The Bone and Sinew of the Land

by Anna-Lisa Cox

  So they waited, waited as hundreds of men began to organize and move with violent intent toward their neighborhood.

  Wilkerson was on the roof of one of the handsome row houses that lined the boulevard of his neighborhood. He must have been lying down to stay hidden, the heat from the day’s sun still rising up from the roof, burning his stomach and legs. Sweat would have run into his eyes as his grip became slippery on his gun.

  They all would have been there for a while, guns in hand. The militia were everywhere, lining the flat roofs on either side of him. He would have barely been able to see them, but once in a while the flicker of a far-off torch must have illuminated the eyes watching him, glittering in the faint light. Was Wilkerson ever tempted to slowly inch toward the edge of the building that dropped into darkness, to glance down into the alley to check on the men waiting there? Even if he had, he would probably have seen little. But he would have known the other men were there; he would have been able to hear them breathing.

  It was so hot.

  They could see the lightning flickering off to the west and hear the low rumble of thunder. Otherwise it was quiet. A city in 1841 could be a very quiet place at night. There was no hum of machinery, no tires on pavement, no sirens, no airplanes. Usually there would be the thrum of a paddle wheel ship passing by on the river, its bell jangling. But not this year. This year it was so dry there were record low waters on the Ohio River. So the steamships were stuck in port, the river they were supposed to travel mostly silt and slag.71

  For months now they had been praying for rain. That thunderstorm building in the distance, blocking out the stars, was something they had all been hoping for.

  But Wilkerson was listening for something else—he was listening for the sounds of violence. There were always noises along the docks and from the brothels and saloons that edged the waters, the places where the foulness of the city washed up late on a summer night. There always seemed to be violence there, a knifing, a rape, a brawl. But his ears were trained on the sounds of a mob: songs shouted, marching feet, the clamor of angry men in motion. And shattering glass. Glass was valuable out here in the Great West, and the breaking of a window could well be a higher offense than the breaking of a body.

  Everything seemed ripe for war. All it took was a spark.

  Maybe that spark was the Brough brothers. They had certainly been working hard to start something. The Brough brothers had been passionate supporters of President Jackson, and even after his presidency was over, they continued to support the darkest of his ideals, starting a newspaper in Cincinnati in 1841 to incite ire. It was full of divisive reporting, panicked stories of the evils of equality and the terrors that free African Americans supposedly inflicted on whites. It was also full of misspellings and errors, such as “Southrons” for “Southerners.” But their prejudiced white readers didn’t care. The Brough brothers were not only telling them what they wanted to hear but encouraging them in their sense of outrage and prejudice. And it seemed that every city and town across America had at least one such newspaper.72

  And all of those newspapers, those editors, were skilled at manipulation, finding the right words to spark flames of violence and fan them into firestorms. They would find something, anything, or nothing at all. Sometimes the mere number of African Americans in a county or a city was blamed for the rise in white violence, as if numbers were an excuse. As if it were utterly natural for white folks to start turning murderous if African Americans rose above a certain percentage in a local population. But if numbers were the answer, then whites would have long ago slaughtered every single enslaved African American in South Carolina or any other region in the nation where enslaved African Americans outnumbered whites.

  And no matter what their numbers, African Americans in the North were blamed for every imaginable ill: economic hard times; taking jobs from more deserving immigrants with lighter skin; brothels, robberies, murders, and rape. Whether the stories were true or not, these prejudiced papers were now blaming free African Americans for almost every single problem in American society.73

  So African Americans, especially the many who had elevated themselves, who were successful, educated, and outspoken, tried to be perfect. But even perfection was no protection. Some abolitionist and human rights leaders, both black and white, pointed out that many prejudiced whites openly hated black success. And when whites rose in violence, their targets were invariably the most noble, powerful, admirable, and sacred products of the African American community: its schools, shelters for the poor, meeting halls, printing presses, and churches.74

  The Reverend Hosea Easton—a great New England equal rights advocate—knew that there was no simple recipe for overcoming white people’s belief in their supremacy or their growing prejudice, whether it was uplift or integration. The Reverend Easton could claim the deepest roots in New England, with African, European, and Narragansett ancestors. He had come from a prosperous family. His father, James Easton, had been a patriot soldier, fighting in the American Revolution. And James Easton had worked hard to become a successful entrepreneur in Massachusetts. By the late eighteenth century he owned a thriving ironworks. The Easton family had seen the tide turning in the Northeast, watching the fervor for freedom and the commitment to equality weakening in many whites around them.75

  By the 1830s his son the Reverend Easton had seen much, and he knew that if integration could solve the problem of prejudice—if every white person could just live near people of African descent and see how human they were—then every white enslaver would already be an ardent equal rights advocate. And if free black success was enough to convince white people that prejudice was wrong, then his plans for a school to educate African Americans in Connecticut would not have met with violent opposition in 1836.

  Soon after a brutal attack on African Americans in his home community of New Haven, Connecticut, in 1836, Easton asked William Lloyd Garrison to publish a pamphlet he had written. Garrison agreed, certainly impressed by Easton’s thoughtful brilliance as he explored the illogic of prejudice and the damage it was causing to the nation. Easton pointed out that prejudiced whites could see people of African descent as “most odious at one moment, and the next beautiful,” depending on whether those African Americans were enslaved or free or even just downtrodden or successful.76

  Like a tour guide in some strange land that Gulliver might have visited, Easton pointed out that the bodies of African-descended people could magically become massive and deformed or tiny and beautiful in the eyes of whites, depending on their context. He explained that if an African American man

  should chance to be found in any other sphere of action than that of a slave, he magnifies to a monster of wonderful dimensions, so large that they [whites] cannot be made to believe that he is a man and a brother. Neither can they be made to believe that it would be safe to admit him into stage coaches, steam-boat cabins, and tavern dining rooms.… Mechanical shops, stores and school rooms are all too small for his entrance as a man; [but] if he be a slave, corporeality becomes so diminished as to admit him into ladies’ parlors, and into small private carriages, and elsewhere without being disgraceful on account of his deformity, or without producing any discomfiture.77

  But the men on the rooftops of their homes in Cincinnati were not enslaved; they were free and part of a community that was refusing to be destroyed. No wonder the Brough brothers, those newspaper men in Cincinnati, were on the warpath. Their recent pet cause had been the city’s decision to support a school for African American children near Cincinnati that might possibly be integrated. The idea of the school had certainly been a cooperative and integrated effort. It had been requested by a petition signed by 105 African Americans in the area and ultimately supported by local white politicians. The Brough brothers worked hard to raise the wrath of their white readers against every form of equality for African Americans, writing that the idea of schools for African Americans was a waste and would give African American children “pretens
ions and privileges that they neither deserved nor could appreciate.”78

  James Wilkerson and the rest of the men on the rooftops of Cincinnati in 1841 knew that a change in their behavior or a reduction in their numbers would not quell whites’ wrath. And more uplift or harder work would not prove their equality. They had already proven that they could be successful enough to make many whites in Cincinnati uncomfortable.

  And now they were laying their bodies across the tops of their homes and businesses and down dark alleys, a human shield against the evil that was rising.

  Who saw it first? The light growing as torches were lit. Someone was funding this, someone always did.

  Wilkerson could hear them coming now, the sound of breaking glass, the screams, and finally the fire as the mob came closer, carrying torches high.

  It was so much bigger than they had expected—hundreds of men.

  But Wilkerson’s men knew to wait. They had been planning for a long time.

  There were people running ahead of the mob, being chased. Everyone was supposed to be in hiding; who was still out? Who had been caught? As soon as news of the mob spread, everyone would have tried to find safety. This was no time to be out of any building. Wilkerson must have hoped everyone would be safe.

  But he was wrong.

  The mob was smashing its way into places where people with dark skin might be hiding, armed men breaking into white abolitionists’ homes to find any African Americans sheltering there. And now they were driving terrified people ahead of them, gathering everyone they found for their fire, their knives, their violent desires.79

  The mob was moving faster. Still Wilkerson and his men held their places. If Wilkerson’s plan was going to work, most of the mob had to be in their sights. But those being chased would have been screaming for help.

  The mob was closer. Did the men on the roof throw their arms over each other to keep themselves still—to keep themselves from jumping down three stories to the ground to help? “Hold,” Wilkerson must have thought, “just hold.”

  They were holding.

  Soon they would be able to help. Soon they would be able to rescue. And they knew what was at stake. Their families, their children, their babies were hiding in the buildings they were lying atop of and surrounding.

  The mob was further in, running hard now, almost there.

  One more breath, one more prayer, and Wilkerson would have made the signal his men were waiting for.

  Now!

  It was just about the midnight hour

  When Jesus displayed his Heavenly power

  And with his chariot drove along

  While angels chanted a morning song.

  His lightning played and thunders roll,

  It shook the earth from pole to pole

  At this the devils took affright

  And left before the morning light.

  As Zion’s sons marched in and took the field,

  Old Molock of hell was the last devil to yield.

  And with a most tremendous yell,

  He leapt from thence down to hell.

  And here with Job I was called to stand,

  And show myself a worthy man:

  Thus born of God, I know I am

  And thou deny it if thee can. Selah.

  —Major James Wilkerson, c. 1850

  Aftermath

  Young John Langston had never run so fast in his life. Then he heard the yells of white men behind him. They had guns, and they were telling him to stop, to be punished for being a twelve-year-old black boy in Cincinnati. But he kept running. He managed to make it to his brother’s, but he had asked more of his young heart than it could give, collapsing as he fell through the door. When his brother managed to revive him, John gasped out the news: the battle had turned worse.80

  They all knew that it had started in the night—a mob forming itself into a fighting force and marching on the African American neighborhood where the young Langston lived. Anyone out on the streets, man, woman, or child, was murderously attacked.

  But then came the surprise, a defense by an armed black militia that had been secretly organizing under the leadership of Major James Wilkerson. The white attackers were repulsed as soon as they came into the African American neighborhood, and they retreated, pursued by the Major’s forces. Then the storm that had been building all night broke, the rain washing away the blood on the streets.

  But the mob would not give up. While Major Wilkerson’s militia had courage, good tactics, and guns, the mob got into the city’s arsenal and hauled out a cannon. The sound of thunder was soon joined by cannon fire. Wilkerson and his men kept the mob at bay so the cannon could not hit them at close range, but they could not destroy it, and the mob loaded it with hot pitch—over and over again—breaking and burning.

  The terrible sounds of gun and cannon fire lasted most of the night until the military finally marched in to end the conflict.

  Then the real terror started. Having successfully defended themselves, the African Americans citizens of Cincinnati were being punished. The white mob had come limping into the town hall claiming they had been terrorized by the black militia and demanding that African Americans be punished for refusing to submit to their violence.

  And the mayor agreed.

  Little Langston had taken shelter in a friend’s home when they were warned that the military was out, rounding up every dark-skinned man it could find. The men were being imprisoned, the city leaders insisting that they pay a Black Code bond of $500 or rot. Langston’s friends hid themselves in specially created bolt-holes and must have urged Langston to join them. But Langston refused, running out the back door toward his brother Gideon’s home. His brothers were the only family he had left, and he had to warn them.

  After all, his brothers had taken him out of Virginia after their white father died, leaving them much of his vast fortune. They wanted their youngest brother, John, to have some schooling. This was no longer possible in Virginia since laws had been passed making it illegal for African Americans to even learn to read. Education for African Americans was not popular among many whites in Cincinnati but it was possible. Now his brothers’ lives were in danger.

  So Langston ran.

  And his warning worked. But that war left its mark on John Langston. Cities were not safe. But he was hearing of hope growing outside cities, of thriving farming communities, of rich frontiers full of promise. He must have met some of those wealthy farmers building schools and churches, building their lives. As soon as Langston could, he left Cincinnati and moved to the country, determined to join the others there who were fighting against injustice, prejudice, and oppression from their farms.

  7

  “The right of the people peaceably to assemble”

  Randolph County, Indiana, Summer 1847

  Someone had been setting off fireworks at the school again.

  Well, it was really gun powder, but lighting it in the right kind of container made a similar ruckus. It must have delighted the students who set it off, but it was upsetting the livestock, causing fear of fire, and shaking the nerves of the school staff, who were already on edge.

  The Union Literary Institute was only about a year old. It was a boarding and day school for precollegiate students in Randolph County in eastern Indiana, on the Ohio border. The school was also a labor institute, meaning that students who could not afford tuition could pay for their education, and support the school, by working for the school. But the board members did not intend for this to be a poor school. After all, they were planning on sending their children there, and they were not poor at all.1

  The board had been planning the institute’s creation for a few years now. It had finally opened in 1846 and was proving popular. But the school board was realizing that they might need an update to their original constitution. They needed a clear ban on burning gun powder for one.

  Then there were the students who were refusing to get up at 5:00 a.m. to do the labor required of them before c
lasses started. And at least one of the board members had been unhappy to learn that some of the students had been caught playing checkers, chess, and other games of “chance or skill.” And there were some troubling reports of students using slurs and offenses, language that they knew could cut deep and cause hurt and division among the students.2

  And clearer guidelines on courting were needed as well. Most of the students were aged fourteen to seventeen and getting distracted from their normal farmwork. Some were “walking out,” strolling together on the school grounds, surrounded by a haze of delight and affection.3

  So on June 14, 1847, the board met to talk about how best to deal with these and other issues that had arisen at the school. Almost all of the board members made it. They were black and white, male and female, Quaker and not, southerners and a few northerners. While there were Quakers in the Northwest Territory states who did not feel warmly toward people of African descent, it did not include these Quakers. And while there were southerners who were pushing a movement for slavery and inequality, these southerners were not. Did these board members, most of whom were southern born, ever joke about this? Here they sat, black and white, with their differing regional accents, most from Virginia and North Carolina.4

  Powerful whites from the slave states kept describing the ideals that this school board was acting on as northern, despite the fact that the nation had been witnessing just how violently antiabolitionist and prejudiced northern-born whites could be.

  Doubtless the board members had their disputes, but they agreed that the safety and well-being of their students was important and that equality was essential to their project.