Uncategorized – Page 2 – Ben Jacques Stories

When superheroes aren’t enough

Art by Florence and Margaret Hoopes, from The Wonder Story Books –
They Were Brave and Bold – Beowulf .

Denmark needed a superhero. A treacherous monster named Grendel was savaging them at night, slaughtering their best as they bedded in Heorot, the great hall of the king. Thus the stage was set for Beowulf, a brawny prince who crossed the sea from Geatland to rid the Danes of evil.

The prototype of the Western superhero, Beowulf does what neither King Hrothgar nor his warriors can do. He vanquishes both Grendel and the slayer’s vindictive mother, diving into a black sea, writhing with snakes, to bring an end to oppression.

Yet in the end, fifty years later, neither Beowulf’s strength nor courage can protect the people from the evil destroying their cities. It takes the wisdom of a thane, an underling named Wiglaf, to see that it is not enough to have heroes if the people’s hearts have grown cold.

We know the story as the first great epic in our language, not English as we know it, but Anglo-Saxon. Sung then written down around 900 CE, it was crafted by a descendant of the Angle, Saxon, Jute and Frisian invaders who overwhelmed Celtic Britain in the 5^th and 6^th centuries. The translation I like best is by the late Irish poet, Seamus Heaney.

A pagan saga with a Judeo-Christian overlay, Beowulf portrays a world in flux. Most modern tellings focus on our hero’s two great victories in Denmark. By the time we get to Beowulf’s last battle, however, things have changed. In several passages, blending Biblical narrative with a pagan’s rumination on the transitory nature of life, the poet reveals a shift in values.

In Beowulf’s world—as today—men seek gold, weapons and treasure. These give them status. With them, kings and queens gain allegiance, reward subjects and build alliances. Treasure shared holds the community together. Treasure hoarded leads to treachery. Hrothgar showers Beowulf with fine gifts: horses, fine armor “and a sword carried high, that was both precious object and token of honour.”

At the same time the king counsels the young warrior to remember he too is mortal. He warns him against vanity and pride, “an element of overweening” that will lull his soul to sleep and expose him to the enemy.

Pride and the lure of treasure surface again in the final act of the play, as Beowulf, now an old king, goes out to battle a “slick-skinned dragon, threatening the night sky with streamers of fire.” Guardian of an ancient underground barrow, the dragon has been burning farms and villages across Geatland, all in revenge for a jeweled cup stolen from its hoard.

Wanting to protect his people, Beowulf is “too proud to line up with a large army against the sky-plague.” He will face the monster alone, confident he will prevail as he did against Grendel and his mother.

It is not to be. In desperate combat, Beowulf is mortally wounded. His famous sword, Naegling, breaks against the dragon’s scales, and the monster’s teeth penetrate his armor. Beowulf slays the dragon, but only with the help of Wiglaf, a young Geat warrior who could not bear to see his king go into battle alone.

As he is dying. Beowulf asks Wiglaf to gather samples of the dragon’s treasure, so he can feast his eyes on them:

I want to examine
that ancient gold, gaze my fill
on those garnered jewels (2747-9)

But the value of gold, jewels, fine weapons and armor—even the priceless cache found in the dragon’s hoard—is relative. Nowhere is this better expressed than in what happens next. Instead of using the treasure to enrich the kingdom, the Geats heap it onto Beowulf’s funeral pyre. They bury the rest in a great mound on the headland by the sea.

They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure
gold under gravel, gone to earth
as useless to men now as it ever was (3166-8).

Nearing the end of the epic, we sense a turning from sword power to soul power. Valued most highly now is inner strength, not physical prowess. The enemy are no longer dragons and monsters, but human rivals—Swedes to the north and Franks and Frisians to the south.

At Beowulf’s funeral, there is great sorrow, but also great fear:

A Geat woman too sang out in grief;
with hair bound up she unburdened herself
of her worst fears, a wild litany
of nightmare and lament, a nation invaded,
enemies on the rampage, bodies piled up,
slavery and abasement (3150-5).

Wiglaf sees clearly what is to come. In a scathing rebuke, he tells his people they have lost more than a great king. They have lost their heart. It is true—their king chose to go into battle alone. Yet, when his warriors saw him bested by the dragon, they turned and ran.

The tail-turners, ten of them together,
when he needed them most, they had made off (2848-9).
Now, weakened by cowardice, Geatland is ripe for the picking.
So it is goodbye now to all you know and love
on your home ground, the open-handedness
the giving of war-swords. Every one of you
with freeholds of land, our whole nation
will be dispossessed (2884-8).

Wiglaf knows that no amount of treasure, or armaments, will protect a people who are paltry of spirit, who abandon each other in times of peril. More important than gold or brawn is the steel of a person’s heart, which underlies all strength. In a remarkable description of interior growth, Wiglaf reveals the change that occurred in him when he ran to assist his beloved king:

There was little I could do to protect his life
in the heat of the fray, yet I found new strength
Welling up when I went to help him.
Then my sword connected and the deadly assaults
of our foe grew weaker (2877-80).

Wiglaf’s experience has given him insight into the interior world through which a warrior must journey. His wisdom makes our first English epic as relevant to our time as to his.

The Dreamer

What I needed to I named
paid attention to what I couldn’t see
What I couldn’t spare I gave away
My left hand didn’t know

I emptied what needed filling
sang words without notes
counted pebbles in the well
slept until the stars had faces

Who travels slow
will travel far
Who dreams of dying
will wake in joy

So do not grudge me
a coat of colors
I weave together
all I dream

She loves us, she loves us not

She loves us, she loves us not. She loves us, she loves us not. So the petals of the daisy tell the story of America’s love-hate relationship with her immigrant people—homesteaders and refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, those fleeing poverty, war, persecution and famine.

President Donald Trump, aide Stephen Miller, DHS’s Kristi Noem, and ICE tsar Tom Holman are not the first ones in our nation’s history to tilt America against immigrants. Anti-immigrant sentiment has been fanned into flames on and off from our earliest days. Posing as populists, politicians have railed against foreigners “poisoning the blood of our country,” as Trump put it in during his presidential campaign.

Since the first Europeans arrived without visas, and Africans arrived in chains, America has opened doors to newcomers, then shut them, opened, then shut them again. In the 19^th century, we needed workers for our factories and farmers for our prairies. We needed merchants and tradesmen, engineers and inventors. It helped if you were Protestant and white. It wasn’t good if you were Chinese or Irish or Mexican.

Although doors for a while swung open to “your tired, your hungry, your masses yearning to breathe free,” by the 1920s they had all but closed again. Laws approved by Congress in 1917 and 1921 slowed immigration to a trickle, setting quotas based on national origin. These laws and anti-Semitic sentiment kept out thousands of Jews attempting to flee Nazi Germany. Included among them were 907 passengers–men, women and children–aboard the M.S. St. Louis. Refused permission to dock in Miami, the ship turned back to Europe. Some 250 perished in concentration camps.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 preserved a restrictive quota system favoring Europeans, but made an important change. The bill abolished the “alien ineligible to citizenship” category applied to Asians, although it limited the number of those who could qualify.

Deciding who to allow in America is one thing. What to do with those already in is another. The answer has often been harsh. For example, the Chinese and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. For example, the braceros invited in to plant and harvest our crops.

In 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) brought out “Operation Wetback.” Under this federal program, officials used military-like tactics to arrest tens of thousands of immigrants across the country. Caught up in the raids were farm and factory workers, including some American citizens. Deemed unwelcome, they were flown, trucked or shipped across the border.

I was thinking of all this as I sat in a café in Woburn the other night, listening to the stories of three immigrants. From Nicaragua, Turkey and India, they shared stories of their arrival and the challenges and obstacles they faced. As they pursue remarkable careers in science, health care and technology, they are reaching out to others, mentoring and building community.

Above all, they are sharing their love for America. She loves me. She loves me not.

Like many Americans, I am pained by the policies and actions of our government, by the slamming of doors to thousands of refugees who were already been vetted for resettlement. By the ending of legal protections for thousands fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries. By the brutal and cruel tactics of ICE agents as they take parents from children and children from families.

The simple truth is, we need immigrants. We need them, not only for economic reasons, to bring young life to an aging demographic, but for their love ethic.

It’s time to love our immigrants again.

From Scotland with an axe and a gun

Last week we flew home from Edinburgh, and on the seven-hour flight I got to thinking of Patrick Hay, who made a similar journey. Flying now-a-days is no fun, but it certainly is easier than the journey the young Scotsman took by ship more than three and a half centuries ago.

It happened like this. Around 1675, escaping from an apprenticeship in Edinburgh, Hay stole aboard a ship leaving for the New World. Arriving in Salem, Massachusetts, with no means to pay for his passage, he indentured himself again, this time for “six or seven years” to a farmer in Lynnfield, who paid off the captain. After this, Hay came to Stoneham, then a sparsely settled area known as Charleston End. As historian Silas Dean writes, Hay “came over from Lynnfield with his axe and gun.”

Clearing land around Cobble Hill, Hay “stood somewhat in fear of the Indians, although he purchased his land of them, at the rate of two coppers per acre.” Here he built a log house.

A colonial farm in the 18th century. Wood engraving, American, 1853.

From this modest beginning, Hay went on to become one of Stoneham’s most prominent citizens and land owners and one of its most colorful characters. Dean writes: “During his life time he is said to have married no less than five wives. At the last marriage ceremony, (which took place after he was seventy years old) he is said to have displayed his youthful buoyancy, by dancing on the occasion.”

In 1730 Hay was “admitted to full communion” in the First Church of Christ in Stoneham.

William B. Stevens in his History of Stoneham has more to say about Hays. “He must have been a man of great force and character, buying as he did numerous tracks of land, clearing farms, and erecting buildings.”

Stevens continues: “[Patrick] Hay was not only the owner of houses and land and man-servants and maid-servants, but he had a multitude of wives, no less than four. He was one of the first selectmen when the town was organized. After having lived the life of a patriarch, so far as such a life was possible in the eighteenth century, and in Puritan New England, he died at the age of ninety in 1748.”

Not long after Hay arrived, he was instrumental in the establishment of another Stoneham family, the Gerrys. The first Gerry arrived in Boston as a boatswain in the British Royal Navy. While stationed here, Gerry met Hay, who brought him out to Charlestown End.

“Being pleased with the prospect of taking up his residence here, [Gerry] returned to Boston, got permission to return here and live, with the promise that if ever called for to go on an expedition against the enemy, (the French), he must go.”

It was Gerry, Dean writes, who with his axe slew a pack of wolves that attacked him on his return home one night. Finding a bride in Boston, Gerry and his wife raised several children, whose lives played important roles in Stoneham and beyond. Gerry himself, however, being called back into war service, “left his wife and children, never to return; as it is said he fell during an engagement with a foreign enemy.”

The children of Patrick Hay were also major players in the life of our town. James became a well-off shopkeeper, having inherited a 60-acre farm from his father. Another son, Captain Peter Hay, “was one of the most consequential men in Stoneham of his time . . . holding many offices and possessing a considerable estate.”

Like his father and his son, Peter Hay owned slaves.

Much has changed in Stoneham since then. Likewise, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the birthplace of Patrick Hay. Visiting there last week, we found the city eminently beautiful and accommodating. People are friendly and tolerant of our American accents. The modern parliament building stands in striking contrast to the castles and medieval streets of the Old Town.

The glories of the past are still there. So are the centers of education and invention. But I could find no remnants of the harshness that drove so many poor and oppressed to America—that brought a teenager, unhappy with his condition, to find a prosperous and influential life in Stoneham.

Note: Ben Jacques writes about local history in his book, If the Shoe Fits: Stories of Stoneham Then & Now. His articles have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers, including the Boston Globe.

In Graves Unmarked

Memorial placed in the OBG

In autumn the Old Burying Ground in Stoneham changes its colors. Yellow and orange leaves fall about the gravestones of the founders of our town. The Goulds, Greens, Holtens and Hays. The Spragues, Stevens, Richardsons and Wrights.

But beyond the cluster of 18^th and 19^th century stones, there are open areas where no markers disrupt the gentle slope of the earth. Here lie those with no status in early Stoneham. Here are buried the town’s paupers, natives and slaves.

On a recent Saturday, thanks to the Stoneham Historical Commission, Stoneham folk gathered in the Old Burying Ground to remember all those buried in unmarked graves. How many were there? It’s impossible to know, even with radar ground studies. But a scouring of town and church records suggests there were over five hundred.

Who were they, these men and women who, along with our better-off European ancestors, built Stoneham? Who, in the case of slaves, toiled without pay or hope of freedom. Who, in some cases, married, had children and attended church, but were prescribed to the lowest rungs of society?

The first white settlers in Stoneham, then called Charlestown End, arrived in the mid-17^th century, about two decades after English colonists led by John Winthrop founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Not long after, came the slaves.

The earliest record I could find of slaves in the Stoneham area is in Elbridge Goss’ History of Melrose. It appears in a 1653 order from the General Court, stipulating that a slave owned by Job Lane, named Ebedmeleck, must be punished for “stealing victuals and breaking open a window on the Lord’s day.” He shall “be whipt with five stripes.”

In the century before the American Revolution, at least nine families in Stoneham owned slaves, including the Greens, who settled in the eastern and southeastern area of our town. The Green farm, extending from the Melrose line to Pond Street, would be the home of five generations of the Greens. Forty-two Greens would be buried in the Old Burying Ground.

An inventory of Captain Jonathan Green’s possessions in 1761 includes, along with 3 horses, 6 oxen, 9 cows, and 20 sheep, “2 servants for life.”

Jonathan Green’s name also shows up in the indenture contract binding a 7-year-old girl to the Green family for eleven years. My column of September 11 tells her story.

The Rev. Ken McGarry offers dedication prayer for all those buried in unmarked graves in the Old Burying Ground in Stoneham.

Indenture in New England was one way of dealing with poor, illegitimate or otherwise destitute children. If they were fortunate, they learned a trade, or, in the case of young women, found a husband after completing their term. Adults were also indentured, often as house servants. In an inventory of the late town minister, James Osgood, is found, along with his other possessions, one Negro woman and one white servant.

Towns also had poor houses, as did Stoneham, although it was customary for officials to “warn out” paupers coming into town, so they would not become a drain on resources.

The earliest mention of an almshouse in Stoneham is a note by Silas Dean that in 1760 town leaders explored working with Reading and Woburn to establish a “work house,” a place for the poor.

The next reference I found is in William B. Stevens’ History of Stoneham, where he records the 1823 purchase of a farm in northeast Stoneham as a place for the poor. As in communities throughout New England, poor farms were funded by towns and cities at public expense. But they were also working homes for the able bodied who could either farm, cook, do laundry, or work at a trade. Here you might find a widow, a disabled or indigent worker, or an orphan.

As Stoneham’s population increased, a larger facility was needed. In 1852 the town purchased 17 acres on Elm Street and began construction of a new Almshouse. Additional acres were later purchased, and the house was enlarged and a shop added where the shoemakers in the home could work. In 1890 the Stoneham Almshouse had 30 residents. Today, it is our Senior Center.

The Old Burying Ground was also the burial place of Native Americans. We know of two because it made the papers. In February of 1813, ruffians murdered a Penobscot couple that had set up camp by Spot Pond. Their names were Nicholas and Sally Crevay. I tell their story in my book, If the Shoe Fits: Stories of Stoneham, Then & Now.

The next time you visit the Old Burying Ground, pause a moment at the beautifully designed memorial placed there by the Historical Commission. It honors the hundreds buried there in unmarked graves, people who lived among us and helped build our town. As we celebrate our Tricentennial, it’s the right thing to do.

I hear America singing: a lamentation

Where are you, Walt Whitman, Woodie Guthrie?

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.

A Poor Girl Named Abigail

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 17^th 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.

Slavery, the Smithsonian and Stoneham

African slaves first arrive in Boston in 1638

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.

At the Corner of WALK and DON’T WALK

Let’s you and me have a little talk

I’ll meet you at the corner of WALK and DON’T WALK

No need to call me ‘fore you leave

Just have an inclination to believe

We’ll stretch our legs figure out where we’re going

There’ll be a little rappin’ and a little foolin’

But don’t worry our destination’s not far

Cause where we’re going is where we are

That’s right didn’t you know it all along

The journey is a circle so goes the song

The last one to leave is the first to arrive

Take slow steps but lengthen your stride

The start is the end and the end the start

We’re talking now about matters of the heart

So time to put on your walking shoes

We don’t have any time to lose

The road may be rough it may be steep

And you never know who you’re going to meet

The friends you make and the love you show

Will bring you back to all you know

So let’s you and me have a little talk

I’ll meet you at the corner of WALK and DON’T WALK

No need to call me ‘fore you leave

Just have an inclination to believe

The Smile of the Nightwatchman’s Daughter

Is it you then that thought yourself less?

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.