Love and Sacrifice

0:08Ashley C. Ford:The United States.

0:30Ashley C. Ford:wants to do something to help those displaced or impoverished by the war, to start creating some order from the chaos in the South. Because you couldn't simply conclude a war, declare slavery over, and tell people to move on. They needed help getting started in a new world. So Northern lawmakers establish the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. And President Lincoln puts it under the Department of War. The agency quickly becomes known as the Freedmen's Bureau, which implies that it only existed to help the formerly enslaved. That is not strictly true. The Bureau also offered aid to poor whites in the South.

1:14Ashley C. Ford:There was so much to do and so many people in need. The agency offered legal support and also helped to establish primary schools. The goal was to educate those who had until recently been forbidden to learn how to read and write. These schools desperately needed teachers. And so, starting in the summer of 1865, the Freedmen's Bureau put out a call. Its publication, called the Freedmen's Record, detailed strenuous requirements for applicants. In the first place, it began, health is requisite. Not merely on account of any supposed disadvantages of the climate, but to ensure energy, cheerfulness, and courage for the work.

1:59Ashley C. Ford:They got thousands of applicants from the North. We don't know many of their stories, but here we want to slow down just a little and hear the story of one of those teachers who applied. A free Black woman born in the North. We'll hear her story mostly through the words of someone she left behind. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Reconstruction, the Unfinished Promise.

2:30Ashley C. Ford:When I spoke with President Barack Obama, we kept coming back to the question of why we know so little about Reconstruction. There's no single story that sums up Reconstruction, And you can't tell this history only through the actions of so-called great men. There are figures that, because they hold political office, because they are men, because they are white, because they are titans of industry, because they hold traditional stations that we understand have power, we think of them as the history makers, right? And you have all these people who may not have occupied formal positions of power

3:19Farah Jasmine Griffin:who entirely bend the course of our history and our collective understanding in powerful ways and the course of our narrative.

3:31Ashley C. Ford:Black people were writing the story of Reconstruction all along. It's just that their stories weren't being published in newspapers or books. Those people were writing their stories to one another, most often through letters. What follows is an intimate story of two young women from very different backgrounds.

3:55Ashley C. Ford:Neither was famous, but their letters to one another reveal something crucial about the country during Reconstruction. It was a time in which so many Americans, so many Black Americans in particular, were searching. Rebecca Primus was a young teacher from a close-knit middle-class family in New England. Addie Brown was a domestic worker who was essentially orphaned at a young age in Philadelphia. Their lives intersected in Hartford, Connecticut around the time of the Civil War. We have only one side of their correspondence, Addie's letters to Rebecca, because Rebecca kept them carefully preserved until her death.

4:36Ashley C. Ford:When we were looking for someone to bring this story to life, the first person who sprang to mind was the writer and podcast host Ashley C. Ford. Ashley is the author of the best-selling memoir, Somebody's Daughter, a book about womanhood and self-discovery. Ashley brings us the story of Rebecca and Addie with the help of the scholar who edited a collection of their letters.

5:06Farah Jasmine Griffin:Why do you think Rebecca held on to Addie's letters for so long, more than 60 years? I think she preserved Addie's letters because she loved her deeply. And I think that she liked the Rebecca that she saw reflected in Addie's letters. it gives us a very valuable window into the intimate nature of that relationship that we would not otherwise have. Farrah Jasmine Griffin is a professor of African-American literature at Columbia University and the school's inaugural chair of African-American studies. She edited a book of Addie's letters to Rebecca and Rebecca's letters to her own family. So Rebecca Primus was the daughter of a somewhat prominent family, Black Hartford family, the Primus family.

6:04They were a family devoted to service, a family devoted to the Black, very small Black community.

6:12Farah Jasmine Griffin:So she would have been brought up with a sense of purpose and mission. During Reconstruction, Hartford was a small manufacturing town, a city less overwhelming than New York or Boston, and perhaps a place where a young woman like Rebecca might dream of a world beyond the safety of her childhood home. Reconstruction offered her an opportunity to pursue those dreams. When Rebecca heard that the Bureau was looking for educators, she applied to go and teach formerly enslaved people.

6:51Farah Jasmine Griffin:While Rebecca set her eyes on a new southern horizon, her beloved friend Addie faced a much different reality. In the early years of Reconstruction, Black life for women like Addie in the North was not entirely different from Black life in the southern states. Rampant discrimination and violence were pervasive in both parts of the country. Still, I imagine Addie, like Rebecca, dreamt of new possibilities in a country where Black people were poised to gain new rights. We're not really sure how she comes into Rebecca's circuit. It seems that she may have migrated somehow to Hartford. She might have boarded with Rebecca's family because her family took people in.

7:44Farah Jasmine Griffin:Addie lived as a kind of live-in domestic throughout New England and in New York. And that while we didn't have very much information about 19th century women, period, we certainly didn't have information about 19th century working class women who had been a domestic. Addie must have come to Hartford as a teenager. not long before the Civil War began. Records show that at some point she lived and worked in the Primus household. Late in the night, Addie would visit Rebecca. Even while living under the same roof, the two girls passed letters back and forth. The correspondence between 19th century women tend to be very romantic and very open in expressing their love for each other.

8:36Ashley C. Ford:my own truly loved sister dear rebecca i don't know how it is i feel nearer to you now than never before although you have always been very very dear to me since i have been here i have enjoyed your society very much so much so i hate to have you away from me one moment from your darling little sister. It is goodbye, Addie.

9:08Farah Jasmine Griffin:I read through the letters and just, you know, held them in my hand. And, you know, they were hard to read because, you know, they were preserving every bit of paper and writing along the sides and everything.

9:25Farah Jasmine Griffin:As Malcolm mentioned early on, we only have the set of letters written by Addie to Rebecca. Remember, Rebecca's letters to Addie have not been discovered. Still, what remains is a reminder to us all. These women existed, documenting some of the region's most noteworthy historical events, from presidential speaking engagements to the presence of the United States Colored Troops. The letters have been edited for brevity and clarity.

9:58Ashley C. Ford:My dear sister, I hear President Johnson expects to be in Hartford on the 26th. I suppose his friends will make a great time over him. I wish some of them would present him with a bullet through his head. The 29th Regiment expected home tomorrow in the city of Hartford. On our way home, we visited the Samuel Coles Willow factory. I was very much pleased with the work. I will offer to come to a close, for my head aches me quite bad. As ever, adopted sister Addie.

10:38Farah Jasmine Griffin:She was often very ill. There was a kind of insecurity around her health and her economic circumstances, which were very similar to those of people of her class. Addie was born in 1841 in Philadelphia as a free person. Her father died when she was a child, and her mother abandoned her to remarry. From a young age, she had no choice but to work as a servant. 90 % of Black women cooked, cleaned, washed, and tended to other women's children to earn some sort of living. The Primuses were a well-respected family who ran a boarding house for African Americans. Their home was essentially a precursor to the agencies that provide social services now.

11:29Farah Jasmine Griffin:In the Hartford Current, a daily newspaper that still exists today, Rebecca's father was featured as one of the most dignified of men. Colored men, to be exact. Rebecca's mother, an entrepreneur and dressmaker, had a similar reputation. Their skills were highly sought after by a number of the aristocratic families throughout Connecticut. Addie tried her best to live up to the standards of the Primus family. She attended the same church and social gatherings as the Primuses, looking to them for work opportunities, a compassionate ear, a few dollars, or even a loaf of bread. Addie was part of their circle.

12:12Ashley C. Ford:My dear Everfriend, I'm very obliged to you for that skirt. In what way can I ever repay you for your kindness?

12:23Farah Jasmine Griffin:Rebecca had considered leaving Hartford on many occasions. When the Freedmen's Bureau offered her the job, she took it. She collected her things, said her goodbyes, and made her way south to teach the newly freed men, women, and children. Rebecca's departure left Addie especially heartbroken, devastated really. Her beloved sister friend would be hundreds of miles away. The following letter from Addie was dated within weeks of Rebecca's arrival to Baltimore, where she was first stationed as a teacher. It's clear that Addie was not handling the separation well.

13:01Ashley C. Ford:My dearest sister, I am greatly disappointed not hearing from you today. You have been so kind to write me every week since your absence until this week. I went to the post office this evening hoping to receive a letter. I cannot express my feelings when told there was none from me. I'm getting sleepy, so I must close hoping to hear from you tomorrow. Good night.

13:27Farah Jasmine Griffin:Without Rebecca's responses, it's hard to know how she felt about leaving Addie in the North. But we do know that she encounters a more vibrant world than what she left behind in Hartford. Rebecca sent this letter to her parents upon her arrival. Baltimore, November 8th, 1865. My dear parents and sister, it is beautiful here today and quite mild. and I guess I have already seen almost as many colored people as there are in the whole of Hartford. Please excuse hasty writing and all mistakes. I had to stop to eat my dinner. Rebecca. Baltimore has a very large free black population and so Rebecca would have encountered all kinds of black people when she gets to Baltimore.

14:21Farah Jasmine Griffin:It's similar to when people first arrive in Harlem in the Harlem Renaissance, and they're just overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of Black people, the diversity of Black people. We see her eyes being opened and a sense of awareness that she's part of a community that is much more heterogeneous than she had been aware of when she was in Hartford, and that, in fact, it might be more complex sense of Blackness than what she is used to in her small, protected New England society.

15:07Ashley C. Ford:One thing I've been very fortunate to do in my life is travel. Political events, music festivals, and of course, big sporting events. It really never gets less exciting. But the hardest part is always finding a place that actually feels like home in the middle of all that energy. And that's why hosting on Airbnb makes so much sense, especially when something big is happening in your area. You've got people coming in who don't just want a place to crash. They want to feel like they're part of the neighborhood, even if it's just for a few days. If you've got a spare room or even your whole place available while you're away, it can be a really easy way to earn some additional income.

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17:46Farah Jasmine Griffin:While most white women at the time were encouraged to keep home and tend to their family's needs, Black women were encouraged to work and become educated. Their success would aid in the betterment of the race, what scholars of the past called racial uplift. Rebecca was convinced of this as well. What can you tell us about the Freedman School and what it was like for Rebecca to be a teacher? The Friedman School was an institution, a vibrant institution that was bringing this thing that had been denied, this thing that was so prized, so prized, that being able to read and write was a foundational skill that they needed to move forward.

18:39Farah Jasmine Griffin:Like, how do I read this deed? How do I do this? How do I write that? Those were all things. They were communal things. Rebecca was barely able to get settled in Baltimore before she was transferred to another school some 60 miles away in Royal Oak, Maryland. So Royal Oak, Maryland is a rural community that's outside of Baltimore. It's on the eastern shore. It is very much unlike Baltimore. And this is where she will teach, where she will found her school, the community that she will become a part of. It probably fits more like her sense of what Southern Black life was like to the extent that she had one.

19:27These are people who really had been enslaved. They're still people who are devoted to the Confederacy there.

19:35Farah Jasmine Griffin:She's going to encounter former Confederates. Rebecca devoted her entire being to serving her students, or as she called them, her children. At the Friedman School, she taught children by day and adults at night. At times, upwards of 50 students in one classroom. People knew the power of literacy, that it had to be powerful for them to pass laws and for them to brutalize people. White supremacists and local residents regularly taunted students, vandalized the Friedman schools, or worse. So Rebecca's school didn't get attacked, but the schools of some of the teachers she knew and went down there with were being challenged and threatened.

20:26Farah Jasmine Griffin:Those teachers were being harassed and sometimes the schools were being burned. So that just underscored for them the power of what they were doing, that this was a revolutionary act. April 7, 1866. I received a letter from Miss Dixon at Trap Tuesday. She has 74 schools, and until the last month, everything has gone on quietly. And while now she's stoned by white children and repeatedly subjected to insults from white men in passing, they have brushed by her so rudely, she says, as to almost dislocate her shoulders. She says she tries to bear it patiently. I feel sorry for her. Her position is truly an unenviable one.

21:21Farah Jasmine Griffin:Both Rebecca and Addie witnessed firsthand other forms of violence. I forgot to tell you in my last letter of a murder that occurred at Easton last Sunday night. It seems a very respectable colored man who resided with his family there was on his way to church, and en route he was shot by a white rascal so that he fell a dead man immediately. The villain made his escape and has not yet been caught. He is said to be skulking about in the woods and sustained by his secesh sympathizers. By secesh, Rebecca was referring to the secessionists or Confederate sympathizers. She continues. There are some very lawless fellows in these towns and there is nothing too bad for them to do to a colored person.

22:14Farah Jasmine Griffin:I trust something like justice will be given to the black man one of these days. for some are persecuted almost as badly now as in the days of slavery. As Rebecca was adjusting to life below the Mason-Dixon line, conditions for Addie were improving. She found new work as a seamstress making$19 per month, which is around$500 today. Addie would work for nearly 15 different employers in total, all throughout Connecticut and New York.

22:47Ashley C. Ford:My dear and adopted sister, I am not feeling well today. I have been lying down all the morning. For the past three or four days, I have the most excruciating pain in my back. I have been out sewing for two weeks. I guess sitting so steady is the cause of my pain.

23:11Farah Jasmine Griffin:The tragedy of Addie's life is the economic precarity of it. you know, that she's living day to day from job to job to job. So the skill of being a seamstress actually brought you much more economic security than domestics had. So the ones who were like Addie who were in service, if you were fortunate, you could have a long term job with a family or something. Addie is much more itinerant than that. She's competing with white immigrants, mostly Irish immigrants. So it's a much more precarious situation. It's a day-to-day. And we get that in her letters. The Freedmen's Bureau picked certain kinds of people to go teach in their schools in the South.

24:01Farah Jasmine Griffin:And Rebecca fit the mold. Northern-born, check. Middle-class, check. Single and childless, check and check. Addie would likely not have qualified. Their lives traveled down very different paths. But the two continued to write despite their busy schedules. And Rebecca's mother would often say, if one of them were a man, they would have married each other. They were that close.

24:32Ashley C. Ford:To my only dear and loving friend, Rebecca, I want to tell you one thing. That is, if I went without eating for two or three days, and then a person was to bring me something to eat, and a letter from you, and they say that I was only to have one or the other, I would take the letter, and that would be enough food for me.