are free and have certain rights.
Mum Bett was present, and silent, at these meetings, and heard and understood the language used. In 1780, the Massachusetts Constitution was read aloud in the streets. Part of that document states that “all men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and inalienable rights.” In 1781, when warding off a blow intended for her younger sister, Lizzie, Mum Bett had had enough. She believed the language in those documents applied to her, and to all slaves, as well. She decided to sue for her freedom, enlisting the help of Theodore Sedgwick, a lawyer and friend of the family.
On Aug. 21, 1781, Mum Bett won her court case. This, along other cases, helped to end slavery in Massachusetts.
On Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008, my daughters and I traveled through picturesque Sheffield under startlingly clear blue skies to sit in the yard of the Ashley house and hear speakers and others mark this important anniversary. Elaine Gunn and Bernie Drew, of the Friends of the Du Bois Homesite Steering Committee, spoke, among others, and the Youth Alive step dancers of Pittsfield performed.
The house has been lovingly restored, with furniture accurate to the period, although not original to the house, setting the scene beautifully. I was struck by the story, and my lack of knowledge of it. How sad that a writer, and a history teacher, could be so unaware of something like this in her own backyard.
Following the moving ceremony, the girls and I consulted the brand-new-off-the-presses Mum Bett’s Trail map, a companion to the broader map I first encountered at the end of July. We decided we would try and find her gravestone in the Stockbridge Cemetery.
The map told us she could be found in the northeast corner, in what is known as the Sedgwick Pie. Amazingly, I found the northeast corner on the first try, but actually went too far. We had to backtrack more toward the middle of the cemetery, where there was a section separated from the rest by a fence on three sides. Entering, we found Theodore and Pamela Sedgwick’s monuments in the center, with the rest of the family buried in a circle around them. There, in the front row, was the 1829 grave of Mum Bett, who, after winning her freedom, went on to serve as a kind of nanny for the Sedgwick family. She was buried right next to the Sedgwicks’ daughter, Catharine. We stood in front of the headstone, all three of us uncharacteristically silent, as we contemplated this important woman and the impact she had had on history.
On Friday, I was off to another site on the trail map, quite different from the three I had already visited. I went off to the home of the Rev. Samuel Harrison on Third Street in Pittsfield. The house is in a state of extreme disrepair, but the event of my visit was a joyous one.
In May 2004, Ruth Edmonds Hill, great-granddaughter to Harrison, traveled to Pittsfield with her husband, Dr. Hugh M. Hill (better known as Brother Blue) to meet with a group of Pittsfielders interested in saving Harrison’s home from the wrecking ball.
Harrison (1818-1900) was an African American minister born into slavery who was a pioneering civil rights activist, abolitionist, orator and writer. He served as the chaplain for the Massachusetts 54th, the all-black Civil War regiment that acquitted itself so honorably yet so tragically at Fort Wagner in South Carolina.
As just one example of his work, when he discovered that the black and white soldiers were not receiving equal pay, he appealed to the governor of Massachusetts, John Andrew, who brought the case to President Lincoln, ultimately resulting in the passage in 1864 of legislation requiring equal pay in the army appropriations bill. Harrison also served as the first minister of the Second Congregational Church in Pittsfield, founded in 1846, the first church exclusively for persons of color.
His house now is a National Register of Historic Places landmark, a National Parks Service “Save America’s Treasures” preservation project and a Massachusetts Historical Commission preservation project. Congressman John Olver secured a “Save America’s Treasures” matching grant for $246,000.
Friday saw the groundbreaking for the restoration and preservation of the property, which is slated to become a place to provide greater insight into African-American history.
Over the course of two days, I had unearthed a vast trove of history of which I have only scratched the surface. I am humbled that it has remained unknown to me all of these years, but am so enthralled by it that my journey of discovery will surely continue.
At the beginning of this column I mentioned four names to you: Du Bois, Mum Bett, Harrison and Agrippa Hull. I have only shared a smidgen with you of what I have learned about the first three, and haven’t mentioned the fourth. Why? Because I haven’t gotten to that stop on the map yet. Hull remains a mystery to me, a mystery to be deliciously uncovered as I follow the fascinating trail of African American history in Berkshire County. Won’t you join me?
For more information about the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail or Mum Bett, go to africanamericantrail.org. A virtual tour of the Du Bois home site is available at library.umass.edu/spcoll/duboishome/virtualtour.htm. The Col. Ashley house is a property of the Trustees of Reservations, thetrustees.org. To learn about Harrison, visit samuelharrison.org.