“Give me liberty or give me death.” Honoring our nation’s Black founding fathers and mothers
From staff reports
Our history books tell us about Patrick Henry, the founding father who in 1775 famously proclaimed, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
But who were the slaves who worked his fields or cooked his meals the morning he uttered those words at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John’s Church in Richmond?
In the final days of the Revolutionary War for independence from Great Britain, who were the free Black men who fought with General George Washington? They, too, are our founding fathers. They, too, birthed the nation that celebrates its 250th birthday this summer.
Genealogist Orice Jenkins and writer Isiah Smith explored the nation’s fraught and complex history surrounding race, slavery, family history, and calls for reparations during a live podcast conversation on May 8 at the Alluvion in Traverse City. The event was moderated by Sun editor Jacob Wheeler.
Smith, a septuagenarian who lives in Traverse City, and Jenkins, a millennial who resides in Massachusetts, connected through a shared past, including a powerful artifact—Smith’s great-grandfather’s Bill of Sale, and the story of an ancestor freed from slavery in Georgia. Jenkins documented that in his book The Early County Massacre: Goolsby vs. the State of Georgia, which led to the two connecting and realizing their shared lineage.
Their unscripted, open-ended conversation last month explored the themes of ancestry, the legacies we inherit, and the necessity of understanding our past to heal and grow. Smith and Jenkins shared personal reflections, the challenges they faced while uncovering their history, and how this journey has shaped their identities today. During a deeply emotional exploration of what it means to come to terms with one’s heritage, they also took a crack at how we view the nation’s semiquincentennial.
Below is an excerpted transcript from May 8 at the Alluvion:
Jacob Wheeler (host): How are you thinking about the 250th anniversary of the country in the context of this conversation about race?
Isiah Smith: I haven’t thought about it a lot, because I think that history has been co-opted as we speak. It’s been bastardized and distorted, and it takes away what should be a great celebration, because this country is not even an adolescent yet. When we go to Europe, we go to houses that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, you know, and a house that’s 100 years old, is an old house.
But this country is undergoing some permutations that indicates how much growing up it needs to do, and hopefully that would happen. I’m fairly certain I won’t see it happen, because we’re taking several steps back since 2016 and it’s going to take a long time to repair some of the damage that’s been done.
As we speak, part of The White House is being torn down, the reflecting pool is being painted, John F. Kennedy’s memory is being almost destroyed.
The founders knew that we had a weak system. The reason they thought it would work were because of checks and balances, so one person couldn’t cause a lot of damage, because you had the three branches, and they would check each other. There are no checks now, and no balances. Even the Supreme Court is complicit,. Even the one Black man who’s on the court is part of the destruction of America, and the right to vote.
So I find it very hard to get worked up about celebrating 250 years, because if you look back, a lot of those years were really awful years for Black people, for Japanese, Native Americans. That’s a lot of blood on this country’s hands, and we can’t pretend that we ever got a more perfect union, and we can’t stop fighting.
Do what little part we can do, you know. Each of us can do something, just find out what it is you can do. I try to do it through community involvement and writing. Maybe no one’s reading it, but I know I’m writing it. We all can do something, and then the next 250 years will be worth celebrating.
Orice Jenkins: I choose to honor those stories that we don’t talk about very often. … I found out through my research that Albert Terrell—five times my great grandfather, and Isiah’s ancestor as well—his grandfather was a Revolutionary War soldier. He was a free person of color in Goochland County, Virginia, and he was drafted. He was a part of the militia. This was in May of 1781.
So these are the final major moments of the war, and he was at Yorktown with George Washington, and that’s our ancestor. So, when I think about, you know, 250 years, I think about him. I think about how he was a part of the founding of this country.
I even think about our other ancestor, who he later had children with. Her name was Grace Shelton. She was enslaved, but as an enslaved person who was born in 1756 she is also a founder of this nation … as every enslaved person from that time period was.
They’re the ones that are cultivating all the food, all the resources, all the things that those soldiers were eating, that those founders were eating. This also, again, is very close to Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson lived, and so they’re a part of his community, as well.
I’ll give a better example, Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry was married to a Shelton, so we are really closely connected to his family. When he rode to St. John’s Church in Richmond in 1775 to proclaim that you should “give me liberty or give me death,” you know, at the same time that he enslaved people who were likely our relatives, I think about that.
I think about who might have made his breakfast that morning. Who works the fields and who helped him in his legal practice, and who was there with Thomas Jefferson. We don’t have to wonder about these things, because that’s documented very, very well.
