#teachtruth

Everybody raise a glass to activist Opal Lee, one of the driving forces behind how we even got a Juneteenth in the first place.

Born Opal Flake in 1926 Texas, her home burned down when she was a small child and the family moved to Fort Worth. In 1939 the family purchased a home in a south side Fort Worth neighborhood --the first Black family to do so, which didn't sit well with some of the neighbors, and after only a few weeks an angry mob burned the house down. Despite these dual childhood traumas, Opal graduated from high school in 1943, and then eventually from Wiley College in 1953. She took a job teaching at an elementary school in Fort Worth, married fellow educator Dale Lee, and ultimately earned a Master's in counseling in 1968, from the North Texas State University (today the University of North Texas). She retired from her career in education in 1977 at the age of 51... and was clearly just getting started.

Beginning with a post-retirement career supervising a local food bank and its adjacent 13-acre farm, expanding it to a 33,000 sq. foot facility that today serves upwards of 500 families a day. More recently she also founded Transform 1012 N. Main Street, a coalition of Fort Worth area nonprofits and arts organizations aiming to reconstruct a former Ku Klux Klan auditorium into the Fred Rouse Arts Center (named for a Black man who was lynched by a Fort Worth mob in 1921). But Lee's greatest passion was always aimed toward preservation of local Black history, leading into the founding of the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society. It was from this starting point that June 19th began to be more widely acknowledged and celebrated as a yearly event. Each year Lee and other members of the society made a point of walking two and a half miles, symbolically covering the number of years between the formal end of enslavement (i.e., the Emancipation Proclamation) and the time most Texans found out about it.

In 2016, now at the age of 89, Lee took the advice of the society to "go bigger," and walked from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. (a distance of roughly 1,360 miles), taking more than five months to complete and collecting enthusiastic signatures along the way, in support of the premise of at last elevating Juneteenth to the status of a national holiday. On June 17, 2021, Lee was present at the White House when then-President Joe Biden signed the bill officially marking Juneteenth as an annual federal holiday. Today Lee is the oldest living member of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF), and is both a board member --and Honorary Chair-- of the National Juneteenth Museum. She was named by the Dallas Morning News as 2021's "Unsung Hero of the Pandemic," has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2024 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"#TeachTruth

because it's unethical to dilute history.

It's immoral to whitewash it.

It's malpractice to erase it." ~ Daniel Santos

"In Board of Education v. Pico, a 1982 Supreme Court case that cast doubt on the ability of public schools to ban library books on the basis of their ideas alone, the court’s plurality described a purpose of public education as preparing “individuals for participation as citizens," and as vehicles for "inculcating fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system.”

Systematically suppressing ideas in public education does not help our students learn liberty, nor does it prepare them for pluralism. It teaches them to seek protection from ideas and that the method for engaging with difference is through domination. 

Our nation is a diverse pluralistic constitutional republic, and as James Madison noted in Federalist No. 10, we cannot respond to the inevitable rise of competing factions by suppressing liberty, tempting as that always is."

Continuing on with the subject that certain "patriotic" government officials really don't want you learning about, today we look at the monumental accomplishments of Abraham Galloway. Born enslaved in 1837 North Carolina, Galloway was the son of a white boatman and an enslaved woman, Hester Hankins. At the age of 20 he escaped aboard a coal ship, remaining hidden below decks for weeks until reaching Philadelphia, and then (by way of the Underground Railroad) ultimately to Canada.

While in Canada Galloway wasn't content to merely enjoy his freedom; he became vocally active in militant abolitionist circles. It might be argued that he had in him a fierce desire to see the entire institution that had once enslaved him --and all of its supporting structure-- to be burned entirely to the ground. (I guess today's FBI would classify him as an NVE; "Nihilistic Violent Extremist.") Once the Civil War was underway, Galloway returned to the South, not only as a recruiter (advocating to fill the ranks of what would eventually become Gen. Edward Wild's African Brigade and also pushing for equal pay for Black soldiers and educational opportunities for their children and families), but also as a spy.

As the war waned, Galloway didn't exactly let up; he merely shifted his focus to the political struggle for equal treatment. He even registered Black voters --something largely unthinkable at the time-- and organized the Equal Rights League, which lobbied for rights for freed people: including education, protection from violence, and the right to vote. Galloway and the league then organized North Carolina's first Freedmen's Convention, held in Raleigh in September 1865, to represent the interests of the state's Black population as the constitutional convention convened across town. Unpolished and impatient, Galloway spoke at rallies with armed guards close at hand, mindful that he was very much on a Ku Klux Klan target list.

I figure we may as well keep going with the established mid-1770's theme, inasmuch as it is possible to do so. In the previous lesson we touched on Black Loyalists and their oft-overlooked role during the American Revolution; for this entry we'll upend that very subject, with a look at the life of James Armistead (later Lafayette). Born enslaved in 1760 Virginia, James Armistead actually enlisted into the Continental Army in 1781 (with the consent of his then-owner). Of all the luminaries to which he could have been attached, it transpired that James was detailed to a unit under no less than the Marquis de Lafayette himself. While the details of the conversations are not recorded, at some point Lafayette persuaded James to work as a spy; his cover would be to pose as a runaway slave who had been hired by the British to spy on the Americans. (Which wouldn't have been the slightest bit unusual!)

During his time in this dangerous dual role, James gained the confidence of British General Charles Cornwallis; to the point where Cornwallis entrusted James to guide British troops through local roads and thoroughfares. James overheard many conversations amongst the British officers, many of whom who had no compunction about openly boasting about their plans in his presence. James surreptitiously handed off his written notes to other American spies and remained undercover in Cornwallis's camp for nearly two years. While there were other spies operating in Cornwallis's purview, none were able to deliver nearly as much tactical intelligence as James --a detail that was even noticed by Gen. George Washington. James's last field report of July 31, 1781 helped Lafayette trap the British at Hampton, which is widely accepted as the lead-in to the eventual British surrender at Yorktown.

After the war Lafayette had made a point of publicly praising James Armistead for his bravery and dedication, but he had already returned to his life as a slave as, due to fine-print quibbles, was not eligible for emancipation as he had not technically served as a soldier. To his credit Lafayette spent the next two years seeking out information on Armistead, and finally found him in 1784. Disappointed to learn James had returned to enslavement, Lafayette again spoke out on his behalf, this time directly to the Virginia General Assembly, who eventually emancipated him --a full two years later. Armistead took on the surname Lafayette and moved to New Kent County, where he was not only able to collect a postwar pension, but to eventually obtained 40 acres of farmland and raised a family. He died at home in 1832, at the remarkable age of 72.

I'm guessing your elementary school (or even high school) American Revolution curriculum didn't conspicuously mention James Somerset, but it's important to understand his life and the pivotal role he played in the legal underpinnings of just how American slavery came to be defined, and moreover how it was set apart from English case law. Born in West Africa sometime in 1741, Somerset was captured by British slave traders in 1749, and sold in the then-colony of Virginia, to one Scottish merchant named Charles Stewart. In 1764 Stewart moved to Boston to take a position as a Customs official, and brought Somerset with him. In 1769 Stewart moved to London and again brought Somerset with him.

Significantly Somerset was baptized on February 10, 1771 into the Church of England; legally recorded, and with witnesses and three specifically-named godparents. This specific detail is key to the broader legal understanding, as baptism was commonly associated with manumission --though in England it was more of a time-honored custom than it was any legal precedent or framework. Nevertheless in October of that same year, Somerset declared himself free and left Stewart's service.

Somerset's liberty was short-lived; a mere year later in 1771, he was kidnapped and forced aboard a slave trading vessel, to be sold in Jamaica. This is where his legal godparents stepped in and filed a habeas corpus case, which led into Somerset v. Stewart, 98 ER 499. Somerset was transported back across the Atlantic and presented before the King's Bench Court, and after a year of legal wrangling from a number of then-well-known lawyers like Granville Sharp (and a great deal of public attention, on both sides of the Atlantic!), in May of 1772 Chief Justice Lord Mansfield ruled that: the act of bringing a slave to England but then shipping that slave elsewhere for resale, represented a "high act of Dominion" that "must be recognized by the laws of the country where it is used." Essentially Mansfield's reasoning was that since there never had been a legal basis for slavery, neither in English common law nor in statutory law, that the practice was therefore unlawful and that Somerset must therefore be freed. In fact Lord Mansfield even took it an unexpected step further when he pronounced the institution of slavery "is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reason, moral or political, but only positive law which preserves its Force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from once it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law."

The case was ultimately a narrow ruling and had truly been decided entirely on legal technicalities, fine print, and precedent... but it also constituted a considerable moral victory, particularly in light of Mansfield's opinion that the entire practice was based on flimsy precepts that should have frankly been dumped centuries ago. While the ruling certainly did not end the practice of slavery in England outright --nor did it affect the status quo of any English colony or territory, nor the actual slave trade itself-- it was the first case of its kind to recognize slavery's inherent wrongness: clearly signalling that this was not an issue that could be deferred indefinitely.

The decision is also widely considered to be a precursor to Dunmore's Proclamation of 1775, and certainly laid sufficient groundwork for the role of Black Loyalists during the Revolution. Yet at the same time, the Somerset ruling also more comfortably brought the subject of abolition into everyday American colonial discourse, which gained further traction over the course of the Revolution (and may have even informed Thomas Jefferson's own famously-deleted slavery abolition clause from the Declaration of Independence (see Lesson #15 in this series). And after ratification, four of the new U.S. states (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and newcomer Vermont) promptly encoded abolition directly into their respective state constitutions, again citing Somerset v. Stewart as the underlying framework.

In 1895, at the age of sixty, Mary Fields landed a U.S. Postal Service contract to become a Star Route Carrier; essentially a lowest-bidder contract offered to "celerity, certainty and security" freelancers --making her the second woman, and the first Black woman, in such a role. Known alternately by the nicknames "Stagecoach Mary" and "Black Mary," she drove her assigned stagecoach in all types of weather and over all types of terrain, becoming something of a Wild West legend in her own time. Dive into her epic saga at: https://www.petervintonjr.com/blm/lesson174.html

"I could not accept the segregation that existed while I was growing up. I really do believe in the Declaration of Independence. I really believe that all men, all women are created equally."

Get caught up on the career of civil rights attorney Frankie Muse Freeman, at: https://www.petervintonjr.com/blm/lesson89.html

Read up on the all-too-tragically-brief life of poet and author Henry Dumas: https://www.petervintonjr.com/blm/lesson160.html