I hear America singing, the varied lamentations I hear. I hear America singing, sorrowful dirges, Singing for the carpenter yanked from his car, Singing for the waitress whisked out the back door, Singing for the campesino dragged out of the field. I hear America singing the song of deportees.
I hear America singing, the varied lamentations I hear. I hear America singing, atonal wailing, Singing for children packed onto airplanes, Singing for women in cells with open toilets, Singing for students who no longer dare dream, I hear America singing the song of deportees.
I hear America singing, the varied lamentations I hear. I hear America singing, keening and sobbing, Singing for the shop keeper taken from her bodega, Singing for the refugee hiding in a warehouse, Singing for the dark men flown to far prisons. I hear America singing the song of deportees.
I hear America singing, the varied lamentations I hear. I hear America singing, mewling in her sleep, Crying for her children set down in a strange land, Crying for old men forever in exile, Crying for mothers who can’t feed their babies. I hear America singing the song of deportees.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita, So long Jean Louis, Alim, Emmanuella Farewell Yasmin, Noor and Amina, Don’t go, Baghish, Esin and Ariana, Please stay, Borislav, Alina and Dimitri, We’ll miss you Minjun, Kwan and Dasom.
Listen now as we sing your names, Sing the names of our dear deportees.
She was seven, too young to lose one parent and be taken from the other. Her name was Abigail. We know about her became Silas Dean, longtime town clerk and church deacon, wrote about her indenture in A Brief History of the Town of Stoneham, published in 1870.
Abigail’s father was Daniel Connery. He lived, according to Dean, in a house “for a long time called Connery’s Den,” the lair of, among other things, Dean comments wryly, “lion rum.”
Daniel died in or before 1776, although his death is not listed in town records. For the family, losing the breadwinner put them in grave peril. There was no safety net then, and the almshouse on Elm Street wouldn’t open until the next century.
Abigail’s mother is not named by Dean, nor is she named in the indenture agreement. She was most likely Elisabeth Phillips of Lynn, married in 1763 to Daniel Connery, as recorded in both towns.
I can only imagine what it must have been like for her, as on May 6, 1776, she prepared to deliver her seven-year-old for indentured service. Was she there as the five selectmen and two justices of the peace signed the legal papers? Did she accompany her daughter to her new family?
So it was that on this spring day Agibail was placed and bound “to Jonathan Green . . . and his wife . . . to learn to spin, knit and sew” and “after the manner of an apprentice to serve for the term of 10 years, 11 months, and 27 days” until she turns 18 (modernized spelling and capitalization.)
Although the document doesn’t specify which Jonathan Green is named—Captain Jonathan Green or his son of the same name—it’s reasonable to assume it is the elder, one of Stoneham’s most prominent and prosperous citizens. A fourth generation of Greens that arrived from England in the 17th century, Captain Jonathan Green was for many years town clerk and treasurer. For 20 years he was a selectman. He commanded a company of militia, and he owned slaves. An inventory of his possessions in 1761 includes, along with 3 horses, 6 oxen, 9 cows, and 20 sheep, “2 servants for life.”
Jonathan’s wife was Rebecca Bucknam, whom he married in 1749 after two previous wives had died. In the home would have been one son, Jesse, 13, and perhaps daughters Sarah, 18, and Rebecca, 21.
As we read the indenture document, it’s important to note its transactional terms. Both parties—the family and the indentured person—will get something. Likewise, each has obligations.
First, Abigail is obligated to serve her master and mistress faithfully and their “lawful commands gladly everywhere obey.” She must also keep their secrets. Today, we call that a nondisclosure agreement. Further, she must do no damage to them or their home or waste their goods. And she must not leave the premises without their consent.
Abigail is also to commit no fornication or enter into matrimony. Also, she must refrain from playing cards or dice. Finally, she must not “haunt ale houses taverns or playhouses, but in all things behave herself as a faithful apprentice ought.”
On the other side, Captain Green and his wife “hereby covenant and promise to teach and instruct … in the art of spinning, knitting and sewing.” They must also provide “sufficient meat, drink, washing and lodging both in sickness and health.” They are also required to teach her to read, although nothing is said about writing or mathematics.
These terms extend through the 11-year-term. Then, when Abigail turns 18, they must give her what were known as “freedom suits.” In this case, “two suits of apparel both wool and linen, fitting for all parts of her body”—one suit for work days and the other for “the Lord’s day.”
As in England, indenture was common in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, involving children as well as adults. Records show that between 1735 and 1805, over 1,400 children were bound over as indentured servants. Hundreds were below the age of 10 and three dozen below the age of 5. Poor, abandoned, orphaned or illegitimate, they would grow up in the households of better-off families. They would eat at their table, take on chores, and assist in the business of the home. The most fortunate would learn a trade, or, in the case of girls reaching adulthood, find someone to marry.
What happened to Abigail we don’t know. Her name doesn’t show up in any other town records. Was she treated well? Did she complete her indenture, perhaps become a seamstress? Did she marry and move away? Thinking of her, I think of my daughter and granddaughter at that age. It must have been heartbreaking for Abigail and her mother.
Nor do we know any more of Elisabeth Connery. Her name doesn’t appear again in either Stoneham or Lynn vital statistics. Did she visit her daughter from time to time? Did she move away.
Meanwhile, Abigail would have grown up in the new Republic, as Massachusetts went from a colony to statehood. What would the changes sweeping through society have meant to her? I only wish we knew more.
Notes:
I found only one reference to indentured service involving an adult in Stoneham. In the 1746 probate inventory of the late Rev. James Osgood’s possessions is this line: “a white servant for a term £25.” The unnamed servant must have had time left on his or her indentured service, valued at 25 pounds. With this entry was also “a Negro woman £70.” She had been purchased by the minister in 1744 and was “a servant for life.”
There is also reference made to the indenture of one of Stoneham’s early settlers, Patrick Hay. Silas Dean tells of a young Scottsman who fled his apprenticeship in Edinburgh, boarded a ship to Salem, then was again indentured “for six or seven years” to a Lynnfield farmer to pay for his passage. Completing his term, he came to Stoneham “with his axe and gun” to clear land for a homestead.
Ben Jacques is the author of In Graves Unmarked: Slavery and Abolition in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and If the Shoe Fits: Stories of Stoneham, Then & Now.
Our President is attacking the Smithsonian for its portrayal of slavery. He wants exhibits that show the horrors of slavery taken down. We don’t want our children to get the wrong idea.
It reminds me of comments I heard in the ‘60s. Comments like, most slave owners treated their slaves like family. Or, slaves benefited from slavery because they could learn a trade—a viewpoint recently written into the Florida public schools curriculum.
Which brings me to a document that surfaced this summer in the Stoneham Public Library titled “A History of the Black in Stoneham.” Written in 1969, it was published in the Stoneham Independent.
Disregarding the awkward reference to “the Black,” the reader is left with the impression that slavery was not so bad.
The article covers three periods, Colonial, pre-Civil War, and modern, and provides much good information. But it starts to break down when it compares slavery to indentured servitude, implying little difference. The authors failed to distinguish between the contractual—and finite–obligations of the indentured person and the ownership in perpetuity of slaves and their offspring. In other words, barring exceptional actions by their owners, enslaved men, women and children labored with no rights and no expectation of freedom. They were chattel.
That hopelessness is expressed in the will of one slave owner: “I bequeath unto my son … one negro woman named Fanny and her children now in his possession and one Negro man named Harry and all their increase to him and his heirs forever.”
A few of the article’s statements about enslaved people in Stoneham can only be described as absurd, like this one: “They were all shoemakers and they laid stone walls, but none was exploited!” And another: “Conditions must have been good because free blacks settled here.”
As we celebrate three hundred years of our history, it’s important to understand the role slavery played in Stoneham. It’s important to know that apart from how individuals were treated and the degree of physical trauma or deprivation they endured, they would have suffered deep and lasting psychological wounds.
Some basic facts. From the colonial period, we have records of some three dozen enslaved men, women and children in Stoneham. Named and unnamed, they show up in church and town records, wills and inventories. Like a “Negro woman and her children” mentioned in Daniel Green’s will. Like the 8-year-old “Mulatto Negro” purchased by James Hay in 1744.
Like “a Negro named Cato, the son of Simon, a Negro servant of Deacon Green,” or a maid named Dinah, owned by the school teacher William Toler.
Like a woman named Phebe, purchased that same year for 75 British pounds by the Rev. James Osgood, and listed along with his house furnishings after his death as simply, “a Negro Woman—70 £.”
Like Jack Thare, 40, “a servant of Joseph Bryant, Jr.,” one of six free or enslaved Black men from Stoneham who fought at Bunker Hill. When Jack failed to return from his enlistment, his master posted a fugitive want ad. Here’s what it said:
Ran away from the subscriber on the 24th of February, a Negro fellow, named Jack, of a — stature, has lost his upper teeth; had on when he went away, a blue coat, with large white buttons. Whoever will take up said Negro, and convey him to the subscriber in Stoneham, shall have three dollars reward. Joseph Bryant, Jr.
The 1969 article on Blacks in Stoneham was published the year I graduated from college. Our nation was still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We were being challenged to examine not only our actions and prejudices, but a long history of subjugation and dehumanization of Black people.
As we celebrate our Tricentennial, let’s look honestly at our history. The value of doing so is that it will affect who we will become. By insisting that we tell the truth about our past, we commit to embracing the full humanity of all those around us.
The question, posed long ago by Walt Whitman, is still fresh in my mind. It’s a line from “Song for Occupations,” Whitman’s ode to the working class, published in 1855. In intimate conversation with the reader, the poet is clarifying what is of most value in our lives.
The question resonates today as then. Who among us has not, in a society that values wealth and achievement above all else, felt themself to be less?
I remember asking that question of my students years ago as we sat around a long table at a Massachusetts public college, reading aloud Whitman’s poems. The course was New World Voices, and the bard from Long Island was the foundation.
Whitman was a contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allan Poe, yet his poems are nothing like theirs. He exploded all poetic norms to fashion a new American verse, free verse. He loved the vernacular and the natural rhythms of speech. The pal of workers and prostitutes, fugitives and suffragists, he called for democracy to extend into all aspects of human life, including the home.
When I taught Whitman, we’d begin with “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer.” In this poem, the narrator listens to a lecture on astronomy, but tiring of this, walks out to an open field to gaze directly at the stars.
Next, we would read “Song of Myself,” Whitman’s 52-stanza celebration of being alive, the heart of “Leaves of Grass.” But it was when we came to “Song for Occupations” that I sensed my students most identified with the poet’s words.
In this six-part poem, Whitman catalogs working people in cities and farms — plowers, milkers, millers, ironworkers, glassblowers, sailmakers, cooks, bakers, carpenters, masons, surgeons, and seamstresses.
The poem, published in 1855, is vibrant in detail, cataloging both laborers and their tools.
The pump, the piledriver, the great derrick . . the coalkiln and brickkiln, Ironworks or whiteleadworks . . the sugarhouse . . steam-saws, and the great mills and factories;
The cottonbale . . the stevedore’s hook . . the saw and buck of the sawyer . . the screen of the coalscreener . . the mould of the moulder . . the workingknife of the butcher;
The cylinder press . . the handpress . . the frisket and tympan . . the compositor’s stick and rule
“Why should we care?” I remember asking my students — themselves the sons and daughters of carpenters and electricians, nurses and social workers, teachers and technicians.
After a pause, one young woman answered: “Because it all matters. Our lives and the work we do matters.”
She had, of course, identified the central theme of Whitman’s art: the immeasurable value of each human being, regardless of class, gender, race, religion, or occupation. Aware of society’s prejudices, Whitman returns to this theme again and again.
Is it you then that thought yourself less?
Is it you that thought the President greater than you? Or the rich better off than you? Or the educated wiser than you?
If so, he has an answer:
I bring what you much need, yet always have, / Bring not money or amours or dress or eating . . . . but I bring as good.
It eludes discussion and print, / It is not to be put in a book . . . it is not in this book.
In the cadences of a preacher he continues:
You may read in many languages and read nothing about it; / You may read the President’s message and read nothing about it there: / Nothing in the reports from the state department or treasury department . . . . or in the daily papers or the weekly papers, / Or in the census returns or assessor’s returns or prices current or any accounts of stock.
Today, as then, I can still hear Whitman whisper:
The sum of all known value and respect I add up in you whoever you are; / The President is up there in the White House for you . . . . it is not you who are here for him.
What Whitman offers in this poem is the gift of ourselves and those around us, an acceptance enriched by his democratic vista. In line after line he reminds us that we are, ourselves, the goal of science, art, laws, politics, commerce — and, yes, education.
It’s a good lesson for all, because it affirms what is of most value in a society prone to power mongering and elitism. And it’s a tender reminder that happiness is not tied to wealth, but to other human beings.
Whitman closes “A Song for Occupations” with an elegant affirmation. Praising the singer over the psalm, the preacher over the sermon, the carpenter over the pulpit he carved, he exclaims:
When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince,
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman’s daughter . . . I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women.
Walt Whitman’s voice is good medicine for us today. Wherever we are, in a classroom or on the subway, he calls us to our shared humanity. Open your eyes, he is saying, to those around you, whether engineer or washer woman. And keep a lookout for the smile of the night watchman’s daughter.
Art: Walt Whitman. Steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison. Used as frontispiece in 1855 (1st) edition of Leaves of Grass. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division: //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b29437
Note: This essay was published by the Boston Globe on August 3, 2025.
Do the traits of our ancestors affect who we are today? Does the character of our town still bear the imprint of its founders? When we look at the lives of Stoneham’s early settlers, we see, as historian William B. Stevens calls it, “the best traits of English yeomanry.”
But what does Stevens mean by referring to those who carved out small farms in the hilly terrain north of Charlestown as “yeomen.”
Today, the word has come to mean someone who works hard at a something and is skilled at it, a ground-level worker.
In Chaucer’s medieval England, yeomen were small farmers, foresters and skilled fighters. Historians credit the long bows of English yeomen with turning the tide when the English defeated the French at Agincourt in 1415.
What Stevens is getting at is not far from the original meaning. Silas Dean, whose brief history reaches back to the first settlers, writes of a Scotsman named Hay, who “came over from Lynnfield with his ax and gun.”
What made our 17th century village different is that there were no wealthy settlers, no people of rank, no nobility. There were no massive land grants, or plantations, or any from the top tier of Puritan society. There were also, at first, no slaves. They were farmers and blacksmiths, shoe-makers and weavers.
They included deserters from British ships anchored in the Boston harbor, and some escaping indentured service. They plowed and traded, planted orchards and corn fields. They harvested the abundant cedar trees around Spot Pond, turning them into posts, shingles and clapboards. They built saw mills and grist mills.
Most of the women, as well as the men, knew what to do with a musket. They hunted deer and turkeys, fought Indians and wolves, and drank rum when they could get it, often when they came together to slaughter the pigs, or to build a school or a church. They went to church, religiously.
Stevens writes: “The foundations of Stoneham were laid, not by men of culture or wealth, but by the brawn and courage of laborious yeoman.”
Yet Stevens, an attorney, judge and the grandson of Stoneham’s longest serving minister, the Rev. John H. Stevens, seems to take pride in the town’s humble beginnings.
To bolster his point, he catalogs the possessions of several of the first settlers at their death. I find the details fascinating. He starts with Thomas Cutler, who died in 1683.
He left 25 acres of land and a house valued at 40 pounds; 3 cows, 4 young cattle, 18 pounds; 1 mare, 2 colts, 2 pounds; 10 swine, 40 bushels Indian corn and some rye and oats and barley, 9 pounds and ten shillings; 1 plough and ax and implements for husbandman’s work; 2 beds with bedding; 3 pair sheets with other linen, woolen and flax, 2 pounds, 4 shillings; 5 yards home-made cloth and some yarn, 2 iron pots with iron things and pewter and brass, 2 pounds, 5 shillings; chests and boxes with other usable things in house, 1 pound 10 shillings; wearing clothes, 2 pounds; gun and sword, 1 pound.
After listing the estates of several early settlers, Stevens notes that there were no carriages, no glassware, and only chairs and boxes for furniture. They had no carpets or curtains, watches or clocks. Their staples “were Indian corn, wheat, rye barley and pork, with mutton and beef at intervals, and doubtless veal and lamb now and then.”
They consumed plenty of milk, butter and cheese, but grew few vegetables. They supplemented their diet with meat from wild game. And they planted orchards. Later, when the trees had matured, they harvested the apples. As Stevens notes, “and afterward great quantities of cider were made and consumed.”
With the passing of time, came more comforts of life. In the 18th century personal wealth increased, and in the 19th century, fortunes were made, as the Industrial Revolution brought capitol, mechanization and employment to a town of farmers, traders and shoemakers.
Today, a suburban town of some 23 thousand souls, we celebrate our origins as a community forged by the labor and creativity of hard-working men and women. I like to think that the spirit of our yeoman ancestors is still alive.
Note: Excerpted from If the Shoe Fits: Stories of Stonehan, Then & Now, by Ben Jacques, available at the Book Oasis on Main Street and at the Stoneham Historical Society & Museum.
I guess you could call him an illegal alien. It was sometime in the 17th century, and a British sailor by the name of Hadley had just jumped ship in Boston and high-tailed it inland, looking for a place to hide. The man who found him was a farmer named Gould, one of the first settlers of our town.
A century later town clerk Silas Dean told the story. Dean, also a longtime church deacon, had an ear for stories, and this is how he told it:
A man by the name of Gould . . . on a certain morning during the first settlement of the town, while at his barn at a very early hour, a man approached him, stark naked, and told him he came over to this country on board a war ship. The night previous he had deserted from the ship, and being fearful that his clothes might retard his escape, or the procuring of them cause some alarm, he left the vessel in a state of nudity.
He also stated to Gould that if he would provide him clothes, and afford him means to keep himself secreted till after the vessel left Boston, he would work for him for a sufficient length of time to satisfy him for all the trouble he might be at. The proposal was agreed to, and by this means Hadley took up his abode in this town, and from him all of that name now living in town descended.
This wasn’t the first time desperate sailors sought refuge in Stoneham. In Colonial times, serving in the British navy was no picnic. “Recruits” were often men seized in taverns or sentenced in court to a grueling life at sea.
Silas Dean tells of another deserter, who hid under the floor in a saw mill in Stoneham. British soldiers sent to find him entered the mill and stamped about on the floor, but never discovered him.
Flash forward to the 1830s and we find Stoneham is again a refuge for runaways, this time, runaway slaves. Here we turn to a history of Stoneham written by Marina Memmo in 2010. She writes:
The issue of African slavery divided the town in the 1830s, but by 1850, Stoneham had fully embraced the abolitionist cause. Members of the Congregational Church led the reform. In 1838, Deacon Abijah Bryant, Levi D. Smith and 60 others formed the Stoneham branch of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and Bryant’s home on Main St. became a “station” on the Underground Railroad. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Rev. William C. Whitcomb expressed his outrage in a sermon that was later published. In it, he urged the people to fight for their enslaved brethren, even if it meant suffering and death.
From a village on the outskirts of Colonial civilization to the present, our suburban town has been a place of refuge and opportunity, a place where men and women have come to plant their fields, open their shops, work in the mills, or simply raise their families. They have come from around the world.
Among those who live or work among us today are more recent immigrants, and some of them are living in fear. Whether they lack proper documentation, or have had their legal status revoked, they, like those before them simply need a safe place to live. They want to know that their children won’t be taken from them, and their children know a parent will be there when they come home from school or camp.
You know the stories. You’ve been watching the news. Being true to our history, being true to our best selves, we must protect the rights and humanity of all who live among us.
You came north after the Civil War, a Black man from Norfolk, Virginia, looking for a place to work and raise a family. You chose us, Stoneham, Massachusetts, a shoe-factory town of about 3,500 people just north of Boston.
In Virginia, were you enslaved? I could find no record. I did find that the year after the Emancipation Proclamation you enlisted in the Union Navy and spent a year aboard the USS Ohio. The Ohio was used to blockade Confederate ships along the Carolinas and in Europe.
The USS Ohio
In 1867, two years after the war, you appeared before the Justice of the Peace in Stoneham with your bride, Sarah Cecelia Hill, from Brooklyn. You were 23 and she was 18. With her you would raise five children, three sons and two daughters.
Cabinet card portraits of African Americans from the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. Left: Man with Pipe, circa 1887. Right: Woman in Silk Dress, circa 1888. William L. Clements Library
I don’t know if you were tall or short. I do know you were strong. I found this ad in an old Stoneham Independent: “The services of Charles Cephas stone mason can now be had. He tends to laying pipes, sinking wells, digging cesspools and blasting. ‘He thoroughly understands his business.’”
Remember that summer when people were praying for rain, you made the news when you dug and lined a 35-foot-deep well, a record in Woburn.
Business must have been good, because in 1876 you bought a house on Hancock Street, then moved it over to Albion Avenue on the northwest side of town.
Lining a hand-dug well
For you and the few other African American families, Stoneham was a good place to put down roots. But the soil was rocky, in more ways than one. Getting along in an overwhelmingly white community sometimes meant conflict. Sometimes you were the target. In 1878, as reported in the Independent, five men attacked and beat you and your friend Thomas Shanks.
Another time, when you were walking by the Cogan and Sons shoe factory, from the upstairs window, someone dumped a bucket of white wash on your head. Furious, you stormed into the building demanding to know who the culprit was.
You raised such a fuss that the police were called. But instead of helping to find the offender, the police arrested you and charged you with disturbing the peace.
Another time, faced with arrest after a domestic dispute, you threatened to blow up the police station with dynamite you had in your work bag. Appearing in court the next day you stated you couldn’t remember making such a threat, but if you did, you were sorry. You were fined $10.
1870 U. S. Census showing Charles Cephas, his wife, Sarah, his mother-in-law and two children.
Were there good times? Did you and Sarah get together with other families after church for dinner? Your children would have gone to school in town.
In 1902 the Independent reported the wedding of your son, George, to Carrie Yancey. It was “a very pretty home wedding, performed in the presence of a large company of friends.”
Another time we learn of your son, Ernest, playing hockey on Spot Pond. Earnest would later go to sea, serving in the U.S. Navy during the Spanish American War.
There were painful losses, as the loss of your firstborn son, Charles H. Cephas, age one. Infant deaths were also recorded in 1874 and 1883.
At some point the stresses of life must have crossed over to your marriage. In 1895, after 28 years, your wife petitioned the Middlesex Court for divorce, and it was granted.
Sometime after this, you moved to Chelsea and started working as a stone mason at the Charleston Navy Yard. I couldn’t find any more about you until 1908, when I found this in the Stoneham Independent:
Charles Cephas, colored, passed away Wednesday evening of last week, at the Chelsea Marine hospital, as the result of injuries received by being assaulted as he was coming out of the Charlestown Navy Yard.
The reporter speculated that your killers must have been after your pension money.
Although there was no mention in the Boston papers, I did find a copy of the coroner’s report. It stated the cause of death as “acute fibrinous pneumonia consequent on hemorrhage and laceration of the brain sustained under circumstances unknown, probably those of an accidental fall.” Accidental fall? Really?
After a funeral in Chelsea, they brought you back to Stoneham for burial in the Civil War military section. Was there an honor guard? On Memorial Day I stopped by Lindenwood to pay my respects.
Sometimes I wonder what you would make of our town today. Of our nation. Some things are better. Some not.
Charles Cephas stone in Lindenwood Cemetery in Stoneham
There’s so much that would amaze you. So many stories of African Americans who paved the way in education, music, science, law enforcement, athletics, and business, not only on the national stage, but in our own town, some of them your descendants.
If I tell you about the achievements, however, I also have to mention the set-backs. I have to tell you about George Floyd.
But here’s something to celebrate. Did you know we now celebrate Juneteenth, the date in 1865 when enslaved folk in Texas finally found out they were free?
Mr. Cephas, when I think of you, I think of a man digging wells so families can have water. I think of a stone mason, his hands rough with callouses. I think of a man who had a temper, but who wanted, above all, a safe place to live, work and raise a family. Who deserved more respect than he got.
They love America, but America doesn’t love them back. “They” are the millions of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers facing deportation.
Built by immigrants, America has now turned its back on them, thanks to Donald Trump and his MAGA followers, who for decades have demeaned and dehumanized them, especially those with skin darker than theirs.
Ironically, many immigrants and asylum seekers have come here legally, through government programs granting them the chance to live here in safety. Others, like Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a Milford high school student taken by ICE while on his way to volleyball practice, have grown up among us and know no other life.
Marcelo, who came to the United States from Brazil when he was six, is an honors student. A junior, he plays in the band and would have performed at Sunday’s graduation. According to a friend, he was shackled feet and hands and shoved into a holding cell with 25 older men.
Here’s what’s happening. Trump wants Homeland Security and ICE to roundup 3,000 “illegal” immigrants a day. They haven’t been meeting their quota, though they’ve tried. To make it easier to find bodies to deport, Trump changed the rules. Now a half million immigrants—families, parents and children who were here legally—have had the rug, no, the ground, pulled out from under them.
Fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries, they were granted “humanitarian parole” or “temporary protected status.” They were fingerprinted and documented. By revoking these programs, Trump has made them easy to find.
ICE has also found other easy targets, immigrants who show up at courthouses for hearings. They’ve been nabbed in hallways and stairwells. A judge was arrested and accused of helping one immigrant leave by a back door.
Masked ICE agents are raiding factories and farms, bodegas and restaurants. They are grabbing people off the streets, taking mothers and fathers from children and children from siblings. The word has gone out. No place is safe, including churches, hospitals and schools.
All this is going on while the Trump administration is calling on Americans to have more babies to counter the declining birth rate. He wants more babies, more young families, yet the clear message is that he wants white families, not black or brown. How else to explain the counter-intuitive break-up and deportation of families already here–those who want nothing more than to live in a safe and free country. Those who love America, even if America doesn’t love them back.
If ICE can meet its 3,000 per day quote, over a million of our neighbors will have been arrested and deported this year, one big step towards the deportation of the 15 to 20 million Trump has threatened.
To millions of Americans, sadly, that is a good thing. They voted for someone to do just that. To millions more, however, it is a travesty. It goes against everything they believe in and stand for.
The largest segment of Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 were Christians, especially white Christians. They put Trump in office. They could be the ones, now, to stop him. Leaving their pews, they could pick up the phone, march in the streets, demand an end to the cruelty, whether to our immigrant neighbors, or to the millions of poor who will lose their health insurance if his budget goes through.
Last Friday in an interfaith rally, some 70 clergy did just that. Marching from the Lexington Green to the Boston Common, they protested the cruel treatment of immigrants and international students.
Meanwhile, in Washington, D. C., a group of ministers praying in the Rotunda of the Capitol were cuffed with zip-ties and taken out, arrested for protesting against cuts to Medicaid and the harm it would cause millions. They were led by the Rev. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.
These faith leaders, like the prophets of old, are calling us to action. It’s time we pay attention.
Let’s see if I get this right. The Trump administration wants us to have more babies. What with Covid and a declining birth rate, we need more young people to offset those of us with gray hair. We need them to replenish our communities and pay our bills. Trump recently talked of giving a bonus of $5,000 to each new mother.
At the same time his administration is deporting mothers, fathers, and, yes, babies. He is rounding up immigrants, including those who are paying taxes and contributing to Social Security and Medicare. He is breaking up families.
In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ICE recently took a mother away from her 1-year-old girl and deported her to Cuba, separating them indefinitely. ICE also deported three children ages 2, 4 and 7 along with their mothers to Honduras. The children are U.S. citizens. The 4-year old has a rare form of cancer.
It’s become clear that Trump’s pro-baby, pro-family approach is meant for one type of family, one type of baby–white families and white babies. And that all this talk about encouraging women to give birth and to stay at home to raise their children is rooted in white nationalist ideology.
What is white nationalism? White nationalism is “advocacy of or support for the perceived political interests of the white population within a particular country, especially to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups.”
White nationalism, along with white supremacy, has always been around. It was behind the enslavement of millions of African Americans. It was behind the Chinese Exclusion Act. It was behind the “separate but equal” Supreme Court decision that affirmed racial apartheid in Southern states. It was given new energy with the re-election of Donald Trump.
Consider the makeup of Trump’s cabinet and advisors. Consider his history of demeaning comments and slurs. Consider the attacks on DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion—and the government’s punitive policies directed towards racial and ethnic minorities. Consider Trump’s revoking of “temporary protected status” for asylum seekers from Haiti and Venezuela.
Consider his shutting down of our refugee resettlement program, stranding thousands of already approved refugees from Africa and the Middle East. At the same time, he has put out the welcome mat for Afrikaners in South Africa, whom he claims are victims of “white genocide.”
Last week 59 white South African “refugees” arrived at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D. C. A photo of them shows young families holding babies in their arms. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau told them: “We’re excited to welcome you here to our country where we think you will bloom.”
All this, while Trump denies a haven to black and brown families fleeing famine, war and persecution.
So what do we do about it? First, we need a stop to the deportations of non-violent immigrants—full stop—and the affording of due process to all. And we need a resumption of our long-standing refugee-resettlement program, applied fairly to everyone.
Second, we need immigration reform. For too many decades, we have let Congress off the hook. The last significant immigration reform came during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when millions of immigrants were granted pathways to citizenship. The failure of Congress and past administrations to legislate common-sense reform has victimized millions of our neighbors, who want nothing more than to build lives for their families in a safe and free country.
As for the Administration’s push to have more babies, I say let’s protect the babies we have, and their parents and siblings–refugees, asylum seekers, DACA enrollees, immigrants. They are part of our communities. We need them. Diverse, multi-cultural, hardworking, creative, they, with us, can build an American future based not on white-nationalist ideology, but on equal opportunity for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or religion. A future aligned with our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Ben Jacques Stories 