At a time when every magazine from Vanity Fair to Bird Talk contains an anniversary article on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, American History magazine has published a fascinating story about an event that took place exactly 150 years earlier -- on Sept. 11, 1851.
Shortly before dawn that morning, a posse of slave catchers led by Edward Gorsuch, a wealthy Maryland farmer, surrounded William Parker's stone farmhouse in Christiana, a village in southeastern Pennsylvania. Hiding inside the house were two slaves who had run away from Gorsuch's Baltimore County farm two years earlier.
Gorsuch and a federal marshal from Philadelphia approached Parker's front door and announced that they'd come to take the slaves.
"If you take another step," Parker replied, "I'll break your neck."
The marshal said he'd come with a warrant and he began reading it aloud. Gorsuch was impatient with such legal niceties. "I'll go up and get my property," he said, and he stepped inside.
"See here, old man," Parker called down from the second-floor landing. "You can come up but you can't go down again. Once up here, you're mine."
Gorsuch stopped. He hadn't expected to meet a man like Parker. Then 29, Parker was himself an escaped slave, having run away from a plantation in Anne Arundel County 12 years earlier. He'd found work as a miller, married another runaway slave, and settled in Christiana, a town largely populated by anti-slavery Quakers, free blacks and escaped slaves. Parker had organized a black militia group that had already freed several slaves from slave catchers in shootouts.
As Parker and Gorsuch argued over slavery -- each man quoting the Bible to defend his views -- Parker's wife blew a horn to summon the militia. Incensed, the marshal fired at her. He missed. Within an hour, scores of black militiamen arrived, armed with guns and machetes. A few white Quakers showed up, too, and they urged the slave catchers to leave.
The marshal took their advice, but Gorsuch was too stubborn to retreat. "I will have my property or die in the attempt," he said. He went after his slaves and was shot dead. His son rushed to his aid and was shot and wounded. After that, both sides retreated.
That night, Parker and two other black men fled, smuggled away by anti-slavery activists of the underground railroad. In Rochester, N.Y., the fugitives stayed at the home of another man who'd escaped from slavery in Maryland -- Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist agitator.
Douglass put Parker on a boat bound for Canada and Parker thanked him by giving him a souvenir -- Gorsuch's pistol. Later, Parker's wife joined him in Canada and they raised their family on a farm there.
When news of the shootout spread, President Millard Fillmore dispatched 45 Marines to Christiana. They arrested scores of people, most of them black. Two months later, 36 local black men and five whites were indicted for treason. They were defended by Thaddeus Stevens, the fiery abolitionist congressman. The jury deliberated for 15 minutes, then returned with a verdict: Not guilty.
It's an amazing story and it is told well by William C. Kashatus, the historian who created the underground railroad exhibit currently on display at the Chester County Historical Society in West Chester, Pa., not far from Christiana.
Kashatus's account did exactly what a good historical piece is supposed to do: It piqued my curiosity and sent me to the library to learn more. In a book of slave narratives, "I Was Born a Slave," I found Parker's memoir, first published in 1866 in the Atlantic Monthly. In it, Parker writes eloquently on the joys and the responsibilities of freedom:
"I could go out on Saturdays and Sunday, and home when I pleased, without being whipped," he wrote. "I thought of my fellow servants left behind, bound in the chains of slavery -- and I was free! . . . I formed a resolution that I would assist in liberating every one within my reach at the risk of my life."
Tomorrow, perhaps we should commemorate Sept. 11 with a moment of silence for the victims of last year's terrorist attacks, followed by a toast to the memory of William Parker, American freedom fighter.
Restyling the Past
Last week one of America's best magazines, the New Yorker, published a special fashion section that featured a photo essay by veteran photographer Herb Ritts. Ritts dressed his models in the latest fashions, then posed them for pictures that parody the classic photos of the Great Depression.
There's a group that looks a lot like the Alabama sharecroppers photographed by Walker Evans -- except that they're wearing clothes by Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga. And there's a model posed to resemble Dorothea Lange's famous "Migrant Mother" -- except that she's wearing a chic silk Chanel dress.
How clever! How piquant! How delightfully postmodern!
I'm so charmed by these wonderful pictures that I'd like to offer some suggestions for follow-up photos in next year's fashion issue:
Let's have Ritts parody Lewis Hine's famous photo of a child laborer who lost his arm in a mill accident. This time the poor kid can replace his grimy overalls with a nice Bill Blass suit.
And perhaps Ritts can re-create W. Eugene Smith's photo of a wounded Marine praying on a stretcher in Okinawa -- except this time the wounded man will get to wear something sporty from Sean John.
Finally, Ritts can parody the Charles Moore photos of police dogs biting civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham in 1963 -- but this time the dogs can rip into some stylish John Varvatos slacks. Won't that be nice?
I think we can all agree with Ritts and the editors of the New Yorker that the best way to honor our collective American ancestors is to turn the classic photos of their agonies and tragedies into cute little jokes that hype the latest products of the fashion industry.
