Notes to self:
Lyr Add: You Must Shun Old Satan (Spiritual)
Lyr Add: Run to Jesus (Spiritual)
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My Southern Home: or, The South and Its People by Brown, William Wells, 1814?-1884 http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brown80/brown80.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wells_BrownResearch help needed to check/augment:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia William Wells Brown Born 1814 Lexington, Kentucky Died November 6, 1884(1884-11-06) Chelsea, Massachusetts Occupation Abolitionist, Writer, Historian. Spouse (1) Elizabeth "Betsey" Schooner, 1835; (2) Annie Elizabeth Gray, 1860 Children Clarissa Brown, Josephine Brown, Henrietta Brown, William Wells Brown, Jr., Clotelle Brown
William Wells Brown (November 6, 1814 – November 6, 1884) was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North in 1834, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer. Brown was a pioneer in several different literary genres, including travel writing, fiction, and drama. His novel Clotel is considered the first novel by an African American and was published in London in 1853.
Lecturing in England when the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was passed in the US, Brown stayed for several years to avoid risk of capture and re-enslavement. After his freedom was purchased by a British couple in 1854, he returned to the US and the abolitionist lecture circuit. A contemporary of Frederick Douglass, Wells Brown was overshadowed by the charismatic orator and the two feuded publicly.
William was born into slavery in Lexington, Kentucky. His mother Elizabeth was owned by Dr. Thomas Young and had seven children, each by different fathers. (In addition to William, her children were Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Milford, and Elizabeth.) His father was George W. Higgins, a white planter who was a cousin of William's master, Dr. Young. Although Young promised his cousin he would never sell the boy (whom Higgins recognized as his son)[2], William was sold multiple times before he was twenty years old.
William spent the majority of his youth in St. Louis. His masters hired him out to work on the Missouri River, then a major thoroughfare for steamships and the slave trade. He made several attempts to escape, and on New Year's Day of 1834, he successfully slipped away from a steamboat when docked in Cincinnati, Ohio, a free state. He adopted the name of Wells Brown, a Quaker friend, who helped him after his escape by providing food, clothes and some money. [edit] Marriage and family
Shortly after gaining his freedom, Brown met and married Elizabeth Schooner, a free African-American woman. Later he separated from her and they eventually divorced, causing a minor scandal.[3] Together they had three daughters.
Move to New York
From 1836 to about 1845, Brown made his home in Buffalo, New York, where he worked as a steamboat man on Lake Erie. He used his position to aid escaped slaves to freedom in Canada as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.[4] Brown became active in the abolitionist movement in Buffalo by joining several anti-slavery societies and the Negro Convention Movement. [edit] Years in Europe
In 1849, Brown left the United States to travel in the British Isles to lecture against slavery. He stayed in England until 1854. He lectured widely to local antislavery circuits to build support for the US movement. Brown also wanted to learn more about the cultures, religions, and different concepts of European nations. He felt that he needed always to be learning, in order to catch up and live in a society where others had been given an education when young. In his memoir he wrote,
“He who escapes from slavery at the age of twenty years, without any education, as did the writer of this letter, must read when others are asleep, if he would catch up with the rest of the world.”[5]
In 1849 Brown was selected to attend the International Peace Conference in Paris. By then separated from his wife, he brought his two young daughters with him, to give them the education which he had been denied.[6] Based on this journey, Brown wrote Three Years in Europe: or Places I Have Seen And People I Have Met. His travel account was popular with middle-class readers as he recounted sightseeing trips to the foundational monuments considered the spine of European culture. When lecturing about slavery, he showed a slave collar as demonstration of its evils. At the Paris Peace Conference, he faced opposition while representing the country that had enslaved him, and confronted American slaveholders on the grounds of the Crystal Palace.[7]
Abolition orator and writer
Brown gave lectures for the abolitionist movement in New York and Massachusetts. He soon focused on anti-slavery efforts. His speeches expressed his belief in the power of moral suasion and the importance of nonviolence. He often attacked the supposed American ideal of democracy and the use of religion to promote submissiveness among slaves. Brown constantly refuted the idea of black inferiority. Reaching beyond America’s borders, he traveled to Britain in the early 1850s and recruited supporters for the American abolitionist cause. An article in the Scotch Independent reported the following:
"By dint of resolution, self-culture, and force of character, he has rendered himself a popular lecturer to a British audience, and vigorous expositor of the evils and atrocities of that system whose chains he has shaken off so triumphantly and forever. We may safely pronounce William Wells Brown a remarkable man, and a full refutation of the doctrine of the inferiority of the negro."[8]
Due to Brown's reputation as a powerful orator, he was invited to the National Convention of Colored Citizens, where he met other prominent abolitionists. When the Liberty Party formed, he chose to remain independent, believing that the abolitionist movement should avoid becoming entrenched in politics. He continued to support the Garrisonian approach to abolitionism, and shared his own experiences and insight into slavery in order to convince others to support the cause.
Literary works
In 1847, he published his memoir, the Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, which became a bestseller second only to Frederick Douglass' slave narrative. He critiques his master’s lack of Christian values and the brutal use of violence in master-slave relations. When Brown lived in Britain, he wrote more works, including travel accounts and plays. Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States
His first novel, entitled Clotel, or, The President’s Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, is believed to be the first novel written by an African American.[9] But, because the novel was published in England, the book was not the first African-American novel published in the United States. This credit goes to either Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859) or Julia C. Collins' The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride (1865).
Most scholars agree that Brown is the first published African-American playwright. Brown wrote two plays, Experience; or, How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone (1856, unpublished and no longer extant) and The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858), which he read aloud at abolitionist meetings in lieu of the typical lecture.
Brown continually struggled with how to represent slavery "as it was" to his audiences. For instance, in an 1847 lecture to the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem, Massachusetts, he said, "Were I about to tell you the evils of Slavery, to represent to you the Slave in his lowest degradation, I should wish to take you, one at a time, and whisper it to you. Slavery has never been represented; Slavery never can be represented.[10]
Brown also wrote several historical works, including The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (1863), The Negro in the American Rebellion (1867) [considered the first historical work about black soldiers in the Civil War], The Rising Son (1873), and another volume of autobiography, My Southern Home (1880). [edit] Later life
Brown stayed abroad until 1854. Passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law had increased his risk of capture even in the free states. Only after the Richardson family purchased his freedom in 1854 (they had done the same for Frederick Douglass), did Brown return to the United States. He quickly rejoined the anti-slavery lecture circuit again.[11]
Perhaps because of the rising social tensions in the 1850s, he became a proponent of African-American emigration to Haiti, an independent black republic. He decided that more militant actions were needed to help the abolitionist cause.
During the American Civil War and in the decades that followed, Brown continued to publish fiction and non-fiction books, securing his reputation as one of the most prolific African-American writers of his time. He also played a more active role in recruiting blacks to fight in the Civil War. He introduced Robert John Simmons from Bermuda to abolitionist Francis George Shaw, father of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commanding officer of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
On April 12, 1860, Brown married twenty-five year old Anna Elizabeth Gray in Boston[12] While continuing to write, Brown was active in the Temperance movement as a lecturer; he also studied homeopathic medicine and opened a medical practice in Boston's South End while keeping a residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts's Second Ward until moving to the nearby city of Chelsea in 1882.[13]
William Wells Brown died in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1884 at the age of 68.
Writings
* Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself. Boston: The Anti-slavery office, 1847. * Narrative of William W. Brown, an American Slave. Written by Himself. London: C. Gilpin, 1849. * Three Years in Europe: Or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met. London: Charles Gilpin, 1852. * The American Fugitive in Europe. Sketches of Places and People Abroad. Boston: John P. Jewett, 1855. * The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements. New York: Thomas Hamilton; Boston: R.F. Wallcut, 1863. * The Rising Son, or The Antecedents and Advancements of the Colored Race. Boston: A. G. Brown & Co., 1873. * My Southern Home: or, The South and Its People. Boston: A. G. Brown & Co., Publishers, 1880. * The Negro in the American rebellion; his heroism and his fidelity ... * Brown, William Wells (1815-1884). Three years in Europe, or places I have seen and people I have met. with a Memoir of the author. 1852.
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