Echoes of History and Hope

from the Board of the Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House:

It was an interesting and cathartic moment. We were coming to the conclusion of our zoom board meeting, when one of the members paused and expressed her dismay at the death of Mr. George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police department.
 
This outrage has transcended racial and political lines. Protests have erupted around the country and overseas. Law enforcement officials, black and white, have expressed their concern and disagreement with the police tactic the world has seen. As in the case of Eric Garner in New York, Floyd’s words “I can’t breathe” have become the new plea of protest.
 
The board meeting mentioned was a meeting of the Board of Trustees of Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House.  Just like the outrage of our board member and others, there was another brave person who, over a century and a half ago, expressed her outrage about slavery and the treatment of people of color in this country: Harriet Beecher Stowe. Mrs. Stowe had received a letter from her sister in law, Mrs. Isabella Jones Beecher in which she said to Harriet: “If I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that will make this nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” According to Harriet’s children she read their aunt’s letter to them, then rose to her feet with crumpled letter in her hand, and declared, “I will write something, I will if I live.”
 
She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852.  The book profoundly transformed how Americans thought about the institution of slavery. It is said of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that never before had the “curious institution” been so effectively contrasted with the ideals of American liberty and Christian virtue. Now 168 years after the publishing of her book and on the eve of her birthday, we the community of the Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House must declare our position as the vestiges of slavery in the form of institutional racism continue in the United States of America.
 
The United States built its own freedom, in part, on the dispossession of one race and the enslavement of another. The problem of racism is deeply rooted in the nation’s very foundation. That was the profound truth that Harriet Beecher Stowe sought to communicate by writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Stowe intended that her work would cause her readers to see the humanity in others.  As a people, our progress toward that goal has been at best piecemeal, and has had many setbacks.  Recent events in Minneapolis and elsewhere make it very clear that we are still a long way from the ideal that Harriet Beecher Stowe sought to encourage. In homage to her, the Friends of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House join with people of goodwill everywhere in condemning senseless acts of racial violence.  We look forward to the day when, as a nation, we can live up to the ideal that Harriet Beecher Stowe envisioned: seeing the humanity in others and advocating for freedom and opportunity for all people.

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