We Keep Learning (Part I)

Harriet wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851-52 to draw light to the injustices of her own time.  With the current challenges our nation faces, we are reminded that the legacy of Harriet's time still interferes with our nation’s journey towards an equitable society. 

The Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House community values the ideas of historical literacy (http://stowehousecincy.org/aboutus.html. ) As part of our lead-in week to Harriet’s Virtual Birthday Party on Sunday June 14th, we want to share ideas and resources we have found helpful in our own learning process. 
 
We are continual learners who strive to connect others to resources that our board, volunteers, and staff are finding helpful in that quest.  We are currently reading, following, and listening to:
 
Abigail:

• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
• Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation by Latasha Morrison
• We are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century edited by Dorothy Sterling (for Semi-Colon club)
• Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center
• Cincinnati NAACP

 
Christina:

• The Stony Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
• International Coalition of Sites of Conscience
• NPR Codeswitch podcast

​Fred:

• I just concluded reading Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby (Metropolitan Books 2004).  It took a few months of lockdown to read this wonderfully written history, which introduced me to a number of heroes I had not known, including Ernestine Rose (early 19th century Jewish feminist émigré from Europe) and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (early 20th century publisher of Little Blue Books).
• Earlier in the lockdown I read Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida, 1867 to 1884 by Olav Thulesius (McFarland & Co. 2001), a short 150-page expanded thesis I think, a choppy read, but with a lot of information about her role in Reconstruction and her environmental concerns.
• Now I am two-thirds of the way through Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Known and the Unknown by Edward Wagenknecht (Oxford University Press 1965), “a psychograph, or “portrait,” or character study” of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  I highly recommend it.
• In late April, after reading so many articles others had shared on Facebook that originated from The Atlantic magazine, I subscribed digitally.  It has been a stellar source of quality journalism about the Covid pandemic, the self-destruction of the Trump regime, and the Black Lives Matter protests.  How appropriate, as when I subscribed Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief, sent an email entitled “How It All Began” that explained:  “In the spring of 1857, a group of Boston transcendentalists gathered for dinner at the Parker House Hotel. After five hours of repartee, they decided to create a new magazine, one that would make politics, literature, and the arts its chief concerns.They were united in three ways: their opposition to slavery, their love of American writing, and their tripartite names—including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Russell Lowell. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was invited, but she boycotted the dinner when she learned that alcohol would be served. After everyone agreed on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s proposed name, a plan for The Atlantic was set. The founders wanted to be “fearless and outspoken” at the dawn of “a new era of human civilization.” In a manifesto, they promised to be “the organ of no party or clique”; to “honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea”; and to care for the “whole domain of aesthetics.” The manifesto was signed by, among others, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and yes, "Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe."

Robin:

• Just Mercy, book by Bryan Stevenson, and movie
• Dark Waters, movie
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
• Black Prophetic Power by Cornell West -- It's a look at six well-known revolutionary African American leaders: Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells.
• No One is Illegal by Justin Akers Chacon and Mike Davis
• The Bridge that is My Back, poetry collection, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa.