Yours in Sisterhood

16 November 1855

Dearest Ms. Ellen Craft:

I pray this letter finds its way to you as it has been transcribed and penned by a dear friend at my request.

Please allow me to commence this brief missive by commenting on your lovely name – first and last. I have spent all of my 19 years burdened and bothered by my lack of a full, dignified, person-like name. In court my George and I are the only souls conspicuously missing surnames and if you didn’t know who we were, I imagine you could easily mistake our monikers for your favorite hen or mule. If I was fortunate enough to ever acquire a proper name I think ‘Craft’ would suffice quite nicely. ‘Celia Craft’ – the thought makes me sheepishly grin.

In my mind’s eye, I imagine that you are an older sister (just ten years my senior) born into slavery of the Georgian form, while I have exhausted my days here under Missouri’s oppressive eye. News of your 1848 escape to Philadelphia has found its way to even the most insignificant plantations in your home state and mine. And although I was just a girl when I heard your story for the first time – I have laid my head to rest many a night with thoughts of your marvelous wit and courage. Slave, slave-owner, steward and abolitionist alike -- have all marveled at your brilliant strategy and success.

At first glance, so much of our lives should be unremarkably similar -- Negro, female contemporaries born as slaves -- but today, I contemplate that which truly separates us, Ms. Craft. You are married, renown and Free. And although we are now physically oceans apart – I know that this span of experience, time and space was only assured by a single variance -- our variance in hue.

How could something as subtly sinister as the shade of one’s skin draw a line of demarcation so wide and vast and dark? Dark and soiled. Dark and ruined. Dark and soiled and ruined like me.

Your skin allowed you to traverse an abyss I never imagined could be navigated.

Your skin allows you to negotiate social boundaries I mistakenly thought were illicit and forbidden.

Your skin allows you to be seen and admired and revered in a manner that leaves me achy, drawn and pained.

Your skin will allow you to nurse, coddle and indulge your own babies – knowing they are truly yours and yours for keeps.

Your skin permits a Freedom I cannot fathom and will never experience.

And my skin you ask?

Simply said, a death sentence. Death by hue. A hue that denies my womanhood. A hue that denies my right to bear children by the man I love and desire. A hue that assures that my children and their children (and perhaps their children too) will be forever bound to human bondage. A hue that denies my right to protect my body and the baby growing within. And today my hue denies my right to live -- a jury of my white, land-owning, slave-possessing male peers, has sentenced me to death by hanging.

But I am not writing to dwell on my fateful doom.

This is a thank you, Ms. Craft, as I am forever grateful to you. Your escape inspired a Negro girl in Missouri to dream of something remote and inconceivable – even if that one reverie was to protect oneself against an unwelcome intruder. Please know I am thrilled that you managed to shirk the shackles of slavery and delighted with your knowledge of freedom.

I am satisfied with your knowing. And for today that knowing will have to be enough for the both of us.

Yours in sisterhood,

Celia

Questions:

1. Can you please elaborate on the concept of ‘purchasing freedom from slavery’ (pg. 10, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom)? From the reading, it appears that procuring the proper amount of money may not be the most critical factor. Were some slaves simply ‘not for sale’ at any price? Did slave owners have absolute autonomy as demonstrated by Master Hoskens and Antoinette?

2. I was unable to locate any recent articles that might update or supplement Dr. Holt’s premise in the Problem of Race in the 21^st Century given the recent Presidential election of Barack Obama. Would Dr. Holt state that this election only serves and illustrates his ‘Colin Powell’ assertion that some chosen Blacks are idealized in popular culture while scores of others are diminished and reviled?