Maynard Seider: Slavery and the North Berkshires
Posted Friday, August 24, 2018, 12:45 pm
By Maynard Seider
NORTH ADAMS — I grew up in Connecticut and attended an almost all-white high school in the late 1950s. In my history classes, we learned a simple truth: the slave South was evil and the North was good. The only book that we read that dealt with racism focused on South Africa, "Cry Thy Beloved Country." We never discussed race, prejudice, or discrimination in the U.S. It was easy for a young white man to graduate and feel self-righteous.
Many decades later, I began to research the conditions of 19th century workers who toiled in the numerous cotton mills in North Berkshire. I focused on their wages, working conditions and culture. Perhaps because of my earlier high school experiences, I didn't initially think about the origins of those bales of cotton and the connections that New England mill owners had with the slave South. I soon read the histories of Adams, North Adams and Williamstown as told by writers living in the late 1800s.
While celebrating captains of industry, the 19th century historians omit one crucial fact: the textile barons constructed their wealth on slave-produced cotton. When these historians broach the topic of slavery, they put a positive spin on North Berkshire. W.F. Spear, for example, highlights the example of Jeremiah Colgrove, a North Adams mill owner, who housed and protected a woman who had escaped from slavery. But without a word about the slaves who produced the raw material used in the local mills, Spear and other historians keep their readers from facing up to the financial and social relationships between the "lords of the lash and the lords of the loom," in the memorable phrase of Charles Sumner.
Who were some of these "lords of the loom"? The Arnold brothers — Oliver, Harvey and John — began manufacturing cotton cloth in North Adams in 1827. In 1860, they had become wealthy enough to expand and establish the Arnold Print Works (APW). An 1871 fire destroyed the buildings, but the owners gradually rebuilt them. Before long, APW became the largest print works in the world, with offices in New York and Paris. Today, that complex is the home of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA).
In neighboring Adams, William C. Plunkett and his descendants dominated regional cotton textile production until the middle of the 20th century. Born in Lenox in 1799, Plunkett began managing the Adams South Village Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company in 1829. Politically active, Plunkett reached his highest office, lieutenant governor, in 1854. That same year, Anthony Burns, an escaped slave from Virginia, was captured in Boston. An avid supporter of the Fugitive Slave Act, Plunkett and Governor Emory Washburn sent Burns back to slavery.
While the cotton mill owners indirectly benefited from slavery, one of the most well-known figures in North Berkshire annals, Ephraim Williams Jr., actually owned slaves. In the history books, Williams receives most attention as commander of Fort Massachusetts, the state's westernmost line of defense during King George's War (1745-1748). He left that command in 1752, but when the French and Indian War broke out in 1754, he was promoted to colonel and called back into service.
In 1755 his regiment was tasked with capturing the French fort, Crown Point, on Lake Champlain. On September 8, Williams led his men into an ambush causing his own death. Perhaps anticipating such a quick end, the forty-year-old Williams had written his will less than two months earlier.
Childless and unmarried, he left his home, his land and his three personal slaves, Moni, London and Cloe, to his brothers, stipulating that his mother and sisters be cared for. The last request in his will stated that whatever remained of his wealth "be appropriated towards the support and maintenance of a free school" if the town of its location would be named after him (it was, Williamstown), and if it were determined to be within the boundary of Massachusetts (it was). And so, in 1793, with money from the sale of the founder`s slaves, Williams College became a reality.
Facing our history
This past April, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, dedicated to the memory of the more than 4,000 victims of lynching in the U.S., opened in Montgomery, Alabama. At the event, Equal Justice Initiative's Bryan Stevenson stated: "[W]e're either going to confront this (racist) history and understand that we have to overcome it, or we're going to try to minimize it, sugarcoat it, romanticize it and fall deeper into these patterns and practices that oppress and marginalize and minimize some communities because of their color or their national origin."
Let me suggest how North Berkshire's two most prestigious institutions, Williams College and MASS MoCA, can confront the history that Stevenson so passionately addresses. Although Craig Steven Wilder has spelled out Williams College's slave origins in his award-winning Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of America's Universities, I could find scant mention of it from the college itself. Numerous American colleges and universities, including Brown, Columbia and William and Mary, have owned up to their early ties to slavery and initiated policies to deal with that history. Under the leadership of President Ruth Simmons, Brown led the way in 2003 by establishing a university committee on Slavery and Justice. In what might be a hopeful coincidence, Williams College has announced that its new president will be Maud Mandel, a faculty member and administrator at Brown during Simmons' tenure. As she begins her new presidency at Williams, Mandel could emulate Simmons' precedent and call for a similar college-wide committee on Slavery and Justice.
The buildings that house Maas MoCA's art collection could not have been built without the profits of slave-grown cotton. Tourists to MoCA marvel at the tasteful renovations and enjoy the art, but how many know the source of the wealth that funded the construction of those buildings? Why not add a permanent exhibit inside MoCA detailing the role that slavery played not only for the Arnolds, but for the Plunketts and all the other cotton textile manufacturers in the region? With these truth-telling actions, a new generation of Northerners may well grow up with a better understanding of our past and a commitment to change those "patterns and practices" that, as Bryan Stevenson reminds us, have perpetuated American racism.
Maynard Seider is emeritus professor of sociology, MCLA, and author of the forthcoming "The Gritty Berkshires: A People's History From The Hoosac Tunnel to MASS MoCA" (February, 2019, White River Press)