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Female Firsts: Frances Anne Rollin Whipper · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Steff.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I never told you a protection of iHeartRadio. And it
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is time once again for another edition of a Female First,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: which means we are once again thrilled to be joined
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: by the fantastic, the fabulous Eves.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Welcome Eaves.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Hello, thank you.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: We're so happy to have you as always. Happy belated birthday.
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: Happy belated birthday.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I like to do anything of note.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Of note.
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  Speaker 5: I don't know if I would say it was of note,
• 0:45
  Speaker 5: but all I did was I read a lot that
• 0:48
  Speaker 5: day and then I, yeah, so I just worked, if
• 0:51
  Speaker 5: that's interesting. And then I lifted. I weightlifted that day,
• 0:56
  Speaker 5: and I went out to eat. So it was chill.
• 0:58
  Speaker 5: I really had no plans. Kept asking myself before the day,
• 1:01
  Speaker 5: like what do I want to do, and I was like,
• 1:02
  Speaker 5: I don't really know, So I guess it's fine for
• 1:04
  Speaker 5: me to not think so hard about it.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: If you know, I don't know. I have a trip
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  Speaker 3: plan for later.
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  Speaker 5: But it's technically for my birthday, but it's not happening
• 1:12
  Speaker 5: all my birthday, so hey, I was just like, I'll
• 1:14
  Speaker 5: just chill.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: I love that. Yeah, Sometimes just having a relaxed day
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: is the best.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think there's there
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: could be so much pressure on birthdays and sometimes it's
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: nice to be like, you know what, I'll just do
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: whatever it is I want and then I'll do a
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: trip later and that's fine, Like I don't know, taking
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the pressure off.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah I does. Yeah.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're always You're always up to stuffives. I'm always
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: interested to hear what your your trips you're going on
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  Speaker 2: and everything.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: I try. I try to keep things interesting.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: So I think I think you do. I think you do. Yeah,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: you much so, yes, I'm always I love checking in
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: with your cat today and your various travel.
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and the lifting was new to me. I was like,
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: what you're just yeah, a pile of secrets.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: A pile of secrets.
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: That's the best I could think of at the point.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: I think that's all.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: This secret secrets.
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: You're a bundle of secrets that yeah, like pile is like, yeah,
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: this seems like a mistake. That's where like you just
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: like just go ahead and just throw things into a pile.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: We'll put it in a bundle.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Thank you. That's a lot neater.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I love it well, speaking of someone who got up
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: to a lot in their life.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Can you tell us who we're talking about today, Eves, Yes.
• 2:50
  Speaker 5: So we're talking today about Francis and Rolin Whipper, and
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: she was I talked about her in a recent episode
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: of On the which is another podcast that I do
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: is my cost Katie Mitchell, and that one's about black storytelling,
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: and we did an episode on diaries that black women
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: wrote in history, and Francis and Rollin Whipper was one
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: of the people who wrote diaries.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: She had a diary.
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  Speaker 5: That is one of the earliest known diaries written by
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  Speaker 5: a black Southern woman that she wrote in eighteen sixty eight.
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: It's like a year's worth of her recordings from that year,
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: and it's a pretty interesting year in her life.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: So I enjoyed reading it.
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: And I think y'all know from other episodes of Female
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: First that, like I really enjoy letters and journals that
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: people have from their travels.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Like I think we talked about Mary Sekol.
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: People's autobiographies when they have just kind of a daily
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: log of the things that they did, is super fascinating
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: to me, even though it's like the most mundane things.
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: You know, we'll talk about people who have all these
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: big accomplishments and traveled.
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  Speaker 3: All over the world or like.
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  Speaker 5: What seeing with different dignitaries and all that stuff is cool.
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  Speaker 3: But I also like the.
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: Everyday musings of getting to know people's internal processes and
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: how they choose to express those. So I was fascinated
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: by Francis and Rolin Whipper's diary. And she also had
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: a first and she wrote the first full ath biography
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  Speaker 5: by black American about a free born black person, so
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  Speaker 5: that is part of her story as well. And she's
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: just like a super interesting person. So that's what we'll
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: be talking about today.
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  Speaker 1: I agree with you. I love diaries. I love like
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: just random notes you can find. I love these like instances.
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  Speaker 1: I think they paint such a good picture of what
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: was going on at the time, even if it can
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: seem kind of mundane, I'm fascinated by it, like this
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  Speaker 1: is what people were worried about, or this was what
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: was going on on, or I think it's such a
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: great snapshot of stuff.
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  Speaker 2: So I agree with you, Eve, Well, shall we get
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: into the history.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Sure?
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: So.
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  Speaker 5: Francis and Rowlin was born free in November of eighteen
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  Speaker 5: forty five in Charleston, South Carolina, and her parents were
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  Speaker 5: Margarette or Margarette, not sure which way to pronounce that,
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  Speaker 5: but Margaret and William Rolin, and they were also free,
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: not much more beyond her being free as known about
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: her mother, but her father was like from this wealthy
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  Speaker 5: quote unquote.
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  Speaker 3: Mulatto side, and they ended.
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  Speaker 5: Up on their family ended up on a plantation near
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: Charleston and started getting into the lumber trade. So he
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: was kind of doing some merchant stuff, buying property. And
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: they had their family had enslaved three people I've seen.
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure if that's like how many people they
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  Speaker 5: had enslaved over, you know, over time, if they had
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: even more than that. But they also had trading connections
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  Speaker 5: with other cities. So they were these free people of
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: color who had high status in society and basically gained
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: a lot of privilege and access to things by virtue
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  Speaker 5: of their proximity to whiteness. So that's part of their history.
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  Speaker 5: But Francis, she had four sisters. They were Charlotte, Catherine, Luisa,
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  Speaker 5: and Florence. And Francis was the oldest of all of them.
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  Speaker 5: And they all got good educations. Like I was just saying,
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  Speaker 5: she you know, they all they have money. So even
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: though it was illegal for black folks at the time.
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  Speaker 3: Black schooling was still.
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  Speaker 5: They were able to be educated, and Francis went to
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  Speaker 5: private schools and she had tutors in Charleston and she
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: learned French, and.
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  Speaker 3: She, you know, had access to.
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  Speaker 5: Education because of her parents, and all her other sisters
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  Speaker 5: did as well.
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  Speaker 3: But at the same time, the Civil.
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: War was about to pop off and things were looking
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  Speaker 5: dicey for free black people in the South.
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  Speaker 3: You know, all of this.
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  Speaker 5: At the end of the day, if you're perceived as black,
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  Speaker 5: you're perceived as black. So you know, even free people
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  Speaker 5: of color face difficulties at the time. And in eighteen
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  Speaker 5: fifty nine, Francis ended up going to Philadelphia and she
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  Speaker 5: began attending the Institute for Colored Youth, which was founded
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: by Quakers, and she lived there with musician Morris Brown's family,
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  Speaker 5: and her sisters followed her up there not long afterwards.
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  Speaker 5: So for the next six years she stayed in Philadelphia.
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  Speaker 5: I saw that she wasn't really in communication with her
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: parents during that time that we know of, and she
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: seemingly didn't graduate from the institute, so she may have
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: had to work at the time. But either way, after
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: the Civil War she went back to Charleston to teach
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: black people who had recently been emancipated. She taught at
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: a Freedman's Bureau school, and then she taught at an
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  Speaker 5: American Missionary Society school.
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  Speaker 3: And when there is a notable case.
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  Speaker 5: In her history, and that's when she was traveling on
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  Speaker 5: a steamer to Beaufort, South Carolina, the captain, whose name
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: was W. T.
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  Speaker 3: Mcnelty, denied her access to a first class cabin.
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  Speaker 5: She said that he had violated a military order, and
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  Speaker 5: so at that point he was tried before a military
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  Speaker 5: court and he was found guilty and he got fined
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  Speaker 5: two hundred and fifty dollars in eighteen sixty seven, which
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  Speaker 5: I don't know how much that is in today's dollars,
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  Speaker 5: but it's a lot more So around this time she
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  Speaker 5: met Martin R. Delaney, and at this point he was
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  Speaker 5: major in the army and he worked for the Freedman's
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  Speaker 5: Bureau and he supported her. He was during her case process,
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  Speaker 5: and I don't know exactly how this conversation looked, but
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  Speaker 5: I'm very curious about it because she told him that
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  Speaker 5: she wanted a literary career, and he encouraged her to
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  Speaker 5: write his biography, and she agreed, and there's just there's
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  Speaker 5: something about this interaction that really fascinates me, Like as
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  Speaker 5: a writer, it just I just want to know how
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  Speaker 5: that conversation went, because she hadn't written any biographies up
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  Speaker 5: to this point, so one to ask somebody to write
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  Speaker 5: your biography, I feel like you have.
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  Speaker 3: To feel you you have to feel a.
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  Speaker 5: Way about yourself before you're like, Okay, you know, I've
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  Speaker 5: done some things and I want somebody to write my biography.
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  Speaker 5: And at this point they had just met, like they didn't.
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  Speaker 5: I'm not sure how long they knew each other up
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  Speaker 5: until this point, but I don't think they have been
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: there were deep in the trenches of friendship. And she
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  Speaker 5: also wasn't known for writing full length works, if barely
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: anything at this point because she was doing I believe
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  Speaker 5: more teaching up until this point. But anyway, I'm very
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  Speaker 5: curious about this conversation. I don't think there are any
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  Speaker 5: records of this, because it seems like there's a lot
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  Speaker 5: of vagueness around this.
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  Speaker 3: But when I'm looking at.
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  Speaker 5: Her biography, I just like, this is a this is
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  Speaker 5: a flashpoint for her. This is the first that we're
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: talking about today. And to not know exactly why he
• 10:36
  Speaker 5: asked her what he thought her merits were of being
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: able to do this is very interesting to me. So anyway,
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: that's that's by a side. But she hoped that, you know,
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: this biography would launch her literary career. And he gave
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: her all these materials, all these papers, and he told her, hey,
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  Speaker 5: I will support you financially while you work on this book.
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: And she went to Boston to write the book and
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: she stayed there for eight months. So this is in
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  Speaker 5: eighteen sixty eight, and that's the year that we have
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  Speaker 5: where she writes in her diary, and so all her
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: surviving diary entries are from that year. I'm not sure
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  Speaker 5: if she had diary, if she was doing diary entries
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  Speaker 5: before then or after then, she very well could have been.
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  Speaker 5: But this is these are the this is the extant
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  Speaker 5: diary that we have of hers, and in it, she
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: is very she's very kind of like before I was
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: want to say that she was she's uppitty. At first
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: I kind of felt like, hey, I want to be
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: her friend. But then I realized that she kind of
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: had like her class consciousness was not completely there, Like
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: she was a little too bougie for my taste. But
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: if you read her diary, there are parts of it
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  Speaker 5: that I kind of like, oh, I want to be
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: her friend, because she's kind of like she's going to
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: lectures for people like Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldell Emerson
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: and abolition sheets got to know people like the abolitionists
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: William Lord Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and William Nell, as well
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: as the scholar name Richard Greener, and she talks about
• 12:18
  Speaker 5: the difficulties that she had during that year.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: In her diary, she talks.
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  Speaker 5: About Martin Delaney and the troubles that she was going
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: through with him in that relationship, because apparently there was
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: some infidelity later on, and she talks about how he
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: wrote her a love letter, and then there are also
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  Speaker 5: these other moments where she's in her very intellectual flow
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: where she's talking about how she.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: Went to these lectures and she read this person's.
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: Work and she thought he needed to do better. So
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: and she talks about how she had friends who she
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: would talk to about some of the literary works that
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: she had read and how their opinions on them could
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: be improved. But yeah, so you can read her diary online.
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: It is digitized online, so it's free. Everybody can go
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: check it out and read all her entries. There have
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: been people volunteers who worked on transcribing everything and her diary,
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: So if you're interested in diary entries like we are
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: here on Sminthea, then you can check those out.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: But the thing about.
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: It is Delaney didn't keep sending her money, so she
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: had to sew and be a copyist, I think, to
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: support herself.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Which is sad because.
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: I'm just trying to step in her shoes and think
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: like I want this thing to launch my career, and
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: she's already getting a taste of how this whole writing
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: life is.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: You don't get paid when you're supposed to, so.
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: She had to support herself, but she did it, and
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: clearly she was dedicated to that work because she continued
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: it and she wrote the book that ended up being
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: called Life in Public Services of Major Martin R. Delaney
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: That was published in eighteen sixty eight, and later on
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: years later in eighteen eighty three, it was reissued, but
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: the publisher LEA. Shepherd, they published the biography under a
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: pseudonym that was Frank A. Rolin, and that was seemingly
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: the publisher's decision because they thought people weren't ready to
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: have a book by a black woman. But her family
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: also did call her Frank, so it seems like it
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: was a fine compromise for her, I guess, because she
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: was like, well, I guess they already called me frank anyway,
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: so it's cool.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: But yeah.
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: By July eighteen sixty eight, she had left Boston and
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: she went to Columbia, South Carolina, which is my birthplace,
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: which is not a thing people really need to know,
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: but it is, so there's a link there. And she
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: had gotten a job as a copyist, and William J.
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: Whipper had offered her the job. And he was a
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: lawyer from the North who had recently moved to South
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: Carolina and was elected to the state legislature.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: And he had people in his.
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: Family already who were writers, editors, an abolitionists. So the
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: work that he ended up doing in politics and in editing,
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: you know, that is something that was in his family already.
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: And he though had his own controversies, so he has
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: his own history of the work that he did in
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: what in the Republican Party at the time during reconstruction,
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: and it said that he was often charged with political corruption,
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: and he had a reputation for gambling and drinking, and
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: just it seemed like being kind of like a party
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: guy who was sometimes up to no good, but like
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: had did a lot. But he offered Francis the job.
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: And when he did, he had a wife, but his
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: wife died before Francis.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: Ended up coming to Colombia.
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: And when she got to Columbia in August, he proposed
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: to her in less than two months, so they had
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: their whole dating period.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: But he proposed pretty quickly. But similarly, she was into it.
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: Can't tell you why, if she was just that smitten
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: with him, or if there were other motivations.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: I have no idea, but she because that's quick.
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: But you know, she went to talk to her parents
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: about it, and her father said the same thing, He said,
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: it's too soon. But her sister Charlotte said, like it
• 16:47
  Speaker 5: might have been some class stuff going on. Because there
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: is a quote from a publication in which Charlotte says,
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: in fact, our family never condescended to notice such small
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: people as Elliott and Whipper. Although Whipper married our sister Francis,
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: they are both Negroes, and our family is French, so
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: you know they were she was recognizing their status as
• 17:12
  Speaker 5: Mulato's and you can see from that sentiment that she
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: and her sisters as well distanced themselves from other black
• 17:21
  Speaker 5: people and kind of looked down on lower class folks.
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: They cared a lot about appearances and politeness and respectability politics,
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: and it is.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Clear that they did.
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: They gained favor from this, Like there's a lot in
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: sources about them of talk about how elegant they were,
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: how refined they were, how polite they were, how they
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: were able to move through these political spaces kind of
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: like they're not like the other darkies situation with them
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: and ad around their complexion, all of that kind of
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: stuff going on. So they were clearly that up and
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: it worked in their favor. They already had wealth, so
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: they already had access to that kind of status and
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: all the traffics that came along with it. But the
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: way that they clearly carry themselves in like socialite society
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: also helped them. So they were viewed pretty positively by
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: the elite essentially. And it's interesting though because at this
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: while it's an interplay of like lack of consciousness, but
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: also some they did also pay attention to racial issues
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: and issues of gender, because they still advocated for equal
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: rights for black people, and they still all of the sisters,
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: including france Is, still advocated for equal rights for women.
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: But you know, I guess we contain multitudes, and they
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: definitely did. And we also like have to consider the
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: the the way that people of color moved in the
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: reconstruction era when they got a little taste of, you know,
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: a post slavery South, and how I'm sure all.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: Of that glory and.
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: Respectability looked like, you know, a shiny object at the
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: end of a tunnel, and they clearly got wrapped up
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: into that.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: But anyway, even you know, even with the.
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: Disavowal of her father, her father's disavowal about her soon
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: to be husband, she still got married in September of
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: eighteen sixty eight, and she edited the Beaufort Tribune, and
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: she wrote some pieces for other newspapers under a pen name,
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: and she and her sisters advocated for rights during this time.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: And Francis ended up having four children who lived beyond infancy,
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: although I think one of her other children also die
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: a little bit later on, but still young. But either way,
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: she and her sisters were moving through these fears in Colombia,
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: and her father died in eighteen eighty and she began
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: to administer the estate, but her mother challenged her administration.
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure the suit didn't go to trial, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure exactly why she challenged it, but that happened,
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: and by that year, Francis was also living in Washington, DC.
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: That was with her kids, but without her husband. So
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: her husband was in South Carolina. He was still doing
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: his political thing and apparently had a mistress at this time,
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: I believe, and Francis was in DC and she was
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: still publishing articles and essays and eventually landed a job
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: as a copyist with the US Department of Lance. She
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: did lose that job in eighteen eighty five the Democrats
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: gained control of the White House. But after that year,
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: between eighteen eighty five and eighteen eighty nine is unclear
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: exactly what she did from work, but she still got
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: All of her children were going to school, they graduated
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: from Howard University, and she kept writing, though it seems
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: like there are some she wrote under pseudonyms that are
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: some of which are unknown. But she kept writing, and
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: sometime after the mid eighteen ninety she had to go
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: back to South Carolina. Her health wasn't in the best shape,
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: and she ended up dying in Beaufort, South Carolina, on
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: October seventeenth, nineteen oh one, of tuberculosis. And she's today,
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: she's buried in Beaufort, South Carolina.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, once again, it's quite a story. It's
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: hard to imagine having your diary digitized. I mean, it
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: sounds like she would be cool with it, right, but.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: I mean I would to mine mine. I would do.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: But it's just it's kind of odd to think everyone. Right.
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: But it's interesting because the that you read from the sister,
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: I was like, this kind of reminds me of like
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: a Jane Austen novel, Like this feels like it's like
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: a dialogue straight out of except for is from the
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: black community perspective or the you know, like freight black community.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: I'm like, huh, this feels very like enriched in like
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: society and our place in life and then who is
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: beneath us? And I was like, maybe it's because we
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: just did Bride prejudice, but I'm like, this feels familiar.
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there's I can't read a quote from her diary
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: if you want to hear one. Yeah, actually really because yeah, So,
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: like we talked about at the beginning of the episode,
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: the diaries that people wrote, they allowed people to have
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: a lot of insight into what daily life was like
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: for different kinds of people. So not only did she
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: talk about her social life life, she was also talking
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: about things that happened in society that you know, we
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: can we have other records of, but you know, we
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: get more of this personal insight of. So this is
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: one journal entry that she had in eighteen sixty eight.
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: This was on August second, so I think that was
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: she reached Columbia this day. So she says in this
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: diary entry, reached Columbia about six o'clock. Mister Hipper met
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: me at the depot with his buggy and took me
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: to my boarding place, where an elegant and spacious room
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: awaited me. Breakfast was tempting. My dear friend, mister Adams
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: was in to see me very soon after. My Charlotte
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: came to see me in the morning, but Kate did not.
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: Went to church in the morning with Harry Maxwell and
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: mister Adams. The governor and all the members were there
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: quite an excitement created on account of the disappearance of
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: Joe Howard after the visit of the Ku Klux Klan
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: at night. So that's the end of that journal entry.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: And uh, it's a pretty shock. It's a cliffhanger, right,
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: It's kind of like you buried the lead in that one.
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: You're talking about your elegance spacis room. But I do
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: think it's interesting now that I think about the journal entry,
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: the contrast between its beginning and it's end, because she's
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: talking about this fancy situation where she's being catered to,
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: but at the same time she's saying racial the reckoning
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: of racial violence happening around her, and it's like those
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: things are right next to each other. She's in Columbia,
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: South Carolina, you know. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: lot going on around her.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: Interesting to see some of her talk about some of
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: those things. She talked about some of the anti slavery
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: meetings that she goes to. Yeah, so she was she
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: had her hands in all these.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: Parts of.
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: Society and wrote about it in her diary. And I too,
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: I don't want my diary published.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I don't, you know, now that I'm thinking about it.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: This is one of the interesting things about diaries is that,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: at least in my understanding of them, you're writing it
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: for yourself with the idea no one else will ever
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: read it. Plus the thought, which is such a fascinating
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: I've never really considered it before, but that is interesting
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: that you're essentially just writing this thing to help you
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: process or think about things, but it is not for
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: anyone else to read. And you know, I like when
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: I travel, I always keep a diary, and it's mostly
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: so I can go back and remember things like oh yeah,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I remember that, but it's never with the idea I
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: will publish it. So this is this is fascinating. Her
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: diary got published. Yeah, well, I also don't put in
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: like I feel like she had some pretty good language
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: in hers mine, Like I just need to write it
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: down before I forget what happened.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna be incoherent sometimes, right.
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: I think mine was just like a lot of exclamation
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: points and astisks going. But why.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: I'm just here to process.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: Or just be sad. Yeah. Again, Like it's interesting though,
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: the way she does build it up into like her
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: day and then just like the last comment of like
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: the glukluks Lam. They're here. Cool, You're like, oh god,
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: what is what's happening?
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, once again a very good snapshot of what was
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: going on. I have to check it out. Yeah, I
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: don't want to look into what.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much as always Eve's for being here,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: for braving the technical difficulties that the Sminty team has
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: had over the past few days. It just keeps happening.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And yes, once again delated Happy birthday.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Where can the good listeners find you?
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: You can find me on many other episodes of Sminty
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: doing female First talking about other women in history, and
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: you can also find me on Instagram at not Apologizing,
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: or you can just go to my website, which is
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Eve's jeffcoat dot com.
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: That's Eve spelled with why ves Jeffcoat just like it
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: sounds basically, and you can check me out on On Theme,
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: that is the podcast that I mentioned at the top
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: of the episode that I co host with Katie Mitchell.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: That is a.
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: Podcast about black storytelling in all of its forms. And
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: if you're interested in hearing about other diaries, we have
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: a recent episode on that call it Diary Dialogues, So
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: you can go check that out and all the other episodes.
• 28:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a good title. Yeah for the episode I
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: love you. Love it well, listeners, go do that. If
• 28:22
  Speaker 6: you haven't done it already. If you would like to
• 28:24
  Speaker 6: contact us, you can. You can email u Atephania mom
• 28:26
  Speaker 6: Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. Can find us on Twitter
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: at mostaff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok that Stuff
• 28:31
  Speaker 6: will Never told you. We have a tea public store,
• 28:33
  Speaker 6: and we have a book you can get wherever you
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer
• 28:36
  Speaker 6: Christina or executive producer Maya and.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Your contributor Joey.
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: Thank you and thanks to you for.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Listening Stuff I Never told you the inspection of my
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: can check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite show.