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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did Cool Stuff,

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Speaker 2: your weekly reminder that when there's bad things, there's good things,

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Speaker 2: and then sometimes bad things happen to the good things,

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Speaker 2: but then good things come out of the bad things

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Speaker 2: that happen to the good things that were in response

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Speaker 2: to the bad things. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and

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Speaker 2: with me today is Bridget Tod.

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Speaker 3: Hi. How are you, hey, Margaret. I'm so excited to

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Speaker 3: be back.

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Speaker 2: I know it's nice to have you. And wait now,

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Speaker 2: I don't remember what the last I usually try and

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Speaker 2: remember and look up with the last episode because you've

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Speaker 2: been on a bunch.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, was it Wendy Carlos?

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Speaker 2: Oh shit, it might have been that one?

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Speaker 3: Was it might have been Wendy Carlos.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, people should go back and listen to me talk

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Speaker 2: about the trans woman who invented electronic music. Bridgetod is

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Speaker 2: the host of There Are No Girls on the Internet,

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Speaker 2: which is an untrue title. I've been meaning to tell

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Speaker 2: you this.

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Speaker 4: Yes, oh god, the title is like I mean, first

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Speaker 4: of all, it's a mouthful. If you ever have to

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Speaker 4: name a podcast having a long title, just give it

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Speaker 4: some thought. If that's really what you want to do.

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Speaker 4: I know, I guess cool people who I mean, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, it's I think it's worth it.

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Speaker 2: It just means that every time you go anywhere, people

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Speaker 2: get your title slightly wrong. People are like, I'm adage

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Speaker 2: fan of cool people who did cool things, and you're like, sure,

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Speaker 2: good enough. I don't correct people. What do people get

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Speaker 2: your your's a mouthful? What do people say instead?

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Speaker 3: Oh?

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Speaker 4: Sometimes it's like girls on the internet, which feels like

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Speaker 4: vaguely pornographic, like.

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Speaker 2: Whatever I type that?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally it's some combination of

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Speaker 4: correct ish words in not correct order. But yeah, I

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Speaker 4: don't correct them either. I actually love hearing the incorrect

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Speaker 4: podcast titles.

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Speaker 3: Keep them coming.

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Speaker 2: I know me too. And I'm also like, I don't know,

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Speaker 2: I'm glad that people listen. I wouldn't remember the name

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Speaker 2: of my own podcast. Like we even had a long fight,

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Speaker 2: not fight, we had a long discussion. I don't think

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Speaker 2: anyone actually took any strong positions whether we were going

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Speaker 2: to call it cool people did cool things or cool

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Speaker 2: people who did cool stuff.

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Speaker 4: Is there a functional difference between the things and the stuff,

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Speaker 4: the stuff and the things Sophie do you remember why

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Speaker 4: we ended up with stuff.

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Speaker 1: I think it just sounded better.

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Speaker 2: I think you're right. Also, people who listen every week

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Speaker 2: might notice, is that Sophie and it is our producer.

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Speaker 2: Sophie's here. Hi Sophie, Hi.

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Speaker 3: Magpie, Hi be Hi Sophie Sophie.

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Speaker 4: Speaking of podcast titles, I was interviewing Molly Konger about

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Speaker 4: Weird Little Guys and I asked, where did that title

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Speaker 4: come from? And she said, oh, that was a Sophie

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Speaker 4: a Sophie production right there.

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Speaker 1: Not exactly, She's very nice to say that, but it's

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Speaker 1: something she said in a meeting, and I wrote it

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Speaker 1: down on my like creepy notepad of like that could

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Speaker 1: be a podcast title. And then when we decided to

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Speaker 1: do a weekly podcast with her, I was like, lardy

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Speaker 1: have the title. So it was her idea. Originally, I

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Speaker 1: want to make sure she credits herself as well.

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Speaker 2: Which is a podcast that people should go listen to absolutely, but.

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Speaker 3: Nope.

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Speaker 2: I was trying to come up with a segway, but

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Speaker 2: I don't have one. Okay, So lately I have been

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Speaker 2: burning through my short list of topics that I've wanted

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Speaker 2: to cover since the very beginning of this show. I

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Speaker 2: had like maybe ten things that I set out being like, I,

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Speaker 2: however long the show goes, I need to make sure

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Speaker 2: to cover these at some point. And in earlier this week,

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Speaker 2: I went to a little national park. I accidentally, I

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Speaker 2: mean on purpose. I totally went on purpose when on

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Speaker 2: the day that everyone had protests at the national parks,

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Speaker 2: I went to a national park called Harper's Ferry in

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Speaker 2: West Virginia and I got like every book there. It

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Speaker 2: was amazing. I went up and was like, here's all

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Speaker 2: the books, and the person behind the counter was like interesting.

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Speaker 2: This week we are talking about the raid on Harper's

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Speaker 2: Ferry of eighteen fifty nine that not only presaged the

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Speaker 2: coming Civil War but essentially sparked it. I know the

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Speaker 2: answer to this because I asked you earlier. But have

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Speaker 2: you ever been to Harper's Ferry.

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Speaker 4: I have been to Harper's Ferry many times. I love

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Speaker 4: Harper's Ferry.

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Speaker 2: It's so beautiful there. When I was a little kid,

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Speaker 2: it was just like the place to go get taffy.

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Speaker 2: And also there's something that happened during the Civil War there,

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, when I went there with my parents, it was

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Speaker 4: the place where they have you know those like historical

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Speaker 4: markers of like historical thing happened here. And I have

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Speaker 4: many many memories of my dad being like I'm going

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Speaker 4: to go read this time to find out what happened here,

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Speaker 4: and we're like, Dad, let's go like that, Like that's

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Speaker 4: the space that Harper's Ferry occupied when I was young.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. It is a very beautiful place with

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Speaker 2: some historical markers, and now it's a place that I

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Speaker 2: like just like go and cry because I think that

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Speaker 2: the people who fought there are wonderful people. But the

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Speaker 2: most famous of those people is not who we're talking

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Speaker 2: about today. Ooh, John Brown is the most famous Harper's

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Speaker 2: Fairy adjacent person, right, Yes, I think people hold on

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Speaker 2: to him because he's the best white guy in American history, accurate,

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Speaker 2: especially at a time when like decent white men were

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Speaker 2: like real thin on the ground.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, not a ton of them back then, not really

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Speaker 4: a lot today either, really.

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Speaker 2: No, yeah, fair enough, And so people should go and

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Speaker 2: learn from John Brown's example if you're a you know,

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Speaker 2: a white man living today, that is a thing to

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Speaker 2: go read about, you know. But John Brown has been

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Speaker 2: covered a fair amount, But like I like him but

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Speaker 2: he's been covered a lot, including in an excellent series

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Speaker 2: of Christmas special episodes on Behind the Bastards. So you

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Speaker 2: can listen to a Cool Zone Media special all about

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Speaker 2: John Brown this week. I want to talk about the

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Speaker 2: other Raiders because twenty two people participated in the raid

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Speaker 2: on Harper's Ferry, and even that's not true. Twenty two

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Speaker 2: people set out to participate on the raid on Harper's Ferry,

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Speaker 2: an unknown of additional enslaved people joined them. I've read

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Speaker 2: fifteen and I've read fifty, but I want to talk

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Speaker 2: about these other raiders, and in particular, I want to

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Speaker 2: talk about the five Black Raiders who set out with

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Speaker 2: the intention of joining in this raid. Have you heard

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Speaker 2: much about this story besides the just the John brown Er.

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Speaker 4: I have to admit I have not, Like I definitely

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Speaker 4: John Brown is the name that looms large when I

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Speaker 4: think about Harper's Ferry, So I'm excited to learn more.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like one of these things where it's

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Speaker 2: like I understand why people were doing the like big

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Speaker 2: man of history stuff, but it's not interesting to me.

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Speaker 2: Like he's great. I really am not trying to put

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Speaker 2: this man down, but like there were other people who

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Speaker 2: fought and died and sometimes survived who were part of this,

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Speaker 2: And uh, yeah, I don't know, so I want to

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Speaker 2: talk about them. The shortest version of this story is

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Speaker 2: that during the first half of the nineteenth century, US

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Speaker 2: politics were growing more and more tense over the issue

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Speaker 2: of slavery. It helps that the century kicked off with

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Speaker 2: Haiti proving that you can, in fact, just grab a

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Speaker 2: bunch of pikes and guns and then kill all the

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Speaker 2: people who claim to own other people, which scared the

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Speaker 2: piss out of America. Like I didn't, I didn't know

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Speaker 2: as much about how Haiti influenced American politics until it

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Speaker 2: started reading history books for a living. Rebellions were popping

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Speaker 2: off everywhere, and even in the halls of power, people

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Speaker 2: were discussing the issue more and more. Abolitionist tensions were

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Speaker 2: reaching a boiling point when in eighteen fifty nine, nineteen

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Speaker 2: abolitionists stormed the federal armory in Harper's Ferry. I said

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Speaker 2: twenty two earlier, But that's because three of them stayed

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Speaker 2: back at the farmhouse to guard all the guns that

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Speaker 2: they were going to give to enslave people if the

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Speaker 2: whole thing worked out. So nineteen of them stormed the

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Speaker 2: Federal Armory in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia now regular Virginia

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Speaker 2: at the time, with the intention of seizing arms, freeing slaves,

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Speaker 2: and starting a generalized rebellion as well as an independent

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Speaker 2: black nation right here in Appalachia. And that was another

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Speaker 2: part that like never really got explained to me. Like

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Speaker 2: maybe maybe whenever I keeping like, I didn't learn about

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Speaker 2: this in school. Maybe I was just asleep. I don't know,

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Speaker 2: but I don't remember learning that they were going to

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Speaker 2: start an independent black nation in Appalachia, that was the

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Speaker 2: purpose of this raid.

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Speaker 3: No, I definitely didn't learn that either.

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Speaker 4: I went I went to school in like the former

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Speaker 4: capital of the Confederacy. So I have come as an

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Speaker 4: adult to realize all the different ways that specifically the

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Speaker 4: Civil War curriculum was taught to me. Is like so

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Speaker 4: messed up. But no, I did not learn about this either, Margaret.

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Speaker 3: I know.

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Speaker 2: I even like, when I think back about I don't

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Speaker 2: remember whether school taught me that slavery was the cause

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Speaker 2: of the Civil War, not because I remember being told, Oh,

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Speaker 2: people say that, but it's really states rights, you know.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I So I grew I went to school in Richmond,

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Speaker 4: right outside of Richmond, Virginia, and we explicitly did not

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Speaker 4: learn that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War.

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Speaker 4: It's all states rights, yeah, like it. And it's so

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Speaker 4: funny because like I'll look at my like cousins, like

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Speaker 4: their history books and the way that they go out

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Speaker 4: of their way to be like, well, you know, sure

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Speaker 4: slavery was bad, but like it's it's yeah. So I

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Speaker 4: didn't learn it that way either, Yeah, And it's it's

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Speaker 4: kind of wild how like some of these talking points

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Speaker 4: haven't changed since the end of the Civil War, like

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Speaker 4: this idea that like slavery was bad, but enslave people.

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Speaker 5: Were kind of happy.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 3: It's really well.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And so most people claim that the raid on Harper's

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Speaker 2: Ferry did not work. It was an abject failure. To

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Speaker 2: be certain, it was a military failure. Only one of

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Speaker 2: the raiders who actually went to Harper's Ferry, a black

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Speaker 2: man named Osborne Pierce Anderson, survived the raid. John Brown

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Speaker 2: himself was hanged. They had ordered a thousand pikes to

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Speaker 2: be handed out to a thousand enslaved people, and only

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Speaker 2: about twenty to fifty ended up handed out. They did

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Speaker 2: not themselves. These raiders personally wage war on the slave states,

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Speaker 2: successfully as they intended. But my argument here is an

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Speaker 2: argument that I think modern historians tend to just actually

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Speaker 2: agree on now, is that they succeeded. The raid on

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Speaker 2: Harper's Ferry was the spark that ignited the Civil War,

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Speaker 2: the end of chattel slavery. It didn't pan out like

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Speaker 2: the raiders had planned, but it happened, and they used

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Speaker 2: their own deaths to spark the war. And the thing

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Speaker 2: that I didn't realize until doing more research on this now,

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Speaker 2: that was k kind of their plan b all along.

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Speaker 2: Like their goal was to have a raid and arm

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Speaker 2: everyone and go and create this independent black nation. But

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Speaker 2: they were like very consciously. Okay, I feel weird saying

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Speaker 2: the majority of the raiders were white, because it's not true.

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Speaker 2: The majority of the people who marched there were white,

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Speaker 2: but the majority of the people who fought were black.

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Speaker 2: But the reason that the majority of the people who

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Speaker 2: march there were white is that they were like, we

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Speaker 2: think that if a bunch of white people die, it

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Speaker 2: will cause northern white people to actually grow the fuck

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Speaker 2: up and do something about this.

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Speaker 4: Wow, I mean I get that as a strategy. I

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Speaker 4: totally get that as a strategy.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and what a what a wild one one of

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Speaker 2: the wild. Like like the Raiders had planned, the enslaved

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Speaker 2: people of the South had a hand or millions of

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Speaker 2: hands in their own liberation. As I've covered before on

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Speaker 2: the show, the General Strike conducted by enslaved people in

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Speaker 2: the South was the most successful labor action in US history.

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Speaker 2: They grinded the Confederate economy into dust while black and

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Speaker 2: white gorillas waged a civil war within the Civil War.

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Speaker 2: And this doesn't even mention yet the one hundred and

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Speaker 2: eighty thousand black soldiers who fought in the Union Army

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Speaker 2: or the thirty six thousand of them who died, and

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Speaker 2: the Union Army when it marched into the Civil War,

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Speaker 2: it marched with a song on their lips. And the

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Speaker 2: song was John Brown's Body, which states John Brown's body

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Speaker 2: lies a moldering in the grave, but his soul is

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Speaker 2: marching on. To me, this was the people marching into

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Speaker 2: the South to end slavery. Was his soul marching on

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Speaker 2: like a for me a kind of literal sense. And

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Speaker 2: so my argument is that the Raiders fought, died, and

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Speaker 2: then won. And I think there are many such cases

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Speaker 2: of this throughout history. One of the reasons that I

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Speaker 2: think so much about this. Okay, So I went, oh,

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Speaker 2: I'm not going to go off script. I'm just gonna

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Speaker 2: read my script because I'm going to say what I

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Speaker 2: was going to say. The raid itself was fought and

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Speaker 2: over within a couple of days, about thirty six hours

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Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty nine, but the battle over its story

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Speaker 2: is still being fought. I live not terribly far from

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Speaker 2: Harper's Ferry, and I grew up going there as a kid.

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Speaker 2: I went a couple years back and I saw a

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Speaker 2: private tour guide giving a talk. He said, basically, oh, well,

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Speaker 2: the raid was ill advised. No matter how good his intentions.

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Speaker 2: John Brown was basically just this white guy who is

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Speaker 2: disconnected from what the black enslave people here actually wanted.

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Speaker 2: You know, they didn't want someone coming in to liberate

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Speaker 2: them at gunpoint, and I wanted to scream in retrospect,

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Speaker 2: I kind of wish I had, but I had my

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Speaker 2: dog with me, and I didn't want to go to

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Speaker 2: jail because this is the talking point that even like

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Speaker 2: sympathetic people have started to believe. And when I say

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Speaker 2: started immediately this was an active media campaign right away

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Speaker 2: to disconnect John Brown from a racially integrated abolitionist movement

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Speaker 2: that he was an integral part of. I got really

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Speaker 2: angry about this stuff.

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Speaker 4: Why do you think that attitude person or like, how

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Speaker 4: have that attitude managed to persist today that you're hearing

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Speaker 4: it from a tour guide in a park.

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Speaker 2: I have a lot of thoughts about it. So I

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Speaker 2: think he wasn't an official tour guide because I actually

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Speaker 2: went back and I think the actual National Park the

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Speaker 2: information that the National Park Service is presenting is actually

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Speaker 2: fairly accurate for now. If you're listening to this next year,

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Speaker 2: it might be not anymore. They'll just be like John Brown,

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Speaker 2: a trader who just went and died, and all black

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Speaker 2: people hated him. But I think there's a couple reasons.

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Speaker 2: I think that people immediately people painted him as a

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Speaker 2: zealot and then ignored everyone else who fought right. It

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Speaker 2: was just him and he was crazy. He had to

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Speaker 2: be crazy in order to do what he did. So

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Speaker 2: for racist white Southerners it was a way to be like, oh, well,

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Speaker 2: obviously that's the wrong way to make change. But I

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Speaker 2: think vaguely less racist white Northerners. It was kind of

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Speaker 2: the same thing. It was kind of a way to

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Speaker 2: get yourself off the hook, to be like, oh well,

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Speaker 2: it wouldn't really have work to take militant action against slavery.

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Speaker 2: So it's okay that all I did was hold up

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Speaker 2: a ping pong paddle that says we don't like fascism

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Speaker 2: or whatever.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: Because after the raid, the Southern media presented John Brown

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Speaker 2: as evil and as a threat to all humanity. Eventually,

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Speaker 2: the basic moral rightness of his cause couldn't really be

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Speaker 2: argued right, and in order to reach that, seven hundred

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Speaker 2: and fifty thousand people had to die. But the conservative position,

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Speaker 2: I'm back on script saying the same things I just said,

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Speaker 2: sorry about that. The conservative position switched quickly to claim

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Speaker 2: that he was a zalot and crazy. His followers were

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Speaker 2: misguided or crazy too, and they wanted to deny that

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Speaker 2: he was a well connected and well loved abolitionist too,

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Speaker 2: as part of an international movement to end shadow slavery

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Speaker 2: in the US. He also was a bit of a zelot.

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Speaker 2: I think it might take a bit of a zelot.

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Speaker 2: And when I read about the rest of his followers,

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Speaker 2: I think they kind of were too.

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Speaker 4: They're nice though, Yeah, I mean, it doesn't surprise me

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Speaker 4: that this kind of action would take a bit of

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Speaker 4: a zelo it to organize, I.

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Speaker 2: Know, especially especially once they found out what the real

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Speaker 2: plan was. They were like, wait, our plan is to

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Speaker 2: just go there and try and win. We're just gonna

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Speaker 2: twenty one of us are just gonna take over the South.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you gotta a.

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Speaker 4: Zelot might be the type of person that would go

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Speaker 4: along with that plan.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. But you know, it doesn't take much as

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Speaker 2: ellotry going along with Wow, taking advantage of the excellent

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Speaker 2: that are offered by all of our sponsors, which absolutely

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Speaker 2: would later claim to have been on the right side

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Speaker 2: of any given large thing in history. Allegedly, here's our.

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Speaker 5: Ads and we're back.

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Speaker 2: So it is true that Frederick Douglas, the most famous abolitionist,

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Speaker 2: a man who had self emancipated from slavery, turned John

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Speaker 2: Brown down when he was invited to the raid, but

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Speaker 2: one of Frederick Douglas's close friends, who was at the

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Speaker 2: same meeting, agreed to join. Harriet Tubman, perhaps the single

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Speaker 2: most impressive badass the US has ever produced. Like, honestly,

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Speaker 2: I'm like I bring her up like here and there

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Speaker 2: in other episodes, but mostly because it's just like I'm

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Speaker 2: just slowly collecting books and I'm just I don't know. Anyway,

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Speaker 2: she was amazing.

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Speaker 3: She's the coolest fun fact.

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Speaker 4: She's like, I'm an avid outdoors woman, and whenever people

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Speaker 4: are like, oh, black women hiking, I'm like, oh, Harriet

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Speaker 4: Tubman was like, people don't think of her this way,

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Speaker 4: but avid outdoors woman, you know, Like that's true. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: I really I really own her as my like black

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Speaker 4: woman outdoors woman, you know, idol.

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Speaker 2: Honestly, there's a lot to be said there about like

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Speaker 2: people who were using the outdoors in real interesting ways

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Speaker 2: during the first half of the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 5: Like, oh, yes, that's cool.

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Speaker 3: I'm so.

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Speaker 4: I mean something told me that that might be a

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Speaker 4: spirit that we have to embrace at some point in

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Speaker 4: the future.

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Speaker 3: I'll put it that way.

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Speaker 2: It's fair enough. Yeah, Honestly, one of the people involved

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Speaker 2: in this story is going to die because he can't

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Speaker 2: hike far enough.

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Speaker 5: Uh there you go.

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Speaker 2: So uh so Harriet Tubman wasn't on the raid because

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Speaker 2: she was sick when the when it was planned, so

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Speaker 2: she didn't make it, but she proved contacts for it,

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Speaker 2: She raised funds, and she recruited soldiers. And there's so

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Speaker 2: much focus on John Brown himself and his psychology that

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Speaker 2: I think that disconnects him from the vibrant movement he

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Speaker 2: was part of, right, because not everyone involved in that

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Speaker 2: movement was like a zalot, but he was still part

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Speaker 2: of that movement, if any, he was kind of the

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Speaker 2: wing nut fringe of it, and that movement that he

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Speaker 2: was part of did in the end and through bloodshed

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Speaker 2: and legal chattel slavery in the United States. There were

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Speaker 2: twenty two people who were part of the raid. Nineteen

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Speaker 2: of them marched on Harper's ferry. John Brown was one

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Speaker 2: of them. And we're going to talk about some of

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Speaker 2: the other ones. But first context, those are the other

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Speaker 2: instead of ads. That's the other thing I cut to context.

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Speaker 1: We should like play the Jaws theme song whenever you

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Speaker 1: say context.

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Speaker 5: We absolutely should.

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Speaker 2: The South was always internally divided on the issue of slavery,

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Speaker 2: as we've talked about before on this show. Of course,

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Speaker 2: four point five million people living there had a particularly

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Speaker 2: personal reason to be opposed to the institution of slavery.

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Speaker 2: There was a free black population, and as there were

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Speaker 2: a few white people arguing against it as well. For

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Speaker 2: about three years, from eighteen twenty nine to eighteen thirty two,

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Speaker 2: debates raged in Virginia about slavery. And I think this

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Speaker 2: was happening elsewhere, but like I read about it in

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Speaker 2: Virginia because the western half of the state, which is

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Speaker 2: now West Virginia or Greater Virginia. Actually people have told

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Speaker 2: me I shouldn't call it Greater Virginia, I should call

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Speaker 2: it Best Virginia. And that makes sense.

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Speaker 5: West Virginia Best Virginia it is.

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Speaker 2: And whenever people are like, why do you call it

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Speaker 2: Best Virginia, I'm like, hello, I would like to introduce

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Speaker 2: you to why West Virginia exists. It's because they did

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Speaker 2: not want to fight for the Confederacy. On the other hand,

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Speaker 2: the tables have turned politically a little bit, but I'm

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Speaker 2: still holding out that people will anyway whatever. So just

401
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:55,840
Speaker 2: don't look at a modern voting map of the country,

402
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Speaker 2: and we can still hold the by the Best Virginia.

403
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Speaker 2: So the western half of the state was mountainous and poor.

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Speaker 2: Most people there didn't own other people, and they were

405
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Speaker 2: firmly in favor of abolition. Overall. Quakers throughout the state too,

406
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Speaker 2: fought for abolition as well as free black people and

407
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Speaker 2: enslaved black people, and some of the Quakers were also black.

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Speaker 2: Just to be clear, in eighteen thirty one, Nat Turner's

409
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Speaker 2: rebellion in Virginia. We've covered this a bit on the

410
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Speaker 2: show before. This also scared the shit out of everyone.

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Speaker 2: All the slavers were like, oh fuck a black man

412
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Speaker 2: named Nat Turner and a bunch of other people were

413
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Speaker 2: like fuck this, and they started killing white slavers and

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Speaker 2: the white slavers families. This scared the shit out of

415
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Speaker 2: the legal institutions of the South. Laws started getting passed

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Speaker 2: everywhere in the Slave states restricting the rights of free

417
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Speaker 2: black people even further, like laws where black people weren't

418
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Speaker 2: even allowed to preach anymore. Church services were banned for

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Speaker 2: black people after dark because preachers were doing a lot

420
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Speaker 2: of the itinerant. Preachers were going around and being like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 2: this is what the Bible says. Also, the way to

422
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Speaker 2: the swamp is this way, and that's a good place

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Speaker 2: to be.

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Speaker 5: Free.

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Speaker 2: Progress is never linear. Free black people started having more

426
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Speaker 2: of their voting rights taken away, including in the North.

427
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Speaker 2: Now I didn't even realize this. I had just assumed

428
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Speaker 2: free black people couldn't vote in the South, but it

429
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Speaker 2: turns out at various times they could. It's very easy

430
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Speaker 2: to fall into the sort of like linear things you

431
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:33,919
Speaker 2: just slowly chip away at oppression, yeah, you know, but

432
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Speaker 2: it turns out sometimes you start chipping away at a

433
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Speaker 2: depression and then they're like, how about twice as much oppression.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

435
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Speaker 4: It's a good reminder that these things are not always

436
00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:45,560
Speaker 4: like so binary or yes, it's easy to think of

437
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:48,760
Speaker 4: them as switch flip as opposed to like, oh, it

438
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:50,320
Speaker 4: was a chip away and then this, you know.

439
00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:51,600
Speaker 3: It's a good reminder.

440
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:55,639
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it also it's like worth understanding how like

441
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:58,400
Speaker 2: I mean, even the I mean, obviously, the Civil War

442
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:00,920
Speaker 2: was in many ways terrible. It was the bloodiest thing

443
00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:03,639
Speaker 2: that's happened in the US besides the destruction of the

444
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:08,479
Speaker 2: indigenous population here. But like it ended legal chattel slavery

445
00:23:08,480 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 2: in the United States, and it came from the right

446
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:16,359
Speaker 2: wing reaction to people helping people become more free. It

447
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:18,880
Speaker 2: came from the right wing being like, fine, more oppression

448
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 2: and then people are like, nope, we've had enough of it.

449
00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:25,280
Speaker 2: You know. But before all of that, as free black

450
00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:28,440
Speaker 2: people are having more of their rights taken away. In Virginia,

451
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:30,359
Speaker 2: people were like, what are we going to do with

452
00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:33,520
Speaker 2: all these free black people? It's scary, We're scared. We

453
00:23:33,560 --> 00:23:36,280
Speaker 2: are terrible and cowardly people. I think that's what they said.

454
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 2: One of the answers was send them back to Africa.

455
00:23:41,280 --> 00:23:45,480
Speaker 2: Both slave owners and white Quaker abolitionists agreed send free

456
00:23:45,520 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 2: black people back to Africa. And obviously there was a okay,

457
00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:52,720
Speaker 2: so the slavers really liked this argument, but so did

458
00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 2: some like there were black abolitionists argument for this as well,

459
00:23:55,560 --> 00:23:58,240
Speaker 2: like we're gonna I think even some of the people

460
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:00,439
Speaker 2: involved in Harper's Ferry's raid were on both sides of

461
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:05,720
Speaker 2: this particular issue. But a man named Henry Wise, who

462
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 2: would later become the governor who signed the death warrants

463
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,919
Speaker 2: for all the Harper's Faery raiders, he was really in

464
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:15,520
Speaker 2: favor of this. He said to the Virginia Colonization Society

465
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 2: of eighteen thirty eight, quote, Africa gave to Virginia a

466
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 2: savage and a slave. Virginia gives back to Africa a

467
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:25,240
Speaker 2: citizen and a Christian.

468
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:26,160
Speaker 3: Wow.

469
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 4: Wow, it's so bad, thanks guys, Yeah, wow, so bad?

470
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:41,200
Speaker 4: Oh God, I mean I've actually I've heard like that

471
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:46,000
Speaker 4: argument from like some black radicals really did feel like

472
00:24:46,119 --> 00:24:49,479
Speaker 4: black people should up and leave the United States and

473
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:52,480
Speaker 4: go back to the continent, like uh, totally. But then

474
00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 4: hearing that, it's like, yeah, this was not an argument

475
00:24:55,760 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 4: you know, grounded in self determination and respect?

476
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:00,240
Speaker 3: What help woult it that way?

477
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah it was.

478
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 2: And for some people it was like yeah, for some

479
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 2: people it was like, oh, we can get the fuck

480
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 2: out of here. We never wanted to be here in

481
00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:12,680
Speaker 2: the first place, right, And then other people were like, no,

482
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 2: we're here now, like you can't just fucking get rid

483
00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 2: of us like that, you know.

484
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's I mean, like y'all brought us here, y'all,

485
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:22,120
Speaker 4: y'all are all ride like.

486
00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:23,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally.

487
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this deepening racism that was happening in the South,

488
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:34,280
Speaker 2: which is a weird thing to say because in my mind,

489
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:37,679
Speaker 2: I'm like, you're it's already a horror movie set, you know,

490
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:40,920
Speaker 2: it led a lot of free people to migrate north.

491
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:44,159
Speaker 2: The deepening racism of the North led a lot of

492
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 2: free people to migrate even further north to Canada. A

493
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:51,879
Speaker 2: lot of people, at least a lot of people relevant

494
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 2: to today's story. When they went to the north, if

495
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:56,280
Speaker 2: they didn't go all the way to Canada, they made

496
00:25:56,280 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 2: their way to Ohio. In particular, they found their way

497
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 2: to a little college town in Ohio that was trying

498
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:06,680
Speaker 2: in its way to be the most anti racist place

499
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 2: in the country. And this was to me, this is

500
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 2: a twist. I don't know if other people are going

501
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:14,480
Speaker 2: to find as much of a twist. The most anti

502
00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 2: racist place in the United States in the eighteen thirties,

503
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 2: forties and fifties Oberlin, Ohio.

504
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:24,159
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that actually totally tracks with me. I

505
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:27,479
Speaker 4: had no idea where you were going. Oberlin is a surprise.

506
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 4: But now that I'm thinking about it, like, yeah, I've

507
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 4: known so many Oberlin college grads.

508
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 3: I've had two.

509
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:36,160
Speaker 4: I've had two as roommates, by the way, terrible roommates

510
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:39,120
Speaker 4: and they don't make brave roommates, but we love them anyway.

511
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 5: Yeah.

512
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:43,119
Speaker 1: I was literally about to say the same thing bridge

513
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:49,480
Speaker 1: not me personally, but a friend of mine had an

514
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: Oberlin roommate, and wow, yeah, by you guys. If you're

515
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 1: if you're if you're an Oberlin roommate, work on your reputation.

516
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, that's a good advice holer not so good.

517
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:09,080
Speaker 2: I once drove the only time I've ever been to Oberlin.

518
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:11,640
Speaker 2: It was to help my friend drop out of Oberlin

519
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:15,720
Speaker 2: to join the environmental direct action movement, which is actually

520
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 2: a fitting thing that parallels to a lot of John

521
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:21,199
Speaker 2: Brown's raiders. It turns out a lot of them went

522
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:22,880
Speaker 2: to college at Oberlin for like a year.

523
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 3: Interesting before dropping out.

524
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:26,200
Speaker 5: Yeah then.

525
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:28,679
Speaker 2: Starting an insurrection.

526
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:31,919
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like this Oberlin business is not radical enough for me.

527
00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 5: Yeah.

528
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 2: So I did not see Oberlin College as showing up

529
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 2: as one of the cool people in this week's episodes.

530
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 2: But here we are in eighteen thirty three. I'm not

531
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:48,360
Speaker 2: like a big college person. I mean, it's fine, Hey,

532
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 2: I recognize its importance. Oberlin College was founded in eighteen

533
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:56,240
Speaker 2: thirty three specifically to be a Christian college teaching good

534
00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:01,920
Speaker 2: Christian values like the abolition of slavery. By eighteen thirty five,

535
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 2: with a slim majority vote of the trustees, they started

536
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:07,600
Speaker 2: letting in black students. It was like literally a one

537
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:12,199
Speaker 2: person majority, and one of the trustees who voted and

538
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,439
Speaker 2: therefore could have been the deciding vote, was John Brown's

539
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 2: dear father, a Tanner named Owen Brown. This makes Oberlin

540
00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 2: College one of the first colleges in the US to

541
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 2: let black students in, and it's the first to formally

542
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 2: say we allow black students in.

543
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 3: Wow.

544
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 2: The first historically black university didn't actually open until two

545
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 2: years later, the Cheney University in Pennsylvania in eighteen thirty seven.

546
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:42,480
Speaker 2: Oberlin then also became the first gender integrated college in

547
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 2: the US. So they kind of came at the gate

548
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 2: real fucking strong.

549
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 3: Oh Oberlin, who knew.

550
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 5: I know, I know Oberlin.

551
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:57,080
Speaker 2: The town became a hotbed of abolitionism. Black families would

552
00:28:57,120 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 2: move to the area. It became an important stop on

553
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 2: the under ground railroad. The local public schools were racially integrated,

554
00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 2: and there was a Liberty school at night for fugitives

555
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 2: to learn how to read and write. The town refused

556
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 2: to celebrate the Fourth of July because that celebrated a

557
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:19,120
Speaker 2: document that excluded black people. Awesome. Instead, their official celebration

558
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 2: was August first, after the eighteen thirty four abolition of

559
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 2: slavery in Jamaica.

560
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 3: Awesome.

561
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, and if you're currently Oberlin, get back to

562
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 2: your roots. And a disproportionate number of the Raiders came

563
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:41,280
Speaker 2: from Oberlin or like lived there or went to school

564
00:29:41,320 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 2: there for a year or so. Some of them said

565
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 2: that they went to Oberlin, but there's no record of

566
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 2: them going to the college. They might have like audited classes,

567
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 2: or they might have just been like patting their resume

568
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 2: a little bit, you know.

569
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:54,320
Speaker 4: Is it like a status thing to have gone to

570
00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 4: Oberlin and like, oh, I went to Oberlin, don't fact check.

571
00:29:57,120 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 2: That, I think So we'll start with a raider named

572
00:30:02,280 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 2: John Anthony Copeland. John Anthony Copeland was born in eighteen

573
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 2: thirty four in North Carolina. It is worth understanding how

574
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 2: just fucking nonsensical and confusing slavery was at the time.

575
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 2: Having a race based slavery chattel system doesn't make sense

576
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 2: obviously morally is one of the worst things that's ever

577
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 2: happened in the history of the world. But it doesn't work.

578
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 2: There's gonna be a bunch of cases like this that

579
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 2: are gonna be confusing as shit. John's father, John Copeland's

580
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:36,720
Speaker 2: father had been born enslaved by his own father, but

581
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 2: was then freed on the death of his father owner

582
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 2: when he was eight, and then became a carpenter working

583
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 2: in Raleigh, North Carolina. Copeland was the oldest of eight children.

584
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 2: When North Carolina removed the vote for free people of

585
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:53,720
Speaker 2: color in eighteen thirty five, his family was like, Nah,

586
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 2: fuck this, We're getting out of here. This doesn't seem safe,

587
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 2: and so they moved to Ohio. It wasn't eat. They

588
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 2: needed letters of recommendation from white people to say that

589
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 2: they weren't evil, subversives or whatever in order to be

590
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:11,600
Speaker 2: traveling freely. And they made their way to Ohio with

591
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 2: lots of letters of recommendation. Folks from the underground Railroad

592
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:18,160
Speaker 2: helps them get It's one of things I also didn't realize.

593
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 2: Undergroundrailroad also helped with a trip like helped free people,

594
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 2: and also abolitionists move constantly helps them. Once they were

595
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 2: in Ohio to settle an Oberlin, where Copeland grew up.

596
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 2: He learned carpentry and joinery from his father, and eventually

597
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 2: he went for one year to Oberlin. I think he's

598
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:39,240
Speaker 2: the one that we actually have record of going to Oberlin.

599
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 2: He was a diehard abolitionist. He would attend meetings at

600
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 2: the Liberty School and he realized his purpose in life

601
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 2: was to abolish slavery, to free the four and a

602
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 2: half million people in bondage in the country. He started

603
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 2: speaking out about slavery everywhere he went. He also spoke

604
00:31:56,960 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 2: regularly about how sometimes individual revolutionaries must die for the

605
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 2: revolution to succeed. So like again, not just a bunch

606
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 2: of deluded people who got led to their deaths by

607
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 2: John Brown. Ohio at the time was pondering in secession.

608
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 2: And this is the like we all kind of got

609
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 2: taught states rights or the reason for the Civil War.

610
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 2: Ohio was really concerned about some states rights. They hated

611
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 2: the South. They didn't want to be in the same

612
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 2: country as the South. The eighteen fifties was full of

613
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:31,719
Speaker 2: offenses to the North, like the eighteen fifty Fugitive Slave

614
00:32:31,760 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 2: Act that meant the North was suddenly expected to return

615
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 2: fugitives back to slavers in the South, and it became

616
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 2: a federal offense to help people hide from people who

617
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,280
Speaker 2: were going to put them in cages. Then there was

618
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 2: the dread Scott decision of the Supreme Court in eighteen

619
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 2: fifty seven, which declared that black people couldn't be citizens,

620
00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 2: among a whole mass of other wild racist shit. It

621
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 2: was like, if you go to the Wikipedia page for

622
00:32:56,720 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 2: the dread Scott decision, I was like trying to track

623
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 2: down some other parts of it, and it was like

624
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 2: widely considered the worst decision the Supreme Court has ever

625
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 2: made in the United States. Ohio looked at all this

626
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 2: shit and was like, are you fucking kidding me? We

627
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 2: have to let slavers come here and capture people? No, no,

628
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:20,959
Speaker 2: fuck this. Local legislations started passing resolutions like we condemn

629
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 2: this act. I want to read the actual language of one,

630
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 2: because it goes hard. Heart'sgrave, Ohio is worth quoting. They

631
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 2: agreed to quote hold the Fugitive Slave Law in utter

632
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 2: contempt as being no law, and pledge ourselves to despise

633
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 2: the conduct of the makers of it for their utter

634
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:45,520
Speaker 2: destitution of principle, and that they would quote sooner than

635
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 2: submit to such odious laws, we will see the Union dissolved.

636
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:54,440
Speaker 2: Sooner than see slavery perpetual, we would see war, and

637
00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 2: sooner than be slaves, we will fight.

638
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 3: Awesome. I'm glad you read that because it does go hard.

639
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like at the end, I decided the title probably

640
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:09,239
Speaker 2: will be something more shortened to the point, but it

641
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:12,719
Speaker 2: absolutely for a long time was sooner than see slavery perpetual,

642
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 2: we would see war.

643
00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 4: And you know what's wild to me is that when

644
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:18,760
Speaker 4: you drive through certain parts of Ohio when you see

645
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:23,000
Speaker 4: massive Confederate flags, I'm always like, what are you doing?

646
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:25,240
Speaker 3: Like, I know, what are you doing?

647
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:29,640
Speaker 2: I know the Ohio River was like the sacred line

648
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:33,480
Speaker 2: of freedom. Like yeah, and in West Virginia you see

649
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 2: the same and you're like, do you know why you're

650
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 2: in West Virginia?

651
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,280
Speaker 3: Yes? It boggles my mind.

652
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:43,360
Speaker 4: And I feel like these states have such rad histories

653
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 4: that I feel like it's like flinging this like very

654
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:49,560
Speaker 4: cool legacy of why your state exists or something that

655
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 4: was foundational to your state in its space.

656
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 3: Yeah.

657
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 2: Absolutely. So the idea of sanctuary cities goes back a

658
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 2: really long way, and I hope the modern sanctuary cities,

659
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 2: which are more and more needed right now, I hope

660
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 2: that they go as hard and care as much as

661
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 2: Heartsgrove Ohio.

662
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, be better than Ohio.

663
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:15,240
Speaker 5: Yeah, sorry, Ohio.

664
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 3: That's a slogan, be better than Ohio.

665
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 2: And then the back says, it's a higher bar than

666
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 2: you think. That's so funny, so Oberlin itself. In eighteen

667
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:31,839
Speaker 2: forty one, two people who were on the run from

668
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 2: slavery got caught in Oberlin, and they were taken to

669
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:39,240
Speaker 2: the jail. So a crowd of five hundred people white

670
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 2: and black, brought guns, clubs, and rocks to try to

671
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:45,000
Speaker 2: fight back the cops to break the people out and

672
00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 2: free them. They failed during the day, but as best

673
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:52,240
Speaker 2: as I can tell, and this is I read literally

674
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 2: a two hundred year old newspaper article about this. Of

675
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 2: like my understanding of it is slightly imperfect. It might

676
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 2: be a different incident. I believe this is the same

677
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 2: an incident. At night, they came back a smaller crowd.

678
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:11,240
Speaker 2: The newspaper called them fanatical abolitionist anarchists, armed with axes

679
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:14,399
Speaker 2: and saws. They broke the two fugitives out and freed them.

680
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 2: And then in eighteen fifty eight, an even more famous

681
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 2: version of something similar happened in Oberlin. And it's more

682
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:24,360
Speaker 2: famous because it is considered one of the things that

683
00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 2: sparked the Civil War, like the bubbles you could see

684
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 2: simmering in the pot, you know. And this one involves

685
00:36:31,680 --> 00:36:34,200
Speaker 2: our man John Copeland as well as another raider that

686
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about in a second. In eighteen

687
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 2: fifty six, an eighteen year old named John Price escaped

688
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 2: slavery in Kentucky, and he crossed the river into Ohio

689
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:46,759
Speaker 2: and to what he hoped would be his freedom. He

690
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 2: made it to Oberlin and he lived as a fugitive

691
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 2: for two years before he was caught. Basically, someone like

692
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:55,919
Speaker 2: set him up because they knew that even though would

693
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 2: have been legal to come capture him, they kind of

694
00:36:57,719 --> 00:37:01,719
Speaker 2: couldn't in the town because people wouldn't let them. So

695
00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:03,759
Speaker 2: someone was like, oh, we got a job for you.

696
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:06,240
Speaker 2: It's right outside of town. Don't you want a job?

697
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 2: And as soon as he left, they was alone on

698
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 2: the highway. They nab him and they're like, Oberlin isn't

699
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:15,120
Speaker 2: a safe place to hold this guy. So we're going

700
00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 2: to go to Wellington, Ohio, which is right nearby. But

701
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 2: two Oberlin students saw him go by in the buggy

702
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:25,400
Speaker 2: and they gathered a posse of between two hundred and

703
00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 2: six hundred people white and black, surrounded the hotel that

704
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 2: was holding him. Price was up in the attic. They

705
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 2: started trying to negotiate. They were like, I mean, their

706
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:38,880
Speaker 2: negotiation point was like we're armed and we're not leaving,

707
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:39,439
Speaker 2: you know.

708
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:44,000
Speaker 3: But a solid negotiation tactic, I know.

709
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 2: As Frederick Douglas says, and I quote all the time.

710
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 2: Power concedes nothing without a demand. And Copeland was there

711
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 2: in the crowd. He had a handgun and he shouted

712
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:59,239
Speaker 2: that he would shoot any damn rascal who interfered with

713
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 2: their plan to direct him. In one of the coolest

714
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 2: things that college kids have ever done, a bunch of

715
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:10,080
Speaker 2: white Oberlin College students ran in through the front door

716
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:14,319
Speaker 2: of the hotel, distracting the guards while Copeland and some

717
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 2: other folks climbed up the balcony at the back of

718
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:20,720
Speaker 2: the hotel. People tried to stop them, so they shot

719
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 2: guns towards them, and then the people stopped trying to

720
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 2: stop them.

721
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:25,160
Speaker 3: Wow.

722
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:27,000
Speaker 2: I think these were warning.

723
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 1: Shots when you were like, when you were like one

724
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 1: of the cool I was like, I was like, that's

725
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:33,680
Speaker 1: a high bar. College kids do cool things all the time.

726
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:38,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, no, it's true. And uh.

727
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 2: They stormed the attic and rescued Price. There's this story

728
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 2: about like the guy who was keeping them out was

729
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 2: holding this rope that would hold the door shut. I

730
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 2: think it was like one of those old doors where

731
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 2: it's just literally a rope that's the handle, you know,

732
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:52,800
Speaker 2: and he's holding it, but there's a hole in the wall,

733
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 2: and so one of the college kids just punches the

734
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 2: guy in the head through the wall, and so the

735
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 2: guy drops the rope. They storm in and they rescue

736
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 2: John Price. Speaking of prices, Our prices are great.

737
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 5: No why more stuff? No way?

738
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:16,360
Speaker 2: Oh wow, here's the mats.

739
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:24,279
Speaker 3: And they're back.

740
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 2: So they get John Price out and they smuggle him

741
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:31,959
Speaker 2: out to the home of the guy who like later

742
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 2: went on to become the third president of Oberlin College.

743
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:38,240
Speaker 2: Like the entire town was in on this, and then someone,

744
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 2: most likely Copeland, took John Price and escorted him up

745
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:46,640
Speaker 2: to Canada and to freedom. A ton of people involved

746
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 2: in the rescuer arrested around like thirty six or something

747
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:52,640
Speaker 2: like that. But Copeland himself, even though a warrant went

748
00:39:52,680 --> 00:39:55,759
Speaker 2: out for him, was not arrested because he was probably

749
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:57,960
Speaker 2: he disappeared and he was probably in the middle of

750
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 2: escorting him Price up to Canada. The prosecution of these

751
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 2: rescuers is a big fucking deal in the history of

752
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 2: the abolitionist movement. No one wanted to convict them, like

753
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,720
Speaker 2: in Ohio, right, but they like felt like they had

754
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:17,920
Speaker 2: to because the law and stuff, you know. The Ohio

755
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:21,240
Speaker 2: Supreme Court upheld the Fugitive Slave Act, and ten thousand

756
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 2: people rallied in Cleveland on the But have you considered that?

757
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 2: Fuck that law though, and therefore fucked the Supreme Court.

758
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 2: The courts trying the rescuers were pretty lenient. People got

759
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 2: a few months in jail basically, I think, actually I

760
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,840
Speaker 2: think like two people got actual sentences. Everyone else was

761
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 2: just like held in jail for a while and then

762
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 2: released it. But the jailers were sympathetic to their cause,

763
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 2: and so they made a newspaper while they were in jail.

764
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 2: And because they just were given access to the jail's printing.

765
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 4: Press, they've got a jail zine.

766
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:56,440
Speaker 2: They have a jail zine. The rescuers made a jail

767
00:40:56,520 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 2: zine called The Rescuer Ah great, Yeah, and they like

768
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:04,280
Speaker 2: sold it outside to raise money for the abolitionist movement.

769
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 3: And shit.

770
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:09,280
Speaker 2: As for John Price himself, no one ever wrote down

771
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 2: where he was ever. Again. I hope that he lived

772
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:16,759
Speaker 2: a long, happy and free life, and frankly, I have

773
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:20,719
Speaker 2: no reason to suspect he didn't. The abolitionist movement knew

774
00:41:20,719 --> 00:41:25,359
Speaker 2: how to take care of people. Another Oberlin man, a

775
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 2: friend of Copeland's, Lewis Sheridan Leary. He was also born

776
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 2: in North Carolina on March seventeenth, eighteen thirty five. His

777
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:38,240
Speaker 2: father was a fairly well to do free saddle maker

778
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 2: who was part Irish, Croatan, Indian and Black. His mixed

779
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:45,600
Speaker 2: race mother was born in the French West Indies. Their

780
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:49,240
Speaker 2: family was wealthy and owned slaves, but would also regularly

781
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:52,520
Speaker 2: give their enslaved people enough money to buy themselves their

782
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:55,719
Speaker 2: freedom and then help set them up. And I am

783
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,799
Speaker 2: unsure whether they freed everyone they bought or not. I

784
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:01,440
Speaker 2: read some sources that were like, oh, yeah, they just

785
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 2: freed everyone, and other ones were like, uh, they kind

786
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:08,279
Speaker 2: of did it sometimes, you know. Leary was raised to

787
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 2: about as much wealth and privilege as was available to

788
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 2: free black people in the South, which was not that much.

789
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:18,319
Speaker 2: In a lot of ways. He had a reputation for

790
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:21,640
Speaker 2: being hot headed and rash, but also I believe, moral

791
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 2: and brave. He left North Carolina in eighteen fifty seven

792
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 2: when he was twenty two years old, on the advice

793
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:31,279
Speaker 2: of his father. The reason his father advised him to

794
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 2: leave North Carolina was this is the only version of

795
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 2: the story, but there's no whatever. There's no specific evidence

796
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:39,880
Speaker 2: of this besides oral tradition, but I have no reason

797
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 2: to doubt it. One day, Leary is walking down the

798
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:47,359
Speaker 2: street and he sees a slaver whipping a guy, so

799
00:42:47,400 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 2: he grabs the guy's whip and starts whipping the slaver instead,

800
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:54,440
Speaker 2: at which point his dad was like, you should get

801
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 2: the fuck out of the South because they were going

802
00:42:56,920 --> 00:43:00,000
Speaker 2: to kill him. He got the fuck out of the South.

803
00:43:00,719 --> 00:43:03,400
Speaker 2: He went to Oberlin. He started working as a saddle

804
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:06,719
Speaker 2: maker too. He fell in love with an abolitionist woman

805
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,920
Speaker 2: named Mary Simpson Patterson, who was the first black woman

806
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:13,400
Speaker 2: to attend Oberlin College. They got married and had a

807
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 2: daughter named Lewis and Mary Simpson Patterson. Her grandson by

808
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:21,280
Speaker 2: a different father is Langston Hughes.

809
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:22,560
Speaker 3: Oh my god.

810
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, there's so.

811
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 2: Many people alive in this time, what are the fucking odds? Yeah,

812
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 2: the couple did a bunch of underground railroad work together.

813
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:37,239
Speaker 2: Leary at least, I have no reason to believe his

814
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 2: wife wasn't. But it isn't written into history because why

815
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 2: would anyone write that down, even though she went on

816
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 2: to do more work than he was able to, because

817
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 2: she survived and he dies. Anyway, they were part of

818
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 2: the Price Rescue, the one at the Hotel. Leary, who

819
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 2: had Irish heritage, liked quoting poems by an Irish nationalist,

820
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 2: William Smith O'Brien, who was part of the Young Ireland

821
00:43:59,760 --> 00:44:03,120
Speaker 2: movement that I've talked about sometimes on this show. Specifically,

822
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 2: Leary liked to quote the following lines, whether on the

823
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 2: Scaffold high or in the battles Van, the fittest place

824
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:14,240
Speaker 2: for a man to die is where he dies for man.

825
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:18,959
Speaker 2: So yeah, when when John Brown came through Oberlin looking

826
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 2: for recruits, both Copeland and Leary volunteered. Leary told John Brown,

827
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 2: I am ready to die. I only ask that when

828
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 2: I have given my life to free others, my own

829
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:35,680
Speaker 2: wife and dear little daughter shall never know want. And

830
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:41,320
Speaker 2: that's what happened. He dies and the abolitionist movement takes

831
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 2: care of his family.

832
00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 4: Well, it's like you were just saying that part of

833
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 4: the movement was taking care of each other, and I

834
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 4: don't know, I find such power in that, especially now

835
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:56,280
Speaker 4: that like, our strength really does lie in our ability

836
00:44:56,320 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 4: to care for each other totally and even to care

837
00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:02,120
Speaker 4: for people who aren't, Like it's not just care for

838
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:06,239
Speaker 4: the frontline soldiers right, like price to anyone's knowledge. I mean,

839
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 4: he might probably changed his name in and went off

840
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:11,239
Speaker 4: to do other stuff, but like, they didn't help him

841
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:14,759
Speaker 4: escape slavery so that he could join Danaris Targarian's army

842
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 4: of enslaved people to go attack something. You know, they

843
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 4: freedom because he needed to be free. And yeah, a

844
00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 4: lot of enslaved people, formally enslaved people fight militantly for abolitionism,

845
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 4: but no one's telling them that they have to. And

846
00:45:28,200 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 4: if you just want to get out, they'll help you

847
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 4: get out. I just I really like that.

848
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:36,200
Speaker 2: I really There's a lot of bad stuff in American history,

849
00:45:36,200 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 2: and the abolitionist movement is one of the coolest things

850
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 2: that's ever happened.

851
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:42,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, he absolutely should be learning a lot from it today.

852
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, especially the way that they like work together

853
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:50,000
Speaker 2: across intersectional politics. And it's not a coincidence that the

854
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 2: first college to formally let black people in also was

855
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:55,359
Speaker 2: the first college to let women in, you know, and

856
00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 2: let black women in. And I don't know it just

857
00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:01,720
Speaker 2: I can really, I don't know. I went to Harper's

858
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:04,759
Speaker 2: Ferry and cried a lot, decided to write this episode.

859
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:08,440
Speaker 2: The pair raised up the money to get train tickets

860
00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 2: east and they headed off towards the farmhouse in Maryland,

861
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 2: five miles from Harper's Ferry, where the conspirators were building

862
00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 2: their army. Okay, those are those two. Now we're going

863
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 2: to cut to another one of them. This is the

864
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:23,319
Speaker 2: one who I was like, literally saw in the John

865
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 2: Brown Museum that reading about it made me cry, and

866
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:27,840
Speaker 2: I was like, I just now, I'm just telling you, ever,

867
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:30,320
Speaker 2: how often I cry whatever. I read history for a reason,

868
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:34,279
Speaker 2: it was this man's story was the reason that I

869
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 2: decided to do this episode.

870
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,839
Speaker 1: Crying can be good. It reduces stress.

871
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:44,440
Speaker 2: That's true. There was a man named Dangerfield Nuby, and

872
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:47,799
Speaker 2: Dangerfield is a good name. Just gonna get that out there.

873
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:50,359
Speaker 3: Dangerfield Newby is like a very good name.

874
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, there is going to be someone who has

875
00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:55,799
Speaker 2: a better name than him in all of this, and

876
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 2: it's someone who picked his own name. But we'll get

877
00:46:57,760 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 2: to that later.

878
00:46:58,480 --> 00:46:59,279
Speaker 3: Oh I can't wait.

879
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:01,240
Speaker 2: Oh that might he can be a clifhanger for Wednesday.

880
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 2: I think he might not even show up to a Wednesday.

881
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:07,600
Speaker 2: But Dangerfield Nuby was forty four and he was the

882
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 2: oldest of the raiders after John Brown. John Brown did

883
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:12,440
Speaker 2: his thing when he was fifty nine, so never feel

884
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 2: too old. John Brown was fifty nine when he started

885
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 2: the Civil War. Dangerfield Nuby was born in eighteen twenty

886
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 2: in Virginia. He was the oldest son of eleven kids.

887
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:27,759
Speaker 2: His father was a white man named Henry Nuby. This

888
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,239
Speaker 2: is the complicated ass one that I'm just like, what

889
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,759
Speaker 2: the fuck is? Obviously, this is just like whatever. His

890
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:36,640
Speaker 2: father was a white man named Henry Nuby. His mother

891
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:43,840
Speaker 2: was Henry's enslaved common law wife, but not enslaved by Henry. Elsie.

892
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:48,359
Speaker 2: His wife was actually owned by an eccentric slaver named

893
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 2: John Fox, who did shit like let Elsie live with

894
00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 2: someone else. Just be like, I don't know whatever, you

895
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 2: can go live with your husband. Okay, this isn't entirely benevolent.

896
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 2: All of Henry and Elsie's kids are immediately John Fox's property,

897
00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 2: and there's all this stuff. People are like, John Fox

898
00:48:06,640 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 2: did free a fuck ton of he actually he freed

899
00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 2: to everyone when he died, but he freed a fuck

900
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:12,400
Speaker 2: ton of people while he was alive. But I kind of

901
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:14,799
Speaker 2: have this bar where I'm like, if you don't just

902
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:17,879
Speaker 2: immediately free everyone you own I kind of, I don't

903
00:48:17,920 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 2: know whatever. But Dangerfield was owned by his mother's owner,

904
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 2: John Fox. So this kid, well, he's not a kid.

905
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 2: He grows up and he gets leased out as a blacksmith.

906
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:33,840
Speaker 2: While he's enslaved in Virginia, he gets married to a

907
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 2: woman named Harriet, who was owned by yet another man,

908
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:41,360
Speaker 2: and together the pair of them had probably seven kids.

909
00:48:42,200 --> 00:48:47,960
Speaker 2: His brother described Dangerfield as a quiet man, upright, quick tempered,

910
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 2: and devoted to his family. In eighteen fifty eight, his

911
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:55,600
Speaker 2: father took him and some of his siblings and moved

912
00:48:55,600 --> 00:49:00,080
Speaker 2: to Ohio with John Fox's blessing. This means that they

913
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:03,319
Speaker 2: were freed. Ohio wasn't fucking around with that. If you

914
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 2: set up residency in Ohio, you are formally freed. At

915
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 2: this point, the Ohio Supreme Court had decided in eighteen

916
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 2: fifty six that's setting up residency in Ohio freed you.

917
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 2: They wrote that the chains of slavery had to be

918
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:20,839
Speaker 2: broken and quote crumble to dust when he who has

919
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 2: warned them obtained the liberty from his oppressor and has

920
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:26,880
Speaker 2: afforded the opportunity of placing his feet upon our shore,

921
00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:33,160
Speaker 2: go Ohio. I know they know, so He's thirty six

922
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:36,799
Speaker 2: years old when his dad frees him by moving him

923
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:42,200
Speaker 2: to Ohio. Like fucking if it wasn't just like a

924
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 2: nightmare land of horror, it would be comical, how fucking Anyway,

925
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:53,600
Speaker 2: Dangerfield had a problem. His wife wasn't free. I suspect

926
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 2: this story might have influenced the plot of Django Unchained,

927
00:49:56,080 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure it might have. This kind of

928
00:49:58,400 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 2: story might have happened a lot.

929
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 3: I was literally just thinking the same thing.

930
00:50:02,520 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, because Dangerfield dedicated the rest of his life to

931
00:50:06,719 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 2: trying to free his family. For years, he did this

932
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:13,319
Speaker 2: by working his ass off and saving every cent he

933
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:17,240
Speaker 2: could to buy Harriet and his kids. But the slaver

934
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:19,800
Speaker 2: who owned her kept doing shit like and the historical

935
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 2: record isn't certain here either taking his money and not

936
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:27,880
Speaker 2: freeing his wife or upping the price at the last minute.

937
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:30,640
Speaker 2: All the while, rather than go to a safe place

938
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,919
Speaker 2: like Oberlin, he stayed along the Ohio River and helped

939
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 2: shepherd people to safety working the underground railroad. This is

940
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:41,440
Speaker 2: how he met John Brown, who offered him a different

941
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 2: way to free his family, Force of Arms. The last

942
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:49,280
Speaker 2: letter he ever got from his wife Harriet read quote

943
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 2: it is said, master is in want of money. If so,

944
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 2: I know not what time he may sell me, and

945
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:57,840
Speaker 2: then all my bright hopes of the future are blasted.

946
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:00,160
Speaker 2: For there has been one bright hope to cheer me

947
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:02,279
Speaker 2: in all my troubles, that is to be with you.

948
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 2: For if I thought I should never see you, this

949
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 2: earth would have no charms for me. Do all you

950
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 2: can for me, which I have no doubt you will.

951
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:12,760
Speaker 2: I want to see you so much.

952
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:15,040
Speaker 3: Like that's a beautiful letter.

953
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:20,920
Speaker 2: It's I know, oh, I know. Basically like she was

954
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 2: worried that she would end up like sold down the

955
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:27,320
Speaker 2: river to Louisiana, where conditions were worse, and in fact

956
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:31,400
Speaker 2: that is what happens. I don't know. There might be

957
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 2: more information in more of the books than what I

958
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:36,600
Speaker 2: got to about what happens to her after. But fortunately

959
00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:39,960
Speaker 2: her husband starts a civil war which ends up ending slavery.

960
00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:42,840
Speaker 2: So if she made it through a couple more years,

961
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:50,760
Speaker 2: so yeah, he's in. And then there's Osborne Anderson. Osborne

962
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:54,120
Speaker 2: Anderson was born on July twenty seventh, eighteen thirty, to

963
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:57,760
Speaker 2: a free black mixed race family in West Fallowfield, Pennsylvania,

964
00:51:58,320 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 2: which is a bit west of Philly fun fact.

965
00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:06,480
Speaker 1: When you said Osborne Anderson, my dog with excellent hearings,

966
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:07,440
Speaker 1: ears went up.

967
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:12,759
Speaker 2: She was like me, She was like, hello, this is

968
00:52:12,760 --> 00:52:16,440
Speaker 2: who Anderson's named after. Probably I don't remember who Anderson's

969
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:17,160
Speaker 2: actually named after.

970
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 1: She's named after Andy Anderson from him How to Lose

971
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 1: a guy in ten Days.

972
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:25,800
Speaker 4: Oh okay, similar, very similar, similar, similar journeys.

973
00:52:26,280 --> 00:52:29,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna start calling Anderson Osborne Anderson.

974
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:34,080
Speaker 1: Both my dogs are named after fictional movie characters because

975
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:37,720
Speaker 1: you can't really name anybody after a real a real person,

976
00:52:37,840 --> 00:52:39,719
Speaker 1: because you.

977
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:42,880
Speaker 2: Know history and finding out that they're terrible people in

978
00:52:42,920 --> 00:52:43,200
Speaker 2: the end.

979
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:44,520
Speaker 3: Correct.

980
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:50,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, well Anderson, he does good, wonderful. We might need

981
00:52:50,880 --> 00:52:53,000
Speaker 1: to change her name origin story.

982
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, just just multiple name origins. There you go. Osborne

983
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:01,720
Speaker 2: Anderson grew up deep and Quaker territory, so deeply abolitionist area.

984
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:04,640
Speaker 2: Public schools there were integrated, and he got an education.

985
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 2: Most sources I say I've read say he went to

986
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 2: Oberlin College, which would have been a nice tie in

987
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:12,759
Speaker 2: for the story. This is the guy who probably didn't

988
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 2: actually go to Oberlin College. I actually think that this

989
00:53:15,800 --> 00:53:18,880
Speaker 2: is going to be our tends to exaggerate guy of

990
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:19,799
Speaker 2: the story.

991
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:24,360
Speaker 4: Tends to exaggerate his association with Oberlin College.

992
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:27,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some other stuff too, but like he's still

993
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:29,759
Speaker 2: so cool that like and none of the things that

994
00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:33,440
Speaker 2: he's like, I don't know whatever. Anyway, he didn't necessarily

995
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:34,040
Speaker 2: go to Oberlin.

996
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:34,480
Speaker 5: He might have.

997
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:38,920
Speaker 2: He was family friends with another free black family, the Shads,

998
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:42,680
Speaker 2: specifically a woman named Mary Ann Shadd who is around

999
00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:46,080
Speaker 2: seven years older than Anderson. She was a school teacher until,

1000
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 2: like thousands of other people, she was like, fuck America

1001
00:53:49,160 --> 00:53:51,560
Speaker 2: and got the fuck to Canada. In eighteen fifty one,

1002
00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:55,280
Speaker 2: she moved to the sort of center of Black Canada,

1003
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:58,680
Speaker 2: a naval town called Chatham, which is east of Detroit,

1004
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:02,600
Speaker 2: where she set up a school, and in eighteen fifty

1005
00:54:02,640 --> 00:54:05,840
Speaker 2: three she became the first woman in Canada to publish

1006
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:09,840
Speaker 2: a newspaper, also the first black woman in North America

1007
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 2: at all to publish a newspaper. She started a newspaper

1008
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:18,400
Speaker 2: called The Provincial Freeman with the motto self reliance is

1009
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:22,560
Speaker 2: the true road to independence. She and her contributors argued

1010
00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:26,920
Speaker 2: fiercely against begging white folks for funds. She traveled as

1011
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:30,279
Speaker 2: a public speaker, something that women didn't really do at

1012
00:54:30,320 --> 00:54:33,000
Speaker 2: the time, let alone a black woman, but she did

1013
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:36,040
Speaker 2: often write and publish under the name Mas Carrie carry

1014
00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:38,839
Speaker 2: as her married name. She married a guy. He wasn't

1015
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:40,520
Speaker 2: important enough to include the story. She married a guy.

1016
00:54:40,560 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 2: He died right away, but she kept his name to

1017
00:54:43,120 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 2: avoid gender discrimination. She went by Maas Then her childhood

1018
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:51,560
Speaker 2: friend Osborne Anderson, moved himself to Chatham somewhere along the way.

1019
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:53,560
Speaker 2: He worked as a farmer for a bit that wasn't

1020
00:54:53,600 --> 00:54:55,960
Speaker 2: really his thing, and so we started working for the

1021
00:54:56,000 --> 00:54:59,200
Speaker 2: provincial Freeman, first as a sales agent, then as a

1022
00:54:59,200 --> 00:55:03,239
Speaker 2: printer and a contry and he wrote extensively, and he

1023
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:05,920
Speaker 2: wrote against the send Black People to Africa movement as

1024
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 2: one of his main things that he wrote. There was

1025
00:55:07,520 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 2: kind of two competing, like I was saying we were

1026
00:55:10,760 --> 00:55:13,640
Speaker 2: talking about earlier, but in Chatham there was like a

1027
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:17,000
Speaker 2: It was hotly contested between these two positions of like

1028
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:19,080
Speaker 2: do we go back to Africa do we stay in

1029
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:23,239
Speaker 2: North America? And since this was in Canada, where so

1030
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 2: many black abolitionists lived and where the underground railroad often

1031
00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:31,440
Speaker 2: took people, Chatham became the logical place for folks to

1032
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:35,799
Speaker 2: get together and figure out, So how exactly do we

1033
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:39,520
Speaker 2: destroy that slave empire to our south? And since that

1034
00:55:39,640 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 2: was a good place to go do good plotting, John

1035
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:45,680
Speaker 2: Brown went there. He'd cemented his reputation a few years

1036
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:51,120
Speaker 2: prior in Kansas. But what happened in Kansas? In Chatham,

1037
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:54,239
Speaker 2: in Harper's Ferry? And what about the man with the

1038
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 2: amazing name? We'll talk about them on Wednesday.

1039
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:00,959
Speaker 3: Wow, I can't wait to hear this name.

1040
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:05,319
Speaker 2: It's so good. It's multiple good names. He has so

1041
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:06,440
Speaker 2: many good names.

1042
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:10,720
Speaker 1: I really, Rory, Rory, who edits the podcast, I really

1043
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:13,680
Speaker 1: need us to start thinking about putting in like music

1044
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:17,680
Speaker 1: sound effects for Magpie. She needs a cliffhanger music sound

1045
00:56:17,680 --> 00:56:21,920
Speaker 1: effects so badly.

1046
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:25,719
Speaker 2: And what about the man with the amazing name? We'll

1047
00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:34,239
Speaker 2: talk about them on Wednesday.

1048
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,920
Speaker 1: She needs a context sound effects so badly.

1049
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:43,160
Speaker 4: Context context, context, context, context context.

1050
00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:46,640
Speaker 3: There it is there, it is. I feel use that.

1051
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:51,719
Speaker 1: She simply deserves it. And Rory, I know you can,

1052
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:55,760
Speaker 1: I know you can. Rory also edits a weird little Guys,

1053
00:56:55,920 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: so he is extremely talented at doing sound design music,

1054
00:57:01,040 --> 00:57:05,080
Speaker 1: so we could add it in here. Magpie, you deserve it.

1055
00:57:05,440 --> 00:57:08,759
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, let's do it. Thank you, Rory. Even though

1056
00:57:08,760 --> 00:57:11,120
Speaker 2: we didn't shout you out this episode, I forgot everyone's

1057
00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:11,480
Speaker 2: to say.

1058
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:11,920
Speaker 3: Hi to Rory.

1059
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:15,440
Speaker 2: Hi, Rory, Hi, Hi Roy. And our theme music was

1060
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:18,520
Speaker 2: written for us by own woman, bridge Is Todd. How

1061
00:57:18,520 --> 00:57:20,800
Speaker 2: can people find you on the internet where you probably

1062
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:22,720
Speaker 2: aren't because there are no girls on the internet.

1063
00:57:23,200 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 4: Well, surprise, surprise, I actually do show up on the internet.

1064
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:29,360
Speaker 4: You can find me at Blue Sky, where I am

1065
00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:32,800
Speaker 4: Bridget Todd. I think that's right. I'm not used to

1066
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:35,000
Speaker 4: calling out my Blue Sky. Let me just double check

1067
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:36,680
Speaker 4: that that is accurate.

1068
00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:38,040
Speaker 3: I hear you on that.

1069
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:40,800
Speaker 2: And you don't want to be like dot BSk dot

1070
00:57:40,880 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 2: as what are you.

1071
00:57:42,160 --> 00:57:44,520
Speaker 4: Supposed to say? Are you supposed to say? Like your

1072
00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:48,160
Speaker 4: name dot like b Scott like you can. You'll figure

1073
00:57:48,200 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 4: it out. Yeah, you'll figure it out. You can listen

1074
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:52,560
Speaker 4: to my podcast. There are no girls on the internet.

1075
00:57:52,680 --> 00:57:56,480
Speaker 4: On iHeartRadio, yeah.

1076
00:57:55,720 --> 00:57:56,360
Speaker 3: All the things.

1077
00:57:57,000 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I have a Kickstarter going. You probably have

1078
00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:02,880
Speaker 2: heard me say that before, but that's what I talk

1079
00:58:02,920 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 2: about when I have one that's going on YELP. The

1080
00:58:05,440 --> 00:58:08,000
Speaker 2: third book in the Danielle Kaine series, The Immortal Choiral,

1081
00:58:08,560 --> 00:58:12,400
Speaker 2: holds every voice speaking of naming things very long things

1082
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 2: that then get mixed up. Is being kickstarted right now.

1083
00:58:15,320 --> 00:58:17,880
Speaker 2: We've already as of this recording done two and a

1084
00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:21,600
Speaker 2: half times our goal. But if we get enough money,

1085
00:58:21,640 --> 00:58:23,960
Speaker 2: everyone involved in publishing is going to get tattoos from it.

1086
00:58:24,120 --> 00:58:27,280
Speaker 2: That's one of our stretch goals. So I don't know,

1087
00:58:27,680 --> 00:58:31,080
Speaker 2: maybe you'll like it. And also one of the cheapest

1088
00:58:31,120 --> 00:58:33,440
Speaker 2: thing is for fifteen dollars you get three audio books,

1089
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:38,080
Speaker 2: which is the entire series, so hard to beat and

1090
00:58:38,320 --> 00:58:42,400
Speaker 2: what bargain. I know, we decided where this like small

1091
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 2: collective publisher, and it's really hard. Book prices haven't gone

1092
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 2: up yet to match the fact that paper prices have

1093
00:58:49,160 --> 00:58:52,160
Speaker 2: gone up, and so as an independent press, it's really

1094
00:58:52,200 --> 00:58:54,560
Speaker 2: hard for us to have competitive print book prices. And

1095
00:58:54,600 --> 00:58:56,640
Speaker 2: so what we decided is that our digital content is

1096
00:58:56,680 --> 00:58:57,920
Speaker 2: going to be kind of as cheap as we can

1097
00:58:57,960 --> 00:59:00,440
Speaker 2: get away with because we have to pay so much

1098
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:04,040
Speaker 2: for print, which is our print books are still affordable,

1099
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:05,400
Speaker 2: they're just not as affordable as we wish they were.

1100
00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:09,320
Speaker 2: Because we're a bunch of punks anyway, uh and listen

1101
00:59:09,360 --> 00:59:11,760
Speaker 2: to weird little guys and take care of each other

1102
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:14,520
Speaker 2: because the world is a nightmare world. But it's not

1103
00:59:14,680 --> 00:59:16,400
Speaker 2: always because we can take care of each other.

1104
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:18,360
Speaker 1: This is true.

1105
00:59:19,160 --> 00:59:24,960
Speaker 2: Okay, Bye, I see you Wednesday.

1106
00:59:26,560 --> 00:59:29,040
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1107
00:59:29,080 --> 00:59:30,880
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media and more.

1108
00:59:30,760 --> 00:59:32,200
Speaker 3: Podcasts from cool Zone Media.

1109
00:59:32,360 --> 00:59:33,240
Speaker 2: Visit our website

1110
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:37,040
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1111
00:59:37,080 --> 00:59:40,320
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.