Footsteps to You: Chattel Slavery

Objects from the Gore Collection courtesy of the Black Voice Foundation

The Gore Collection

Historian Jerry Gore’s lifelong goal was to illuminate the horrors of slavery so that visitors to his hometown of Maysville, Kentucky could appreciate the daily perils experienced by enslaved people as well as the strength it required to fight for their freedom. A partnership with the Black Voice Foundation and the San Bernardino County Museum now brings the unique artifacts collected by Jerry Gore to the Inland Empire.

Jerry Gore

 The Gore Collection of documents and artifacts helps us understand and explore the institution of slavery in America. It brings to light more than 200 years’ worth of abuses inflicted on people of color and helps us appreciate the courage and strength that enslaved men, women, and children had to possess in order to endure, overcome, and fight against the physical and psychological terrors of forced servitude.

 Since 1996 the Black Voice Foundation has hosted over 2,000 educators on the Footsteps to Freedom, Underground Railroad tour where they have walked the steps of past enslaved freedom seekers. These tours strive to build historical empathy amongst participants. That is, the ability to have an emotional experience and thus better contextualize a historical figure’s lived experience.

Footsteps to You – Chattel Slavery now allows visitors of the San Bernardino museum to build and experience the same historical empathy by immersing them in a world where people were considered objects – a prejudice that was entirely based on the color of one’s skin. Visitors will learn that these injustices not only affected those who were actively oppressed, but that slavery’s lingering effects have haunted people even decades after it was abolished. Visitors are challenged to ask themselves “what side of history would I have been on?”

Exhibit introduction from Hardy Brown, Director, Black Voice Foundation


Chattel Slavery

Chattel slavery is a form of bondage in which people are considered and treated as chattel, or personal property that is moveable. Enslaved people in America were considered to be commodities - property that could be purchased, sold, disposed of, and transferred.

Slave owners were taxed for their slaves just as they were taxed for their horses, real estate, and other property. Enslaved people were often branded with their owner’s initials, just as people would brand their livestock. Owners gave their slaves to their children upon their deaths, and children of enslaved people were also considered property upon their birth.

Prior to the Civil War, the United States Constitution mandated that each individual slave was considered three-fifths of a person. Known as the Three-Fifths Compromise, this rule was added to the Constitution so that enslaved people, who made up a third of the Southern population by the 19th century, could be considered for taxation purposes and population count when deciding a state’s representation in Congress. To most Americans, slaves still were not people at all.


People or Property

People or Property?

Scroll through this slideshow of newspaper advertisements and tax records.


Abuse

Federal and state laws provided virtually no protection to enslaved people from their masters, and given that they were considered to be chattel, or property, slaves had no legal rights. In an effort to keep enslaved people submissive and dependent on their masters, most slave owners maintained strict discipline, created a sense of personal inferiority, instilled fear, and deprived enslaved people access to education and recreation.

 Punishment could be administered by a slave owner, his wife, children, or an employed overseer. Enslaved people could be disciplined for almost anything – resisting servitude, not working hard enough, talking too much, using their native language, stealing from their master, trying to run away, wetting their bed, offending a white person, and countless other infractions. The forms of punishment and their severity differed between slave owners, but they were as vast as the reasons for the reprimands. Enslaved people were whipped, shackled, forced to wear iron collars, beat, mutilated (including the dismemberment of body parts), sexually abused, imprisoned, and killed.

Enslaved people could be punished on a daily basis and many beatings were unprovoked. Slave owners frequently forced other enslaved people to watch these abuses to instill fear and maintain order. Studies conducted on the remains of enslaved people show that they had lesions on their bones due to the immense amount of work and beatings they endured. These studies also found that many enslaved people died before the age of 12 due to the brutality of slavery itself and the punishments that came along with it.


Abolitionism

Abolitionism, or the movement to end slavery, had its roots in early colonial America, but while public protests against slavery occurred as early as the late 1600s, the movement did not flourish until the 1830s. Abolitionists believed that slavery contradicted the principles of freedom and equality that the United States was founded on, and the movement had a large religious base that saw slavery as a sin. While the abolitionist movement was strong, at any given time it was made up of only about 3,000 supporters—including free people of color, white abolitionists, and other allies.

 Early anti-slavery laws were slow to take effect. By 1804, all northern states had abolished slavery, but the emancipation (freeing) of enslaved people was gradual. Likewise, in 1808, Thomas Jefferson signed a law which outlawed the transportation of enslaved Africans into the country, but enslaved people already in the country and children born to those enslaved people remained in bondage. In 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded and energized the abolitionist movement, prompting more discussions about slavery and deepening the divide between the North and the South.

 Between the 1830s and 1850s and at the peak of the abolitionist movement, abolitionists used the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses, to help enslaved people escape to freedom in free states and Canada. It is estimated that about 1,000 enslaved people per year followed the Underground Railroad to their freedom. This affected southern slave holders so deeply that they convinced Congress to pass the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 which prohibited assistance to fugitive slaves.

 Abolitionists continued to fight for the end of slavery throughout the 1850s, eventually leading to the succession of many southern states and the American Civil War, a violent confrontation between the pro-slavery Confederacy and the anti-slavery Union.


Biddy Mason

“If you hold your hand closed, Gladys nothing good can come in. The open hand is blessed for it gives in abundance, even as it receives.” – Saying of Biddy Mason, passed on to her great –granddaughter, Gladys Owens Smith

Although slavery was illegal in California, the status of enslaved people entering the state was often unclear. This led to many court cases between enslaved people and slave owners. One of the most famous of these cases involved an enslaved woman named Biddy Mason.

Biddy was born into slavery in Georgia, sold to a Mississippi slave owner when she was a toddler, and given at the age of 17 as a wedding present to Robert Smith. In 1848, Smith moved his family and slaves from Mississippi to Utah. In 1851, the group moved again to California and settled in San Bernardino, then a newly established Mormon community.

Five years after arriving in California, Smith tried to smuggle Biddy, her daughters, and his other slaves to Texas. Knowing Texas was a slave state, Biddy petitioned a Los Angeles court for her freedom. Although California law did not allow Biddy to speak for herself in court, Judge Benjamin Hayes invited her to speak privately in his chambers. After hearing her testimony, Judge Hayes ruled that Biddy, her three children, and Smith’s other slaves were free.

 Hayes later helped Biddy secure a job as a nurse and midwife. Over the next thirty years, Biddy invested in real estate (becoming the first black woman to own property in Los Angeles), founded the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, and created the first school for black children in Los Angeles. Over her life Biddy accumulated a fortune estimated at $300,000 which today would make her a multimillionaire.

The movement of Biddy Mason


Civil Rights

The Fight for Civil Rights

After the Civil War, Congress passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. These amendments abolished slavery (except for as punishment for a crime), made all those who were born in the United States citizens, and gave male citizens the right to vote regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude (women did not gain the right to vote until 1919). With the passing of these laws, African Americans were considered citizens and guaranteed equal rights under the law. Unfortunately, the fight for actual equality was far from over.

Jim Crow

States and local governments instituted what were known as Jim Crow laws, decrees that enforced racial segregation in public spaces. These laws were upheld by the Supreme Court with cases such as Plessy vs. Ferguson which established the “separate but equal” legal doctrine indicating that segregation was legal as long as facilities and amenities for whites and African Americans were equal. Jim Crow laws were in effect until the 1960s, thus spanning a time period of 100 years.

Segregation

Public schools, restrooms, waiting rooms, public transportation, federal workplaces, drinking fountains, and the military were all segregated. Most public spaces had designated “whites only” and “colored only” sections. Facilities for non-whites were often inferior, underfunded, and sometimes even nonexistent. These laws and regulations institutionalized economic, educational, and social disadvantages for African Americans through most of the 20th century.

Hardy Brown and the Black Voice Foundation

 

Jerry Gore