Giving solace and a home to refugees who come here to escape conditions man-made or otherwise has been part of the DNA of New Bedford for much longer than the United States has told the world to give us your tired, your poor, and your huddled masses longing to breathe free.
It has historically been a refuge and sanctuary.
Quakers of Rhode Island, Nantucket, and New Bedford might have appeared an austere, unhappy people whose dress was rather drab and who, over time, became more angry because of the extent of exuberance that was not allowed in their lives, and many may have left the sect because it was just too severe, but among their major contributions to American society was their belief in the equality of all people.
One such example was that both males and females were taught to read and write in an age when that was primarily reserved just to males.
Because all people were equal, you were valued for what you could contribute to the community, and if you did.
The important crewmen on any whaling voyage were the boat steerers as they were the ones who threw the harpoons and whose skill, therefore, was highly valued.
In 1770 a black slave from Nantucket, Prince Boston earned a steersman’s lay of 28 pounds for a three-and-a-half-month voyage which was a good amount to have made. His “owner”, John Swain, claimed that since Prince Boston was his slave, he should get the wages. The Quaker ship owner held that since Boston had done the work, Boston was the one to get paid. Had Swain been on the voyage, he would certainly have been paid too. Swain sued for the money, but in 1773 the Nantucket Court of Common Pleas granted Boston not only his wages but his freedom.
Swain threatened to appeal, but William Rotch, who would eventually bring whaling to New Bedford, let it be known that he would enlist the services of John Adams to argue Boston’s case. Swain dropped the case, and slavery ended on Nantucket, ten years before it did in the rest of what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Prince Boston’s nephew Absalom Boston became the first whale ship captain to employ an all black crew.
Paul Cuffe (1759-1817), a black sailor from Westport, Massachusetts, based his own highly successful business practices on those of Rotch, becoming one of the wealthiest black entrepreneurs in America.
By the 1840s, Quaker whaling merchants like William Rotch insisted on a higher moral ground for the whale fishery. But as the Quakers became less influential and seemed to have lost their way a little, and as the whaling industry became more secular, the moral high ground slipped somewhat and whale ship crew members began to meet with cruel conditions. But in keeping with the Quaker concept of equality, regardless of race, all crew members were equally mistreated.
But on land the color of your skin and the country of origin made no difference so long as you did your job.
Lewis Temple was born into slavery in 1800, but by the 1820s he had gained freedom and went north to New Bedford where he worked as a blacksmith. He invented the “Temple’s Toggle” or “Temple’s Iron” which was a harpoon whose tip, rather than being fixed, would form a T when it entered the whale and the harpoon had forces exerted on it, and this prevented the whale from pulling free.
His invention made whaling more profitable.
Beginning around 1837, when the still standing Unitarian church was built and Quakerism was being replaced by New England’s home grown Religion, Rev. Ephraim Peabody, who opposed slavery, became pastor. When his wife, Mary Jane Derby Peabody, was bringing wood into the parsonage one day a passing Black man offered to do it for her. Much to his surprise, when he was done, Mrs. Peabody handed him money, and as he attempted to hand it back, she explained that the two coins were his wages for the work he had just done. She thus became the person to pay Frederick Douglass his first wages as a free man.
The second pastor, Rev. John Weiss, was well-known as a staunch abolitionist
There were some prominent citizens in town who played a role in the Abolition movement, and welcomed escaping slaves into their homes giving them sanctuary.
Charles W. Morgan, best known today for the whaling ship that bears his name, was a prominent ship owner and merchant, and an anti-slavery activist. He came to New Bedford with Nathan Johnson who may have been a fugitive slave. Nathan Johnson and his wife Polly Johnson later became prominent African American citizens and conductors on the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass spent his first night of freedom in their house
Andrew Robeson, a ship owner and a merchant with business interests in New Bedford, Fall River, and Boston, was a strong abolitionist. He nominated a Mr. Borden, an African American man, for membership in the New Bedford Lyceum in 1845. When The Lyceum’s all white board refused to admit Mr. Borden into membership on a close vote, Ralph Waldo Emerson refused to speak at the Lyceum, and the New Bedford abolitionists left the Lyceum to form a competing lecture series.
In his Life and Times, Frederick Douglass mentions Robeson as one of those “friends, earnest, courageous, inflexible, ready to own me as a man and brother, against all the scorn, contempt, and derision of a slavery-polluted atmosphere…”
Loum Snow, an agent for whaling ships, a mill owner in Falmouth and Middleboro, director of the Mechanics’ National Bank, trustee of the New Bedford Institution for Savings, and director of the United Mutual Marine Insurance Company, was a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
There are at least two documented instances of Snow helping African Americans escape from slavery. In 1850, Snow arranged for Isabella White to be shipped to New Bedford in a barrel labeled “sweet potatoes”, and in 1859, William Carney, an escaped slave from Virginia, went to Snow seeking help to purchase the freedom of his wife, Nancy Carney. Snow’s house is one of the few that is definitely recognized as a stop on the Underground Rail Road.
Joseph Ricketson , who refined oil and had other interests in the whaling industry, is the subject of this story from Douglass’s Narrative:
“Upon our arrival at Newport, we were so anxious to get to a place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked the necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to take seats in the stage, and promise to pay when we got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do this by two excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names I afterward ascertained to be Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber. They seemed at once to understand our circumstances, and gave us such assurance of their friendliness as put us fully at ease in their presence. It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time.”
Ricketson had no compunction about serving as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
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These people used their homes to give sanctuary.
New Bedford became a destination for runaway slaves because it was relatively more accepting than other places, and because the whaling industry afforded employment that could take a runaway far away from any pursuers.
When the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, many former slaves were in danger, as was any Black person for that matter.
It was the law of the land, and it was expected that cities would help in the apprehension of runaways.
There is a bank building in downtown New Bedford with a large bronze plaque attached to its side explaining that on that site had stood the first meeting house of the Congregational and Unitarian Societies (1795-1797) and then Liberty Hall where Abolitionists held meetings and at which Frederick Douglass gave his first New Bedford speech. After a list of other buildings that occupied the site before the present one, there is an odd piece of metal at the bottom that looks like a chunk of burnt coal. It is what is left of the bell that was rung to notify citizens that slave hunters had entered town so that Black people could make themselves scarce until they left. The odd chunk of metal is what was left of the bell when the building burned to the ground.
That would appear to have been a strong example of valuing the people who needed sanctuary as opposed a law that would send them back to the conditions from which they had escaped.
Jumping ahead a hundred or so years, when the Capelinhos volcano located on the western coast of the island of Faial in the Azores erupted from September 27, 1957 until October 24, 1958, it caused the evacuation of 2,000 people. Because of the close relationship between Portugal and the United States, on September 2, 1958 a bill, the Azorean Refugee Act which authorized the emigration of 1,500 people, was sponsored by Congressmen Joseph Perry Jr. and John Pastor of Rhode Island, and Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and was signed by President Eisenhower, .
Many came to New Bedford.
New Bedford’s history is one of opposing slavery and offering sanctuary when it was needed. There are events going on in the world now that threaten people’s lives in war zones not of their choosing, and some people feel the need to better the lives of their families, and to them the City That Lit the World is still seen by many to be a place to come.
A motion was made by three members of the City Council, Debora Coelho, Dana Rebeiro and James Oliveira back in November,
“WRITTEN MOTION, Councillors Coelho, Oliveira and Rebeiro, requesting, that our State Legislative Delegation join us and other communities across the Country and not deport masses of illegals in order to insure harmony and safety in our community and to not discriminate against a group of people.”
It failed 2-9 and was referred to committee.
The ordinance pointedly avoided the use of the word “sanctuary cities,” in an attempt to avoid the targeting of such cities by the Trump administration.
Most members of the council zeroed in on the undocumented immigrants and not the legal ones who have made contributions over the years, but could still be subjected to profiling.
Councilor Brian Gomes insists that there are laws in this country and they need to be followed.
What does he think of that bell ringing thing?
In contrast to the city’s history, the Bristol County Sheriff has offered to send inmates from the county jails to the Texas border with Mexico to help build Trump’s wall. He claims it would be job training. But anyone with any sense knows he is willing to use inmates as slaves with the expenses for this paid by taxpayers for his personal publicity, and that job training could be done closer to home and cheaper than this public relations ploy.
A bill, HD 3417, that would prohibit Massachusetts inmates or prisoners from laboring out-of-state has been filed by Representative Antonio Cabral, from New Bedford.
Rep. Cabral said that the objective of work programs should be to rehabilitate inmates and prisoners so they can be productive citizens when they integrate back into the community and such a program should benefit the community where the inmates are housed as well as their home community.
Opponents argue that deputizing local officers will lead to racial profiling and erode community trust in law enforcement.
People are fleeing from murder in Central American countries attempting to escape from drug cartels, and wars in other places whose only purpose is to aggrandize their leaders who came into power by making false promises, inheriting their leadership positions, or by some method of self-appointment.
They are just like us because they simply want to live their lives and raise their families, but unlike us have lost everything in other people’s wars.
And the United States has a hand in instigating and supporting some of those wars and their aftermaths, like those in Central America that put the cartels in power positions, for which we have a responsibility to the people affected by our actions.
New Bedford has known that in the past and has done the right thing, and hopefully the city will not forget it is still The City That Lit the World, and doesn’t let that light burn out in the name of politics.