WHAT IS FREEDMEN’S UNIVERSITY PODCAST?
It’s Spring, 1850. Congress is stuck in a heated debate over how to organize the new territories gained from the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican American War. Some Northerners in the Whig Party are pushing for more Free States, but Southerners are pushing for more Slave States.
You are a Black Christian living in New York. You mainly focus on your ministry and your newspaper, but this debate has your undivided attention. Congressman James Mason of Virginia has just written a bill that strengthens the sixty-year-old Fugitive Slave Law that George Washington had signed. You are especially concerned because you ARE a Fugitive Slaves from Maryland. Your parents ran away while you were a child. You were raised as a free person in New York. You are a well-educated author and the pastor of a multi-ethnic church, but if this bill passes, you could be captured, chained, and sent to a cotton field.
This frightening scenario became a reality for Samuel Ringgold Ward when Congress passed the Compromise of 1850.
Who are the Freedmen?
Someone may ask, “What’s a Freedman? What do you mean? Who are the Freedmen?”
Freedmen are people who were enslaved but have been set free from bondage. This is where we get names like the Freedmen’s Bureau. We all know a little bit about slavery from history class, but let’s dig in a bit. Right? Samuel Ringgold Ward was slave and Slave or free, were the only two classes that mattered to a Black man in those days. Now, I know we struggle with the New Jim Crow. We still struggle with the Old Jim Crow, and we still have to deal with police violence, but Samuel Ward said that you can’t imagine life as a slave!
If you’re a parent, and your baby has ever been sick. Man! Right? Like, you can’t think of anything you want more than for your baby to get well. Right? Not so for a slave. Samuel was a sick baby. Because he was so sick, he was allowed to stay with his mom, because the slave master can’t get much money from selling a sick slave baby. So, his momma was stuck in her prayers. Okay? If you pray that your baby gets better then your baby’s gonna get sold, but if you pray that your baby stays sick then your baby can die. What you gonna do? Samuel Ward said, You whose children are born free, can’t really understand what his parents endured.
So, for Samuel Ward’s parents, it didn’t matter if people called you Black, or Negro, Colored, or African American. It only mattered if they called you a Freedman! They knew that they could be killed or tortured for running away, but they put their lives on the line and took that chance. They ran away as a father, mother, and baby. #BlackFamily So with that in mind.
- We are not Black or Negro. Why label anyone by the color of their skin?!?!
- We are not African-American, either. Our fathers did not immigrate from Africa, so why label us as though we are African immigrants?
So who are we? We are the descendants of the Freedmen.
Okay, so why Freedmen’s University?
Once a Freedman, Samuel and his family were still dirt poor, and like many of us have had to do, …they stayed with relatives. The relatives they stayed within New York City were also the parents of the famous preacher, Henry Highland Garnet. A feminist activist once told me that the nuclear family has never been part of the black American experience, I completely disagree with that! A lot of times the family is all we had!
Samuel Ward’s first lessons came from his father while they were working in the garden. He later attended public school in New York and like Francis Grimke, he also wrote about how there is no time in America where a Black person isn’t reminded that they are Black. They often ask, why do you keep bringing up race? Samuel Ward said that whether it was lunchtime, sports, walking down the street, or especially if he ever protested anything or looked for a promotion, somebody reminded him of his skin color! This was the life that Samuel Ward lived as a Freedman.
We could’ve called this Freedmen’s Institute or Freedmen’s College, but we didn’t want to focus on one small aspect of the Freedmen. People will often reduce a Freedman like Sojourner Truth to women’s rights, or they may reduce Harriet Tubman to the Underground Railroad. Robert Smalls has been tragically reduced to his just his escape from Charleston Harbor, or in probably the worst example, George Washington Carver has become the Peanut Guy. We have no intention of doing that.
The word ”University” means the sum of all things or “the whole”. So, the sum of the stars and galaxies are found in the universe. Instead of reducing our heroes to a quote that is useful in making our point, we wanted to take a look at their world. To find out what was important to them and how they lived.
At sixteen years old, Samuel met a very influential and powerful Black preacher by the name of David Ruggles. Ruggles was a very active abolitionist who also opened his home to a runaway slave named Frederick Douglass. Douglass was married in David Ruggles’s home. Frederick Douglass would later refer to Samuel Ward as the most eloquent of the abolitionist preachers.
Samuel Ward got a job working for David Ruggles. That year Samuel Ward said, “It pleased God to answer the prayers of my parents, in my conversion.” Six years later, he was licensed to preach the gospel by the New York Congregational Association. Samuel did not see Christianity as the White man’s religion. Instead, he understood the Bible as the greatest enemy of slaveholders. Quoting Deuteronomy 23:15, Samuel Ward denounced the Fugitive Slave law as a violation of God’s Law. He said that [The Fugitive Slave] shall have the law of Almighty God to protect him, the law which says, “Thou shalt not return to the master the servant that is escaped unto thee, but he shall dwell with thee in thy gates”.
A recurring theme in the writings of the Freedmen is a strong devotion to Christianity as well as the frequent use of Bible verses in their arguments. Black American history is decidedly Christian. Anyone who talks about black history and doesn’t mention Christianity is really doing a disservice to their hearers because Christianity is entrenched within the Black American Experience. I mean, Samuel Ward’s argument against the Fugitive Slave Law came straight out of Deuteronomy! Almost everybody had that Grandma back in the day that could “get a prayer through”. The movement of the abolitionists in the 1800s was a Christian movement. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s found pastors and ministers at the forefront. Therefore, on this podcast, we won’t shy away from the Christianity of our forefathers.
Who are the professors at Freedmen’s University?
The professors at Freedmen’s University are the great heroes of the past and they teach whatever lessons they want. One lesson that they frequently teach is that Freedmen Make Men Free. They are never satisfied by their own freedom, but other men must be made free as well.
Despite Samuel Ward’s efforts, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress in 1850. The next year, government officials intended to enforce the new law in Syracuse at an abolitionist convention. William Henry, called Jerry, was a runaway slave who was captured and imprisoned at the convention. Samuel Ringgold Ward and the other abolitionist were not having it. In what is known as the Jerry Rescue, Samuel Ward participated in a raid to recapture William Henry and set him free.
Malcolm X rightly condemned Black pastors who preached non-violence in the face of violent oppressors.
Proverbs 25:26 Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.
PROVERBS 25:26
Again, Freedmen make men free. Would your pastor take up arms to free a man who was wrongly imprisoned? Samuel Ward did. He immediately fled the US in 1851.
Samuel Ward was also involved in politics, but he was not a Democrat. During his time, the Andrew Jackson Democrats pushed hard for the expansion of slavery. He was not a Whig. The Whigs were the remnants of the original Democratic Party leftover after Andrew Jackson’s split and they were often pro-slavery. He was also not a Republican. The Republican party was founded in 1854, but Samuel had fled the nation three years earlier from the Jerry Rescue. Instead, he worked diligently for the Anti-Slavery Liberty Party.
Freedmen’s University is non-partisan because Black History is Non-Partisan. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. There are plenty of solid Democrats and Solid Republicans in Black history, but Black history itself isn’t on one side or the other. People usually have a political bias and they try to force that on others. Over the years many of our great leaders have been reduced to political talking points by both Republicans and Democrats. We have been blessed by both parties and oppressed by both parties.
Our history is full of prominent Republicans and prominent Democrats and to reduce any of them down to just a political talking point seems like an insult to their legacy, an insult to their knowledge, and ultimately an insult to their Humanity. If we are to honor our forefathers, we should at least take the time to understand what they had to say about many of the issues that was the struggle with today. You don’t have to be Conservative to be Christian and you don’t have to be a Liberal to be Black.
There are many lessons that can be learned from our forefathers. The Fifth Commandment teaches us to honor father and mother, so we are devoted to honoring our forefathers by bringing modern light to the beliefs, experiences, and teachings of the Freedmen.
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