#85: Enslaved children, the Pollitzer Sisters, and a Bike Tour of Columbia's African American History
For South Carolina history lovers far and wide! Enjoy weekly SC history and upcoming SC historical events
Welcome to the first 100 days of the South Carolina History Newsletter! My name is Kate Fowler and I live in Greenville, SC. I have a 9-5 job in marketing, and outside of work, have a deep love of history. I started this newsletter as a passion project to learn more about our beautiful state and build a community of fellow SC history lovers along the way! To establish a foundation for the newsletter and to grow my expertise on a wide variety of South Carolina historical topics, this past February I challenged myself to post 100 newsletters in 100 days. After this coming May 20th, the newsletter will become weekly. Thank you for joining the journey!
Dear reader,
Welcome to Newsletter #85 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
As always, I’d like to also extend a special welcome to the following new subscribers — woohoo! Thank you for subscribing.
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Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Featured SC History Event
Please enjoy our featured SC History Event below, and click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the upcoming SC history events I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the calendar! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
Sunday, May 19th from 9:00 am - 12:00 pm | “Bike Tour: The Green Book and Columbia's African American History” | Columbia, SC | FREE event
“Hop on your bike and join City preservation staff on a bike tour through time as we discuss the importance of Columbia’s historic African American resources. The tour will include a look at the Green Book sites that were safe havens for traveling African Americans during the Jim Crow era.
Helmet required. Limited to 15 participants, so register now!”
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know that children born to slaves became the property of their masters through a legal doctrine known as partus sequitur ventrem?
Before the Civil War, not all African Americans were enslaved, but both free and enslaved Black children faced challenges.
Free children struggled with their place in a white dominated society, and slave children, under their parents and masters, “lived in fear of punishment and isolation.”
Though circumstances widely varied, enslaved children often worked in fields with adults, tended animals, cleaned and served in their owners' houses, and took care of younger children while their parents were working.
Since slave children were not fully functional workers, they were given smaller rations than adults.
The combination of meager diet and insufficient clothes (even in the best of times) meant that slave children were particularly vulnerable when the Civil War brought shortages across the South.
Children of slaves, and slaves in general, were not allowed to read or write. Between 1740 and 1834 Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Virginia all passed anti-literacy laws. South Carolina passed the first law which prohibited teaching slaves to read and write, “punishable by a fine of 100 pounds and six months in prison, via an amendment to its 1739 Negro Act.”
Plantation owners raping female slaves was a common occurrence. Female slaves had no legal right to refuse unwanted sexual advances.
The children born from these unions were born into slavery, through a legal doctrine known as partus sequitur ventrem ('that which is born follows the womb'), which was derived from Roman civil law. The doctrine mandated that children of slave mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery.
These mixed-race children were classified as “mulattoes.” Some went even further to more specifically classify these children as quadroons (one-quarter African) or quintroons (one-sixth African), octoroon (one-either African), etc.
From Mary Boykin Chesnut’s Civil War Diary (1861):
“...the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds...”
Some fathers of these mixed-race children provided special educational or career opportunities, or freed them. Historical examples of this are Archibald and Francis Grimké, sons of South Carolina planter Henry Grimke and his slave Nancy Weston, and Thomas Jefferson's children by his slave Sally Hemings.
Most others treated their multiracial children as property.
Virginia planter Alexander Scott Withers, for instance, fathered a number of children by his mulatto slave Lucy Taylor after his wife died. He subsequently sold her and at least two of the children. In an 1864 issue of Harper’s Weekly, abolitionist George H. Hanks published a letter and printed an engraving of a photograph that included Withers's slave son, Charley Taylor, in an effort to publicize the issue of "white slaves."
White slave propaganda was a kind of publicity, especially photograph and woodcuts, and also novels, articles, and popular lectures, about slaves who were biracial or white in appearance. Their examples were used during and prior to the Civil War to further the abolitionist cause and to raise money for the education of former slaves.
Despite their marriages not being legally recognized, African Americans worked very hard under slavery to keep familial ties intact. These close ties can be seen by the sheer volume African Americans who returned to their families during the war.
Between 1820 and 1860 approximately “30% of all slave children born in the upper South were taken from their families and sold to the Deep South to work in the harsher climate on plantations.”
After years of forced migration many of these African Americans took the opportunity provided by the upheaval of war to escape their masters and travel long distances to be reconnected with their families.
By 1864 approximately 400,000 slaves within the South had fled their masters.
In addition to those returning home, many African American children found themselves living in Contraband Camps during the war, as their families fled to Union lines for refuge.
Setting up these camps for slaves fleeing bondage was an unofficial practice of the Union army in the South until “the Confiscation Acts of 1862 officially freed all slaves who came in contact with Union lines.”
Within these camps, approximately half of all fleeing slaves present were children. With limited resources in some camps, already exhausted and malnourished children often died.
Because of the large presence of children in some camps, an emphasis was placed on education. The American Missionary Association and other similar organizations sent educators to the camps to set up both Sabbath schools and primary schools.
In camps with poor conditions and no schools, African American children often worked to gain status, get better rations, or earn wages.
Already familiar with tasks such as digging ditches, cooking, and washing, these young Contrabands served in menial jobs until the Emancipation Proclamation allowed them to serve in uniform.
Those old enough became drummer boys, buglers, teamsters, and even soldiers. Though still not treated as equals, they faced fear and hardships, hoping for a better future.
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my source for this section
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II.
Did you know that the Charleston-born Pollizter Sisters were pioneers in education and women’s rights?
Carrie, Mabel, and Anita Pollitzer were educators, suffragists, and reformers.
The sisters were born to a prosperous Jewish family in Charleston. Their parents, Gustave and Clara Pollitzer, were active members of the city’s Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, the birthplace of Reform Judaism in America.
Gustave Pollitzer was deeply involved in community affairs, serving on numerous boards and commissions. The three Pollitzer daughters “reflected their father’s civic engagement, taking active roles in reform movements at the local and national levels.”
Carrie Teller Pollitzer (December 5, 1881–October 22, 1974), the oldest of the siblings, graduated from Memminger Normal School in Charleston in 1901. She studied at, and later directed, the South Carolina Kindergarten Training School in Charleston, where she established public health programs, home visits, kindergarten lunches, and parental-involvement programs.
Carrie was active in the community, holding offices in the Charleston Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Free Kindergarten Association. She was a founder and organizer of the Annual Community Children’s Festival in Charleston and served as its director for 23 years.
A tireless campaigner for women’s rights, Carrie was a charter member of the Charleston Equal Suffrage League and was active in the National Woman’s Party (NWP).
On behalf of Charleston’s City Federation of Women’s Clubs, Carrie launched the petition drive that led to the admission of women to the College of Charleston in 1918.
In 1973. Carrie and sister Mabel were recognized by the Charleston chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW) in appreciation of their “contributions towards women’s equality.”
Mabel Louise Pollitzer (January 11, 1885–April 27, 1979) graduated from Memminger Normal School in Charleston in 1901 and from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1906 with a major in biology.
Mabel returned to Charleston and organized the biology department at Memminger, where she taught for 44 years. She instituted nutritious lunches for schoolchildren and formed student honor organizations known as “No Cheating Clubs.” In 1920 she was elected president of the Charleston County Teachers’ Association. In 1929 she obtained legislation establishing the Charleston County Free Library.
A charter member of the Charleston Equal Suffrage League, Mabel Pollitzer served as its publicity chair for many years. She was South Carolina state chairperson for the National Woman’s Party, campaigning first for suffrage and then for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). In 1965 Mabel was named to the Hall of Fame of the Charleston Federation of Women’s Clubs. At age 93 Mabel was still writing letters on behalf of the ERA.
Anita Lily Pollitzer (October 31, 1894–July 3, 1975), the youngest of the Pollitzer sisters, graduated from Memminger Normal School in Charleston in 1913, earned her B.S. in fine arts from Columbia University in 1916, and received her master’s in international relations from Columbia in 1933. While a student at Columbia, she met Alfred Stieglitz, who became her “mentor in modernism.”
It was Anita Pollitzer who showed him drawings by a young, then unknown artist named Georgia O’Keeffe. Stieglitz consequently organized an exhibition of O’Keeffe’s works, sparking her successful career as an artist.
As a student, Anita became involved in the radical wing of the women’s movement. Beginning in 1918 she held numerous National Woman’s Party offices, including national chair from 1945 to 1949. She represented South Carolina at the International Feminists Conference at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1926 and the NWP at the first session of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945.
Anita also campaigned for other women’s issues, including the right of married women to keep their U.S. citizenship and their government jobs and for gender equity in the National Fair Labor Standards Act.
She fought tirelessly for the Equal Rights Amendment. Anita once told a reporter, “The day of chivalry is past…We want to stand on our own feet.”
Pollitzer’s biography of O’Keeffe, A Woman on Paper, was published posthumously in 1988, as was her selected correspondence with O’Keeffe in 1990.
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my sources for this section
Please leave a comment below!
➳ Quote from an SC historical figure
“The black morning at length came; it came too soon for my poor mother and us. Whilst she was putting on us the new osnaburgs [a coarse cloth used for work clothes] in which we were to be sold, she said, in a sorrowful voice (I shall never forget it!), 'See, I am shrouding my poor children; what a task for a mother!' ... the [other] slaves could say nothing to comfort us; they could only weep and lament with us. When I left my dear little brothers and the house in which I had been brought up, I thought my heart would burst.”
—Mary Prine from her book The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian slave, related by herself (1831)
Enslaved Children article sources:
“African American Children.” U.S. National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-american-children.htm#:~:text=Slave%20children%2C%20under%20their%20parents,while%20their%20parents%20were%20working. Accessed 5 May 2024.
“Anti-Literacy Laws in the United States” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-literacy_laws_in_the_United_States#cite_note-2. Accessed 5 May 2024.
Mitchell, Mary Niall. “The Young White Faces of Slavery.” The New York Times, 30 January 2014, https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/
2014/01/30/the-young-white-faces-of-slavery/. Accessed 5 May 2024.“Personal Accounts.” USI Understanding Slavery, http://archive.understandingslavery.com/index.php-option=com_content&view=article&id=375&Itemid=230.html. Accessed 5 May 2024.
Pollitzer Sisters article sources:
Cabrera, Gertrudis. “A Day In The Life Of An Enslaved Child.” University of Houston, https://uh.edu/honors/Programs-Minors/honors-and-the-schools/houston-teachers-institute/curriculum-units/pdfs/2003/african-american-slavery/cabrera-03-slavery.pdf. Accessed 5 May 2024.
McCandless, Amy Thompson. “Pollitzer Sisters.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, 20 June 2016, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/pollitzer-sisters/. Accessed 5 May 2024.
Newman, Betsy. “The Pollitzer Sisters: Fighters for Women’s Rights.” Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, https://jhssc.org/the-pollitzer-sisters-fighters-for-womens-rights/. Accessed 5 May 2024.
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