Nadene Goldfoot
If you’re a black person and you’re living in Vermont in the 1790s, you could own property, you could take a white person to court, but at the very same time, you could be kidnapped or re-enslaved.”
Professor Harvey Amani Whitfield of U. of Vermont wrote a book about this, called The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777-1810. It came out in 2014. During a VPR interview he did in January of that year, Amani said that even though abolition was enshrined in Vermont’s constitution, “it wasn’t enforced. Owners of slaves just sort of subverted it, ignored it.”
Plus, there was a loophole that allowed people to continue to enslave children. Amani found examples of this kind of stuff all the way up to 1810. So that’s one thing: Slavery had a foothold here. Another thing to know is that Vermonters had complicated views about all this. Here’s Vermont historian Ray Zirblis:
“Lots of people, I think, of good will in the antebellum period are on the fence. Slavery is reprehensible, but the destruction of the union would be a terrible outcome. So people we would consider, they would say, ‘gentlemen of property and standing,’ upstanding members of the community, are very often on the side of a more temperant middle ground.”
This is not my family of Robinsons but another from England who settled in Rhode Island and were Quakers, They trace back to Rowland Robinson b: 1754 from Cumberland, England. They came close to mine, living in Ferrisburgh, Addison, Vermont.
Jane Williamson, the director of Rokeby Museum of Ferrisburgh, Addison, Vermont in Shelburne of the Shelburne Museum tells that Rokeby was the home and sheep farm of the Robinson family, who were Quakers. Shelburne Museum is a museum of art, design, and Americana located in Shelburne, Chittenden, Vermont, United States. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and were relocated to the museum grounds. It is located on 45 acres (18 ha) near Lake Champlain.
Thomas Robinson, a Newport Quaker merchant, was a key advocate for abolition of slavery both within and outside of the Society of Friends from the 1770s. As a young man starting out in business in the 1750s, however, Robinson sent a number of ships to Africa to procure slaves for sale in the West Indies, stopping the practice just as the Quaker community came to prohibit the trade among its members. Robinson’s father, Deputy Governor William Robinson, owned a large slave-worked plantation in South County. Robinson’s father-in-law, colony Treasurer and Newport merchant Thomas Richardson, also held slaves, and served as Presiding Clerk of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends from 1729 to 1760.
Robinson’s shift from slave-trader to abolitionist provides a lens for looking at how and why the Quaker community, after tolerating slave-holding and even slave-trading among its members for 100 years, came to view slave-trading and slave-owning as contrary to their Christian testimony. The talk about it was held on March 9, 2011 saying that it would draw on the extensive Robinson and Richardson family papers held by the Newport Historical Society, as well as Quaker meeting records, probate documents, and genealogical materials.
Rokeby’s connection to the Underground Railroad is so legit that the museum is a National Historic Landmark. But Jane says that people come here looking for a different story than the one the museum actually tells.
“The lantern in the window, the hidden room, the loose floorboard,” Jane says. She adds that people are kind of obsessed with hiding places — like in Brandon — because there’s this popular image of slave-catchers prowling around the countryside, looking for fugitives. But there’s no evidence that that happened in Vermont. We’re too far north.
The Quaker movement to help the Blacks was a wonderful move. Today, their zeal has gone into helping the Palestinians in the BDS movement which is against Jews and Israel. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel. This goes against helping a worthwhile cause by aiding and abetting their enemy, Hamas Terrorists, who lead the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Muslims decided in 1967, after their attempt to wipe out Israel in their 3rd war against Israel and losing, to never have peace with this small Jewish state. The 1967 Arab League summit was held on August 29 in Khartoum as the fourth Arab League Summit in the aftermath of the Arab defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War, and is famous for its Khartoum Resolution known as "The Three No's"; No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.
The Abraham peace accords are changing that with over 4 countries signing on and being at peace, joining Egypt and Jordan as well as planning programs together. The BDS movement and the Quakers have not succeeded in driving Israel into the sea.
Resource:
https://wwwrobinsongenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/10/it-was-said-that-most-of-rhode-island.html
https://rokeby.org/about/the-robinson-family/
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/quaker-activists-584222
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sanctions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Arab_League_summit#:~:text=The%201967%20Arab%20League%20summit,Israel%2C%20no%20negotiations%20with%20Israel.
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