Quaker erasure

 

William Penn statue in 1894, prior to being placed on the pinnacle of City Hall, Philadelphia

"Don't erase William Penn," the cry goes up. "Don't cancel him."

I don't think he's being cancelled. He's still there in the history books, in Quaker Faith and Practice, on hundreds of websites, in legal textbooks, and in many statues, including the gigantic one that was for years the highest point in the city of Philadelphia.

More gently, we're asked to sympathise with him, which is fair enough - if we also offer our sympathy to Sam, Sue, Yaff, Jack, Peter, Chevalier, Susannah and Virgil Warder and to others whose names we don't know. These were the recorded enslaved people on William Penn's estate in Pennsylvania and we can't tell from those names where their lives began or whether they had other names that were stolen from them like their liberty.

We can't know what gifts, qualities and spiritual insights the enslaved people "owned" by William Penn had to offer. We can't tell how they were prevented from sharing them. We can know, if we choose, that in 1700 the legal code of Pennsylvania prevented Black people (it's unclear whether or not free Black people were included) from gathering together in groups of more than four. Breaking this rule was punishable by 39 lashes. The people who have been most fully cancelled and erased from history are those who were enslaved; in the words of Ecclesiasticus: "some there be which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them."

We can guess that the descendants of the enslaved people on William Penn's estate are among us in the world even though we may not know who they are. Very few of the enslaved people "owned" by Quakers make it into the history books, although Olaudah Equiano is a notable exception. But it seems to me that they deserve to be acknowledged with a degree of humility. We aren't the people who chose to enslave our fellow humans, despite numerous warnings that this was theft and violence. But if we cherish the good deeds and writings of the enslavers, we don't just need to acknowledge their wrong actions. We also need to be aware that the enslaved human beings had equal worth.

There's still a tendency to say that there was no opposition to slavery in the 17th century. This simply isn't true. There isn't just the evidence of the Germantown protest of 1688, which must have emerged from prior, unrecorded discussion and prayer. In 1693 George Keith, then in a dispute with fellow Quakers that led to his disownment the following year, wrote with others An Exhortation and Caution to Friends against buying or owning enslaved humans. This picks up many of the points made in the Germantown Protest and suggests a widespread attempt to find the right course of action. This document tends to be forgotten in view of Keith's support of a more conventional and biblically-based practice - he and his followers later introduced versions of adult baptism and communion - but it makes me wonder whether Keith and his followers saw shortcomings in reliance on the Inward Light in part because those who endorse it seemed happy to tolerate the abhorrent practice of slavery.

So far as I can see, none of the 17th century Quaker opponents of slavery are mentioned in Britain's Quaker Faith and Practice. Their words aren't quoted. Those enslaved and "owned" by Quakers are not named and their views and insights aren't reported. There's a lot of emphasis on later Quakers who spoke about slavery (though not yet the embarrassing Benjamin Lay). There's little acknowledgement of such groups as the Sons of Africa who worked with them on their campaigns.

This does still matter. It's partly a matter of being honest about the history of Quakers instead of serving up a sentimentalised and dishonest version. But it's also because, if we really believed in equality, we wouldn't just be looking for ways to defend William Penn and other early Quaker enslavers. We'd be giving weight to the experiences of those who Penn and other Quakers enslaved, who suffered terribly and who were just as fully human as their Quaker "owners." 

If we can't acknowledge the equality of all in the past, what chance do we have of seeing all as equal or of working for equality today?