On Enslavement and the River

I want to thank the CAS board and my fellow research committee members, Susan MacIntosh and Jackie Harper, for making room for me. Joining CAS is not like joining an organization, it's stepping into a journey. I look at the time that I spend with CAS as my most valuable time. It is a journey of self discovery and constant questioning and new learning, and I thank you for making a place for me. 

You will see a plaque at the foot of the marker that says we wish to “celebrate the lives of enslaved Africans in their descendants who built Poughkeepsie.” And so, I want to offer context very briefly, answering the question: Why are we at this place, at this very moment, dedicating this marker, and reflecting on these broader issues today? We live here and the things that surround us were shaped and made by men, women, and children whose stories remain too much of a hidden history.

We want to recognize them and honor them, and the question is perhaps more than, what can we learn from them? it is also, why has it taken us so long to get to know them? With that in mind there is much to admire from the people that you'll come to know who are honored by this marker. There's much to recognize and appreciate and applaud. We can only hope that we make the kind of profound contributions that they did in spite of the most extraordinary obstacles. 

As our board member, Kalimah Karim likes to say, New York's slavery was no Hollywood version of slavery. Some like to say, well, in New York, they were treated kindly, like a family member. But sources like bills of sale, wills, and newspaper advertisements to name a few, tell a different story of men, women and children “sold” along with cattle and other material property. And significant rewards for the recapture of so-called runaways.

I think there's a growing awareness that slavery in New York existed until 1827. But its abolishment in the state by no means meant that the risks were reduced as you will see. 

In 1865, the 13th Amendment ended slavery nationally with the deadliest war in our history. Two percent of the US population died, that would be the equivalent of 7 million people today – who died over the issue of slavery. In 1870, the 15th Constitutional amendment guaranteed equal protection. We often think of the end of the Civil War and the constitutional amendments affecting the states in the south, but they affected the state of New York, which had one of the most notorious racist voting laws. From 1824, White men in New York State did not need to own property to vote, but a man of color did. And that race-specific law stood in New York until the 15th Amendment in 1870 made it invalid.

Europeans arrived with enslaved persons from Albany, New York City and Ulster County in the 17th century, and they arrived from the east with Quakers from the early 18th century. We often think of Quakers in their wonderful role later on as important voices for abolition and help on the Underground Railroad which we need not diminish. But in their first near century of populating Duchess County, they were slave owners as much as any other. 

And Quaker manumissions, the setting free of their enslaved, at the time of the American Revolution was sometimes promised as decades away from happening. We learn this by looking at the original 18th century documents.

That's the kind of technical background on the barriers that faced the people we are celebrating. 

When we look at this river relative to enslaved persons and their descendants, we can't help but remember that indeed, as was mentioned earlier, Indigenous people called this massive waterway, the river that flows both ways, right? It's not a river, it's an estuary. And when we consider how this river flows forward and backward, it really embodies all the very positive things and all the very negative things and risks that it offered enslaved and even free persons of color. 

Indeed, it is a river of dreams, as it is often called. It was the backbone that grew the Empire State Economy. And in the 18th and 19th century, rural agricultural goods came from inland to these landings like where we gather here today, to meet with boats and ships from all over the world. 

We continue to be amazed at the populations of persons of color and enslaved persons in rural parts of the county that literally day by day, we continue to unveil and come to know. Slavery was as pervasive in the most rural and remote part of Duchess County as it was in Poughkeepsie.

At the same time, this was a river of great optimism. Paul Cuffee of New Bedford was a Black whaling ship captain with a Black crew. And we know that he traded here in Poughkeepsie. The controversial Jeremy Hamilton, America's first Black millionaire before the Civil War, had bought a landing in Poughkeepsie at the end of Pine Street, a place to build a significant house at Mansion Square, and invested in the silk operation that stood not far from where we stand today. 

Local ship captain Clint Williams of southern Dutchess was the second generation of boat hands on the river, and his children the third generation. 

We are working with Revive College Hill Park Coalition and the city to rename the oval roadway at the top of College Hill that goes around the pavilion as Bolin Oval, to recognize three generations of Bolans: Abram Boland, most likely a freedom seeker from Dover. He lobbied successfully to incorporate a place of higher learning for Blacks in the state, which ultimately was not realized. What was realized is that his son, Gaius Bolin, became the first Black graduate of Williams College and his granddaughter who was born at College Hill became the first Black judge in the United States in 1929. So we have amazing stories of enslaved persons. 

Andrew Frazier was born enslaved at the manner of Morrisania served in the Revolutionary War, and we have records of his descendants and headstones and burial plots of every successive Frazier generation that fought and served in the Civil War, WW1 and WW2. There are many such inspiring stories.

But it is also the river of dread. Of course, when you're on the walkway, you feel, wow, this is huge. It's so big, you feel like you can see the curve of the world. I'm on top of the world. While you can be impressed with its expansive reach, it can also feel like a massively crushing beast.

For example, we know one of the few firsthand accounts of freedom seekers is from Sophia Pooley was a young girl, six years old in 1765, and she told her story late in life, she was kidnapped in Southern Duchess County and put in the hold of a boat that came up this Hudson River and would've gone right past here. Think of the little girl bound and gagged in the hull of a ship going ultimately to Canada where she was enslaved. Canada wasn't always the land of the free, how that river and rivers must have felt so large and oppressive to her. And yet she lived to be in her nineties to tell the most inspiring story of how she survived and integrated herself with the Indigenous population of Canada. 

Another way the great river of dreams could end a life of freedom in an instant was through kidnappings, which were much more prevalent. We know the story of the 12 years a slave. It was much more common than we thought. 

There was a carriage operator in Poughkeepsie who took a young Black boy to the South. When he came back, the boy was missing. The carriage operator said he had run away. The truth was he had sold him into slavery. 

The young boy was clever enough to talk to authorities who reached out to a judge in Poughkeepsie, and he was actually brought back. And court documents show that the kidnapper, Isaac Butler, was actually brought to court in trial. 

We know there are stories of a young boy being brought and lured onto a boat with oranges only to be put in the hull of the ship and sold into slavery. We know because he escaped 10 years later to tell his story. 

Just a block from here, Samuel Thompson and David Arnold, who was a Quaker whaling boat captain, helped people who had sometimes walked from the south as freedom seekers with no food or clothing, and just a block from here helped find them a place to stay and move on to.

So this river that flows both ways so accurately described by our indigenous people was a river of dreams and a river also of dread and despair. It could liberate and bring freedom. It could in an instant turn a free man or boy into an enslaved person for life. I wanna summarize with a hint at the African spirit that we celebrate. And although this is not coordinated I think it will, I think it will align in that we're lucky enough to have poet gold speaking about contemporary or contemporary times with a poem. And I wanted to read two others if I may. 

Langston Hughes in 1920, when he was 17 years old wrote this famous poem about the African spirit. I've known rivers. I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood and human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates. When dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers, ancient dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. 

And I will conclude with 60 seconds of the poem written by Stanley Tarver. Stanley Tarver was a Poughkeepsie High School graduate. Some of you may know the family. I spoke to his older brother who asked me to read this poem that Stanley Tarver wrote in 1977, so almost fifty year ago. Obviously inspired by Langston Hughes, he writes from Poughkeepsie. 

For those that are confused, I am like a river strong, powerful and determined like a river who flows from the loins of the most ancient of ancestors that knows no rest. I am like the river floating on an antique dream of Nefertiti bathing in my clear waters. I danced past the palace of Pianka and flow on. I am like a river potent with energy, rippling with a mass of violence and creativity. I am the defier of death. That killer of dams like the river that winds from the mountains then pierces the greatest seas. I flow on. There is never a break in my stream for I am simply a river that keeps on keeping on. Stanley Tarver Poughkeepsie, 1977.

I hope this has given you some idea of the men, women and children we wish to celebrate, along with their contributions in the face of opportunities and great obstacles, at this great river which flowed (and flows) two ways with equal force, at this great place, Poughkeepsie. Here at the cusp of constant risk and opportunity.

We invite you to look at the Celebrating the African Spirit website, we have a tour that is a walk from the Sojourner Truth memorial at the western side of the Walkway. We invite you to take it either online or in person any time to learn more about the stories of those we celebrate today.