John Jay Homestead lecture explores gradual emancipation

Sarah Gronningsater, top, and bottom left, and Melissa Vail, bottom right at the most recent John Jay Lecture Series at the Bedford Playhouse.  PETER MICHAELIS PHOTOS

By PAUL WIEMAN

University of Pennsylvania historian and author, Sarah Gronningsater, on March 11 presented her recently published work “The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom” at the Bedford Playhouse as part of the John Jay Homestead Lecture Series.

With about 30 people in attendance, and 30 more attending virtually, Gronningsater spoke of her work and her inspirations, and answered questions from the host for the evening, Melissa Vail, chair of the speakers committee.

In 1799, New York passed a law determining that all people born of enslaved women after July 4 of that year were born free, but they must serve as indentured servants to their masters for 25 years (for women) and 28 years (for men). This gradual emancipation, and the resulting class of children growing into their freedom, created a backdrop for a singular set of legal and cultural issues that played out over the ever changing political and economic landscape of 19th-century New York. 

Gronningsater explained the challenges of defining citizenship for this emerging class, of the push by newly freed blacks to have the right to vote, and the pushback against it.

While many recall lessons about Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War, this much less told story offers a window into emancipation and its challenges before the divisions between the North and the South and the resulting Civil War created a political context that altered such discussions dramatically.

Gronningsater highlighted the life and times not of those who rose to fame, but rather those who lived the everyday life of these children born into a delayed freedom. 

Manumission societies established schools which increased in popularity and gained a strong reputation for their success and rigor, and the slides the audience saw showed simple school reports and awards granted as a way to emphasize the day-to-day life that was being gained by these children and their families.

The Jay family, while owners of slaves until well into the 1800s, were paradoxically strong supporters of the Manumission Society, and the family position evolved to that of the abolitionist during this time. Descendants of John Jay became strong abolitionists. Gronningsater spoke of the work she did using the archives and documents of the John Jay Homestead, and how the family was among the leaders supporting the freeing of enslaved people and defending various privileges and rights of citizenship.

What does it say about a community that supplies an audience of 60 people on a Tuesday night to a talk about events 225 years ago? 

“It is clear to me,” Gronningsater said, “that I was in the presence of a community that values learning and reading, and that is a comfortable place for me to be.” 

Watching New York grapple with its racial issues in 1800, sometimes moving forward, sometimes moving back, offers the audience a perspective not just on the long ago and far away, but in the world we live in today. 

For example, she said, if a young New York could create the political will to allow the black man to vote in the early 19th century, and for politicians to realize the importance and power of this vote; and then, in just a few short years to have a powerful, racist, and partisan opposition arise and rewrite the state constitution in 1821 so that it diminishes the chances for blacks to exercise all the possible rights of citizenship and voting rights, we see the racism that appeared recently conquered (or at least moving in a positive direction) return with vengeance.

“By writing this book and learning deeply about the experience of living in New York in the early 19th century,” believes Gronningsater, “I hope I have relayed how people from a different time and place thought about freedom, equality, citizenship, and political practice. Knowing that I can never fully get there, I have tried in a responsible way to see the world as they saw it through their eyes. I hope to bring that lesson to people in the audience and who read the book, to people who are alive now. I encourage people to be curious about how people walk through the world in different ways, what their hopes and aspirations are.”