While many people think of the 1960s as the time of the civil rights movement, in truth, the history of opposition to racism in this country extends well beyond the civil rights movement of the 60s to well over a century earlier. There are long chapters of American history where people and groups stood up against injustice, intolerance, and racism.
The Quakers, in particular, have not only a long history as leaders in the abolitionist movement but also in the movement to achieve civil rights in education and the founding of the Southern Education Foundation. Our connection to those Quakers is one reason we are participating in the Quaker Voluntary Service Fellowship program, through which we have brought on board an outstanding young person as a fellow to support our work for a year.
The relationship of Quakers to the civil rights movement goes back well over 150 years ago when the Quaker community in Philadelphia spoke out in strong and righteous opposition to the barbaric institution of enslavement and took on the responsibility of being major leaders and funders of the abolitionist movement of the 1800s.
The Arch Street Meeting House of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Philadelphia, built between 1803-1805.
Key Figures in the Movement
Anna T. Jeanes
Prominent among these Quaker civil rights leaders was Anna T. Jeanes, a diminutive, unassuming woman who amassed great wealth through hard work and ingenuity and used her wealth to not only oppose the obscene institution of slavery but to help redress the damage it had wrought on those who were enslaved and their children.
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Anna T. Jeanes’ post-civil war legacy was a cadre of Black women teachers across the South, known as the Jeanes Teachers who educated Black children, established schools, and helped launch the Black teaching field in this nation. The Jeanes Fund also enlisted and trained women who were known as Jeanes Supervisors who supervised and helped to develop education for Blacks in the South.
In fact, the Jeanes Fund was one of four funds that merged in 1937 to form the Southern Education Foundation. The others were the Slater Fund, the Peabody Fund, and the Randolph Fund (which was named for Virginia Randolph, the first Jeanes Supervisor).
Anna Jeanes was also a strong supporter of the early Black colleges and universities (which we now call Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs), such as Tuskegee, and she was a friend and supporter of Tuskegee Founder Booker T. Washington and others who emerged to fight slavery and support emancipation. She asked Washington to serve on the Board of the Jeanes Fund, which he did. Other members of that board were President William H. Taft, Andrew Carnegie, and George Peabody, the Northern philanthropist who established the Peabody Fund.
Anna T. Jeanes, a key Quaker leader in the fight against slavery and for civil rights.
Susan B. Anthony
Some of the women who led the suffrage movement were also important figures in the early civil rights movement. Women like Susan B. Anthony, who was also a Quaker, spoke out against slavery and supported people like Frederik Douglass, who, in turn, supported the women’s suffrage movement. Anthony (like Jeanes and many others) never accepted the obscene dichotomy of a nation with one half enslaved and one half free.
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Her words echo today as we once again find ourselves divided over issues of race, many of which are vestiges of America’s dark history with slavery. The organization I lead, founded in part by Anna T. Jeanes, was birthed from philanthropy that not only opposed but sought to eradicate the evils of enslavement and racism by bringing opportunity and education to the victims of this great sin and its derivatives.
So, as we see the divisions in this country over issues of race, let us also remember and recognize that there has always been and continues to be a great deal of unity among people about these issues of equity, fairness, and justice.
The Quakers' Evolving Stance on Slavery
The Quakers were among the most prominent slave traders during the early days of the country; paradoxically, they were also among the first denominations to protest slavery. The denomination's internal battle to do so, however, took over a century. Their fight began in Pennsylvania.
There, in April 1688, four Dutch members of "The Society of Friends," as it was then known, sent a short petition "against the traffick of men-body" to their meeting in Germantown. Pennsylvania had existed for four years; slaveholding had been present for at least three of those.
These Dutch Christians, alluding to Matthew 7:12, believed that Jesus' morality demanded a higher standard: "Is there any that would be . . . sold or made a slave for all the time of his life?
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The 1688 Quaker Meeting, however, ducked the petition of its Dutch members, as they found the matter "so weighty that we think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here." The petition was filed away, to be discovered again and published in 1844, 156 years later.
For the next half-century, similar scattered protests against the slavery system were offered to an indifferent or actively hostile North American public. Before the Revolution, Quakers like George Keith and Samuel Sewall criticized the common practice of purchasing Africans who had been made captive in wars.
Since "every War is upon one side Unjust," Sewall observed, "an Unlawful War can't make lawful Captives. And by receiving, we are in danger to promote, and partake in their Barbarous Cruelties." Early opponents of slavery often paid a high price for their outspokenness. They were disowned by family and fellow congregants and faced public ostracization.
Despite their efforts, the moral question of slavery would not be joined nationally until a decade before the Civil War.
Wood engraving of a Quaker meeting, illustrating their historical gatherings and discussions.
The Underground Railroad and Quaker Involvement
Black, Native American, and white abolitionists worked together on the Underground Railroad. From 1852 to 1865, Quaker abolitionists Thomas and Hannah Atkinson’s farmhouse, located in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania, was used as an Underground Railroad station. Many fleeing runaways were helped by them to get to northern states or Canada.
The former Atkinson farmhouse is still in use today as the Upper Dublin School District administration offices. This building still contains some of those secret places where terrorized fugitives were hidden. Adjacent to the farm is the Upper Dublin meetinghouse and graveyard. The Atkinsons were members here.
When runaways died on this branch of the Underground Railroad, they were buried secretly at night in the meetinghouse graveyard because the law prohibited any assistance to runaways.
Enslaved people had to hide in the daytime and travel by night, so as not to be caught. There is a story that I read about the Underground Railroad that still haunts me; it’s about a woman with her children. One night when this woman stepped away from her children suddenly a predatory panther took one of her children away. She could hear the cries of her child as he was being eaten.
On September 28th Upper Dublin (Pa.) Meeting of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting celebrated the unveiling of a Pennsylvania historic marker which honored the lives of Thomas and Hannah Atkinson, members of the meeting who offered safe haven on the underground railroad.
The Underground Railroad: On the Road to Freedom
Challenges and Conflicts Within the Quaker Community
I am the only African American member the meeting has ever had. This meeting is a very old one which usually has less than ten in attendance each Sunday. Many of the members are descendants of Hannah and Thomas Atkinson.
At a meeting for business, I learned that my meeting was making plans to sell the plots where they knew the enslaved African Americans were buried. I thought that was a desecration of my ancestors’ final resting place. In March 2013, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission designated this place as a Pennsylvania Historical Site.
Starting with the 2013-2014 school year, the Upper Dublin School District in Montgomery County made this significant local history part of their social studies curriculum. All of this was done under the leadership of Dr. Michael Pladus, a Japanese American superintendent. In this way with this new curriculum, all students can gain a more complete understanding of American history.
The unfortunate racial hatred that my meeting members have directed toward me because of this project has made a hostile environment, so it is impossible for me to attend weekly meetings for worship. But, in order to carry out the work of my leading, I need to go to business meetings.
One true example of verbal abuse directed at me by a meeting member occurred just before worship started one Sunday. We were taking our usual places on the benches, and a member walked up to me as I was sitting ready to worship, and said, “I don’t want to sit near you. Get up, and go sit in the back somewhere.” This intimidation didn’t work on me.
Another time a generous member of the meeting offered to cater the repast after the memorial service. I took this to business meeting and was told no; the African American guests would not be fed in the meetinghouse.
As a group, we went out to the graveyard and agreed on a spot to place the memorial marker which was donated by a local company. After taking pictures and measuring where the memorial marker would be placed, I informed the Graveyard Committee that I wanted to be there when the marker was installed to take pictures of the installation, and make sure that no bones were uncovered. However, that didn’t happen.
No one from my meeting informed me that the stone had been installed. A neighbor who lives near the meetinghouse called and told about some activity in the graveyard. I went over and found the marker installed about four feet nearer to the wall at the back of the graveyard, not at the spot that we had all agreed on.
When Upper Dublin fourth grade teachers asked to bring their classes to visit the meetinghouse and memorial marker during February, Black History Month, the meeting didn’t think Black History Month was important, so they took no action.
At the last meeting that I attended of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Ministry for Racial Justice and Equality, hosted at my home, the clerk of Upper Dublin Meeting at that time who was also a member of this group turned to me and said that white people are more civilized than black people. It was as if the ceiling had opened up and dropped ice water on me. I was speechless.
To add insult to injury, neither the clerk of the Ministry, nor the other members of the group sitting there, all of whom were white, said anything. The insult went right over their heads. After the meeting was over and everybody left my home, I immediately wrote a letter of resignation to the clerk of this group. Later one member of the group called me and apologized.
The most serious incident that I have experienced took place during our worship hour one morning in February: I was moved by the Spirit to stand to share a message that had come to me, but before I could say a word, a member jumped up and said, “Shut up, you are a bum! I don’t want you in this meeting any more. Get out!” I was so astonished at these hateful remarks that I picked up my pocketbook, and as I was leaving I paused and said to each and every one there, “You see what is happening, and you say nothing? That makes you just as bad.” Then I told them, “God will get you for this.” And I left and drove home. How humiliating it was to be run out of my meetinghouse!
Historically injustice and inequality have been a part of American society and of the Religious Society of Friends. This situation at Upper Dublin Meeting is horrible. Obviously, if these incidents happened to a white Quaker, things would be a lot different. Sadly, the kinds of things that happened to me in my meeting continue to happen to Quakers of color in other meetings. This makes me feel frustrated, marginalized, and alienated.
This community, as the individuals within it, is imperfect.
Notable African American Quakers
February is Black History Month and there are Quakers of color who have delivered much to our modern world through their faith and advocacy. Knowing the past opens a door to the future that is framed within diversity and inclusivity. Here are three African Americans who were crucial to our shared Quaker history.
- Bayard Rustin (1912-1987): A West Chester native who became an internationally known human rights activist. He was jailed as a conscientious objector and worked throughout his life to address the economic, social, and political issues that hurt people on the margins around the world. Rustin protested segregation in the USA, was active in America’s civil rights movement (advising Dr.
- Vera Mae Green (1928-1982): Was a pioneer in the international human rights and Caribbean anthropology. She was the first president of the Association of Black Anthropologists (1977-1979), served as Director of the Mid-Atlantic Council for Latin American Studies, and was active in the Society for Applied Anthropology. In 1972-3, she did a study on “Blacks and Quakerism” for Friends General Conference.
- Vincent Harding (1931-2014): Was a theologian, historian, and nonviolent activist. Even though he was not a Quaker, he was a friend of the community and affiliated with the Pendle Hill Quaker Retreat Center. Harding and his late wife, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, worked as negotiators in the Southern Freedom Movement in the ’60s and were friends and co-workers with such leaders as Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer.
The Importance of Spiritual Principles
More than our advices and queries, and our social witness and activism, I believe the fundamental spiritual principles that lie at the core of the Religious Society of Friends are the key to our future growth and survival. What are the fundamental spiritual principles of the Religious Society of Friends that speak most clearly to the African American experience?
- Affirming the fundamental, spiritual, and everlasting nature of God and the Christ of the Fourth Gospel-often called the “Quaker text”-who was with God in the beginning. This grounds our belief in a spiritually transcendent deity and a Christ not confined by earthly images and limited socioeconomic and political concepts like race and ethnicity, which are forms of idolatry present in most religious traditions.
- Affirming the possibility and the reality of direct revelation of spiritual leadings and Truth to individuals waiting faithfully in the Light, and the power of spiritual truth conveyed through experience, affirming that God has spoken to us in the past, speaks to us in the present, and will be speaking for all the future to come.
- Affirming the everlasting power of love, which speaks to the statement Martin Luther King Jr.
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The Role of Quakers in the Underground Railroad: Myths and Realities
Quakers are part of Underground Railroad mythology. The Underground Railroad has become a part of our national narrative. We like to think that our nation and our ancestors were good and just people. We like the story that every house owned by a Quaker must have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. Just look at all the tunnels. This is wishful thinking.
Did all Quakers participate in the Underground Railroad? No. Was it official policy of any Quaker Yearly Meeting or monthly meeting body that this was expected? No.
Some Quakers participated in loosely organized Underground Railroad networks. Some Quakers made Underground Railroad their life's work. For others, the opportunity to do so seldom or never arose.
This is true. Fugitives from slavery took the initiative and took most of the risk. The Underground Railroad was more about African-American communities of support than has generally been acknowledged.
Early African American Petitioners
About five years ago I examined a folder of petitions from black activists at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I was surprised to realize that one of the documents was actually an early draft of the famous petition to Congress signed by the Reverend Absalom Jones and seventy other people of color in December 1799. The rough draft was signed by two Quakers who I discovered were members of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings.
Quaker sources have allowed me to tell the story of the nation’s earliest black petitioners in greater detail than any previous historian, establishing connections between the former slaves and Quaker abolitionists in North Carolina and Philadelphia.
Nonetheless, there remain many unknowns in the historical records, resulting from the imbalance of Quaker and African American sources. The surviving records of black churches from the era have allowed me to establish likely connections and networks of influence, but provide few details beyond marriages, baptisms, and fundraising.
