Alison Hart's Blog

#Blacknewenglandhistory #Blackrevolutionarywarsoldiers #historicipswich #mixedracehistory #NativeAmericanHistory #mostlywhitenovel #Blackhistoryisamericanhistory #atlanticblackbox

(Photo courtesy of Gordon Harris)

It has taken seven generations to uncover our family history in New England. On September 16, 2023, the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts will honor our ancestors, the Freeman family who were enslaved in the mid-1700s. Jane Freeman was enslaved by Philip Lord, and her husband Peter Freeman by Thomas Staniford. In 1777, their son John Freeman fought in the American Revolutionary War. In 1784 the family moved to East Brunswick, Maine starting the Freeman family line. The event will include a descendant-centered discussion at the Ipswich First Church followed by a short walk to where the Freeman family was enslaved and to the location of the unveiling of a plaque honoring John Freeman, a Black Revolutionary War soldier.

Growing up we had no sense of belonging in colonial New England. We were the first mixed-race family to live in the small New England town of Lincoln, steeped with history that we felt separate from. Our mother, born in Portland, Maine was African American, Native American, and Irish, our father a Scottish, English, Irish southerner from Arkansas. They fell in love when in many states interracial marriage was illegal, prior to Loving vs. Virginia, 1967 legalizing interracial marriage United States.

Our family’s history was purposefully erased from the colonial settler narrative in New England. “Slaves were treated well, and Natives became extinct” was the history we learned in school: we essentially did not belong or exist. In the 1980’s my mother and older sister Lisa started digging, which began decades of research of our Black and Native American ancestors. This research inspired my first novel Mostly White (Torrey House, 2018) a historical-based family saga of my mother’s Black, Native American, and Irish ancestors from Maine. Crafting together this narrative led to others, and the story widened. We uncovered the story of Peter Freeman who was enslaved in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and discovered John Freeman his son fought in the American Revolution. Lisa contacted Gordon Harris, the Ipswich town historian and this collaboration spearheaded the event to honor the Freeman family.

(Special thanks to ,Aimee Keithan from The Pejepscot History Center historians James Tanzer and Kate McMahon for sharing their findings, ,Atlantic Black Box for their ongoing work uncovering Black and Native New England history, and the book by Talbot and Price Maine's Visible Black History (Tilbury House, 2006)

The history of slavery and the genocide of Native Americans is too much for one person to bear and digest. These stories are meant to be witnessed and shared in community, piercing through the cultural amnesia of the dominant colonial settler narrative, to create a more inclusive and truthful origin story of America for all.

Below is my poem circumference I will read September 16, to honor my ancestors the Freeman's.

circumference

standing on the edges of

circles

always

the witness

rarely

the center

respectfully ambiguous

holding

loving ancestors close

Mali, Ghana, Nigeria,

Cameroon, Congo,

Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England,

Passamaquoddy Native American

“Where are you from?”

My ancestors Jane and Peter Freeman were

enslaved in Ipswich, Massachusetts Bay Colony

in the mid 1700’s

John Freeman their eldest son, Black/Native

fought in the Revolutionary War

In 1784 the Freeman family

moved to Brunswick, Maine

The Freemans are listed in the Maine censuses as:

Negro, Mulatto, Black, Colored, White

but never Native American

because they weren’t supposed to exist

George Augustus Freeman

enlisted in the Civil War

when Lincoln allowed Blacks to join Union ranks

wounded in the battle of Spotsylvania

fighting was in his blood

following the footsteps of his

grandfather, John.

“Where are you from?”

I am history that was never meant to be discovered

an inconvenient narrative

pushing the edges of a circle

open…

In 1911 residents of Malaga Island

an interracial fishing community

of Black, Irish, and Native Americans

founded by Ben Darling, a Black Revolutionary War Veteran

were evicted by the state of Maine

The “degenerate colony of half-breeds”

notoriety became an embarrassment

to the state

must get rid of this eye sore

build a vacation paradise

residents broke down their homes and used them as rafts

floating down the New Meadows River

denied entry on shores

a great sport of entertainment for mainlanders

jeering

as a Black man lost his furniture

in the rush of the current

laughter swelled in amusement

nobody helped him

Who let them land?

some were taken by state officials

to be confined at the

Maine’s Institute for the Feeble Minded

men separated from women

separated from children

they dug up

bones of the ancestors

sent them to Maine’s Institute for the Feeble Minded

thrown together in unmarked graves

“Where are you from?”

blood spilled wars fought bones rattle

My father a white southerner from Arkansas

crossed the Jim Crow color line

and fell for my mother

A Black, Native American, Irish woman

from Maine.

All hell broke loose

both families resisted the union

almost a decade before Loving vs. Virginia, 1967

They met in Boston

while out in public

bottles were thrown at them, racial epithets

their union was not safe

dangerous in fact

they began to date in churches

where they wouldn’t be harassed

Where can we have children?

they asked each other

in letters back and forth

weighing the consequence of

bringing mixed children into the world

Where would they be safe?

Where would they belong?

Will our love make up for the harm society may heap on them?

A unitarian church in Massachusetts said

yes, yes we accept you.

and so, they dared to love

dared to have children

dared

“Where are you from?”

I am earth sky fire water

standing

with deep roots

on the circumference

of circles

I didn’t create

walls

I didn’t build

each brick an

algorithmic separation

I am

a union that dared to happen.

Copyright © 2023 Alison Hart

Check out my interview by the brilliant Taressa Stovall at Mixed Auntie Confidential!

Come join us!

Come hear Author Alix Christie share her stunning family saga based on her Scottish ancestor who fled his homeland, became a Hudson Bay fur trader and married a Native American woman (Nez Perce kin). Alison Hart will share from her novel Mostly White and authors will discuss the colonial settler mythology of Manifest Destiny, Native American history, and how mixed-race history is American history.

A duplex dance collective video

Where is empathy? Do we value it anymore? Or does property and things reign supreme over all? Surely there is a path back to our hearts, our connectedness to each other as human beings. I believe that art is the bridge that brings us back to our humanity, back to our true nature.

During the Covid lockdown, I wrote the poem beyond fences which addresses the homeless crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area from an Indigenous perspective. The poem was inspired by Jericho Brown's duplex poetry form which I thought would be a great structure for a dance piece. In the choreography process, every dancer had a voice creating phrases that adhered to the duplex poetry form. Locations of the video include Berkeley, Alameda and Santa Cruz California.

Please support these amazing women artists who gave their talent, time and energy to create beyond fences.

Sharon Coleman

Katherine Park

Haninah Abdullah

Also, check out Desert Dwellers Whirling Within the music that inspired the movement.

A duplex dance collective video

Where is empathy? Do we value it anymore? Or does property and things reign supreme over all? Surely there is a path back to our hearts, our connectedness to each other as human beings. I believe that art is the bridge that brings us back to our humanity, back to our true nature.

During the Covid lockdown, I wrote the poem beyond fences which addresses the homeless crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area from an Indigenous perspective. The poem was inspired by ,Jericho Brown's duplex poetry form and I thought would be a great structure for a dance piece. In the choreography process, every dancer had a voice creating phrases that adhered to the duplex poetry form. All video was filmed in Berkeley and Alameda, California.

Please support these amazing women artists who gave their talent, time and energy to create beyond fences.

Sharon Coleman

Katherine Park

Haninah Abdullah

Also, check out Desert Dwellers Whirling Within the music that inspired the movement.

Above right: My Great Grandmother Emma Freeman, who was Passamaquoddy Native American and Black with her daughter in Brunswick, Maine. Photo credit: Maine's Visible Black History by Price and Talbot, 2006.

I woke up to a fife playing in my head. Every Fourth of July Minute Men in blue-grey uniforms and pointed hats marched down Lincoln Road in Lincoln, Massachusetts, led by the fife and drum players. It was the same tune every year. And there I was, my small brown fist waving a flag walking behind people in cars throwing out candy and children on decorated bicycles. I decided to walk in the parade in my red, white and blue t-shirt and blue shorts, in a parade of whiteness, yet I walked.

"What is she doing there?"

"Why is she walking alone?" Two white women smirked from the crowd. I didn't care. I had to walk, something made me.

I didn't know then that my Black and Native American ancestors fought in the American Revolutionary War. I didn't know that my ancestor Peter Freeman along with his wife Jane and children were enslaved in Ipswich, Massachusetts by Thomas Staniford and lived at the famous John Updike house that still stands today. Peter Freeman's sons Peter Jr. and John Freeman fought in the Revolutionary War and after their service gained their freedom and moved to Brunswick, Maine to live with their mother Jane who married Anthony Griffin after the death of her husband.

In 1833 at the age of 72, John Freeman petitioned the court in Bath, Maine to receive his pension for his service in 1777 with the help of his siblings Peter Jr. and Jane (same name as his mother) providing statements of support. It is uncertain whether he received his pension for his service in the war.

Photo credit: www.historicipswich.org

Something in me knew I had deep belonging. I grew up steeped in whiteness, the parade was the pinnacle celebration of the complete erasure of Black and Indigenous American history. My cells were the only interception, my connection, feet on the earth marched because deep down I felt my roots. Little did I know then that I was a Daughter of the American Revolution.

Black and Indigenous New England history has been hidden, the narrative of New England as the righteous abolitionist territory has overshadowed the fact that Blacks and Natives were enslaved by whites in New England. We weren't taught Black and Native history in school, only given the perspectives of the white patriots, countless battles, and historical houses. But never who was enslaved in the house, not about the people who worked and created the wealth, nor about Black and Native soldiers: my ancestors were effectively erased from history.

And that's why I keep writing, perhaps from rage, mixed with a drive to find out who my ancestors were and to finally give them a voice and honor their struggle that brought me here.

Special thanks to historian James Tanzer for the petition documents filed by John Freeman, my sister Lisa Terrell for sharing her extensive knowledge of Native and Black New England history, and the book Maine's Visible Black History by Price and Talbot for the incredible resource for my family and many Black families from Maine.

Hart is the author of Mostly White, a mixed-race intergenerational family saga loosely based on her Passamaquoddy Native American, Irish and Black ancestors in Maine which best-selling, award-winning author Isabel Allende praised as "So compelling it gave me goosebumps..."

Hart has finished her second novel based on her ancestors who escape from slavery through the underground railroad, fight in the Civil War, and survive the racism of the eugenics movement in Maine with fierce love and determination showing up in the next generations.

Copyright © 2022 by Alison Hart

Link here: https://middletownartcenter.org/weaving.html

Come and hear powerful indigenous women poets! I dedicate this reading to my mother

Mary Helen Terrell (1936-2010). She was a poet, scholar and humanitarian.

I am honored to be included. Woliwon!

Catch my ten minutes at the Berkeley Bart Plaza 2160 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA.

Tuesday, May 10 @ 7:00 PM Pacific time. I will read from my novel Mostly White, new poems and an excerpt from my upcoming novel. Click photo to register on eventbrite, it is free!