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Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts, by Elise Lemire
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Concord, Massachusetts, has long been heralded as the birthplace of American liberty and American letters. It was here that the first military engagement of the Revolutionary War was fought and here that Thoreau came to "live deliberately" on the shores of Walden Pond. Between the Revolution and the settlement of the little cabin with the bean rows, however, Walden Woods was home to several generations of freed slaves and their children. Living on the fringes of society, they attempted to pursue lives of freedom, promised by the rhetoric of the Revolution, and yet withheld by the practice of racism. Thoreau was all but alone in his attempt "to conjure up the former occupants of these woods." Other than the chapter he devoted to them in Walden, the history of slavery in Concord has been all but forgotten.
In Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts, Elise Lemire brings to life the former slaves of Walden Woods and the men and women who held them in bondage during the eighteenth century. After charting the rise of Concord slaveholder John Cuming, Black Walden follows the struggles of Cuming's slave, Brister, as he attempts to build a life for himself after thirty-five years of enslavement. Brister Freeman, as he came to call himself, and other of the town's slaves were able to leverage the political tensions that fueled the American Revolution and force their owners into relinquishing them. Once emancipated, however, the former slaves were permitted to squat on only the most remote and infertile places. Walden Woods was one of them. Here, Freeman and his neighbors farmed, spun linen, made baskets, told fortunes, and otherwise tried to survive in spite of poverty and harassment.
Today Walden Woods is preserved as a place for visitors to commune with nature. Lemire, who grew up two miles from Walden Pond, reminds us that this was a black space before it was an internationally known green space. Black Walden preserves the legacy of the people who strove against all odds to overcome slavery and segregation.
- Sales Rank: #1041885 in Books
- Published on: 2009-05-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 6.25" w x 1.00" l, 1.21 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 248 pages
Review
"Elise Lemire has written an elegantly researched, deeply insightful, and eminently readable history of the embattled black families in New England's most celebrated town from the Revolutionary era to the heyday of the Transcendentalists. It is certain to be of the greatest interest not only to scholars across the entire interdiscipline of American studies but also to any and all readers interested in the tangled history of race in America."—Lawrence Buell, author of New England Literary Culture
"Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, is most famous as the place where Henry David Thoreau went to 'live deliberately' and subsist on the land. Lemire . . . sets about to resurrect the memory of not only the freedmen and -women who dwelled there but also the history of slavery in Concord. . . . Ultimately, Lemire conveys the idea that before Walden Pond was a 'green space,' it was, in fact, a 'black space.'"—Library Journal
"Thanks to Lemire's ingenious research, such valiant figures as Brister Freeman and Cato Ingraham can claim their just place alongside the more famous Minutemen in the town that fired the 'shot heard 'round the world.'"—Robert Gross, author of The Minutemen and Their World
"[B]reathtaking. . . . Lemire's meticulous and inspired archival research shows that 'Concord, Massachusetts, of all places, was a slave town.' . . . Imaginative and moral generosity, to both the black and the white eighteenth and early nineteenth century Concordians whose intimately entangled fortunes she chronicles, is a hallmark of her study. At the same time, Lemire is clear-eyed and clear-voiced about the facts and meanings of inter-racial Concord's 'long and brutal history.'"—American Literary History
"This small but important study shines light on Africans in Massachusetts as both slaves and freeman. . . . The life of Concord's Africans in and out of slavery was one of prejudice, submission, abandonment, poverty, and absence of earthily rewards. . . . Essential."—Choice
"Lemire has genuinely enriched our understanding not only of the history of Concord but also of the country for which that fabled town still so often stands."—New England Quarterly
"Capturing the social texture of an eighteenth-century Massachusetts community, Black Walden is a useful contribution to studies of New England slavery, Massachusetts history, and African American life. . . . [O]ut of a short excerpt from Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Lemire has put together an engrossing portrait of slaveholders and the freed people in Concord."—Journal of African American History
Designated a "We the People" project by the National Endowment for the Humanities
"Lemire has unearthed an astonishing amount of detailed information about more than a dozen African and African American slaves and the interconnected white families who built their fortunes and genteel reputations on their backs. . . . A beautifully written, fascinating, and challenging piece of historical detective work."—Joanne Pope Melish, Journal of the Civil War Era
About the Author
Elise Lemire is the author of "Miscegenation": Making Race in America, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. She is Associate Professor of Literature at Purchase College, State University of New York.
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
An enlightening, disturbing, & necessary read
By Corinne H. Smith
By now students of American history should be able to accept the fact that a fair number of our "founding fathers" were slaveholders who had a chance but chose not to eradicate the business of slavery with their Declaration. The relationship that existed between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings continues to make news and to raise eyebrows and further debate. But who would have thought that slavery was prevalent in the town we most consider the birthplace of American freedom? And who would have thought that Henry David Thoreau might be the person to provide posthumous direction for this discovery?
Elise Lemire begins her research with descriptions found in one chapter of Thoreau's WALDEN. In "Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors," the naturalist and Transcendentalist outlined the kinds of people who once lived in and around Walden Woods. They were folks who were considered to be on the fringe of society: individuals that the townsmen of Concord wanted to keep at a distance. The enclave included a number of former slaves who forged their own kind of independence as best as they could, on tiny parcels of land that others discounted as useless. No doubt Thoreau felt a certain kinship with them in that regard. Fortunately he named names and repeated the local myths and word-of-mouth histories surrounding those residents. That's all the prompting Lemire needed to do the research and to learn more about those people and where they had come from. Here then is "the rest of the story."
The narrative is chockfull of names and dates and life stories, of both white colonials and black slaves who lived in the Boston-Concord area in the 18th century. (The author thankfully provides a "Dramatis Personae" list as an appendix; otherwise, it's easy to get lost in the sea of similar names used among both races.) Lemire's recurring focus is on two specific men: John Cuming (1728-1788), a first-generation American of Scottish descent who had aspirations of making his mark in Concord as a squire and a gentleman; and Brister (1744-1822), the slave who was given to John as a wedding present from his father-in-law in 1753. In following their paths together and alone, the author reveals a colonial culture of castes in which ownership of land and slaves -- and the more of each, the better -- earned one the honor of sitting in the best pew in church on Sunday morning. It also provided optimum circumstances for the colonials to go off on other missions as needed, since they had workers to keep their farms going without their direct involvement. Thus does this book paint an altered picture of Concord's esteemed agricultural heritage and its ability to raise a colonial militia. Paradigms shift as each page turns.
Readers should be disgusted by the incidents that illustrate man's inhumanity to man. Simultaneously, they should also see the multiple ironies in these revelations. That the "shot heard 'round the world" probably couldn't have happened without slaves back home taking care of the properties and families. That a place known for its passion and involvement in the abolitionist movement in the mid-1800s, had itself been populated by slaves and slave owners just two or three generations back, when it looked very much like the plantation system that its residents later railed against. That the end of slavery in New England came about not by official proclamation or deliberate freedom-granting by masters, but by their general abandonment of the institution during the uncertain and busy times of the Revolutionary War and its aftermath. The latter is an eerie premonition of events that would take place south of the Mason-Dixon line ninety years later, when another war would supposedly and finally correct the founding fathers' original omission.
BLACK WALDEN deserves wide readership by *anyone* interested in American history. It's not just for New Englanders or for people fascinated by the Concord story. Nor is it a mere study of race relations. For surely what happened in the town of Concord was a pattern of behavior repeated elsewhere in those days, beyond the confluence of the Sudbury and Assabet Rivers, beyond the Bay State's borders. That the truths uncovered here were brought to light by a native of nearby Lincoln, Mass., gives them even more credence. Lemire is a local who is not afraid to be graphic and to point an accusing finger. If the town's tour guides and historical site personnel are conscientious, they will read this book and make corresponding changes in the way they present their information. Those rear stairways weren't just used by servants; in colonial days, they were used by slaves.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Black Walden
By Jane
Black Walden is not just for those who reside in Lincoln and/or Concord, it is a wonderful read for those who love history. This book leads you on an amazing journey of exploring a side of Walden Pond that needs to be known as well as Thoreau's Walden.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A must read for every resident of Concord and Lincoln, MA
By Allan H. Schmidt
An outstanding description of the life and times of the slave population in Concord MA after their emancipation. Should be required reading for every school child in Concord and Lincoln MA as well as their parents.
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