John Parker, Eliza and the kids

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Monday February 03, 2014 · 4:01 PM PST

2014/02/03 · 16:01

This is a multipart diary based on dozens of sources on the life of John P. Parker. See also part one: "John Parker bought his freedom" and part two: "John Parker: foundry by day, freedom by night."

This book and three patents might have been the only record of John Parker, except people argued about Eliza.

Since 1852, Americans had been arguing about the accuracy of Eliza’s escape. In the 1880s -- sources list 1883, 1884, 1885 and 1886 -- Frank Moody Gregg, a reporter with the Chattanooga news, went hunting for Eliza.

He found …

iampunha

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Sunday February 02, 2014 · 9:07 PM PST

2014/02/02 · 21:07

In 1845, John Parker was newly free from the slavery he had been born into in Virginia. He had been working in foundries and had gotten far better than any white Southerner wanted him to be.

Where now?

Not the slave state of Virginia, where he could be captured and sold even though he was free. Permanent freedom meant living in a free state, so he moved to Indiana.

New Albany? Jeffersonville? You could walk from one to the other in two hours.

Either Indiana town led, one hundred miles away, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Parker was living in 1845. And in Cincinnati, John Parker was first asked to risk his life for another.

iampunha

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Saturday February 01, 2014 · 8:34 PM PST

2014/02/01 · 20:34

Frozen.

Four degrees above zero before dawn one morning.

A foot of snow.

But this was an order to walk, not an invitation, and the face issuing it didn't invite dissent.

John was chained to an old man and fellow slave who tried to keep his spirits up as they walked through snow and cold, wind and desperate loneliness.

One hundred miles. Norfolk to Richmond. But who cared about the names? Mama was gone. Daddy had sold him.

He had the chains freezing his wrists and the old slave trying to warm his heart.

And he was property.

iampunha

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Tuesday January 28, 2014 · 6:26 PM PST

2014/01/28 · 18:26

Undetailed horror opening:

She performed the abortion by candlelight.

Detailed horror opening:

The newly arrived woman had heard of her, fortunately for her life -- but not her unborn child's.

The doctor had arrived two hours after sunset to avoid detection by guards. As her assistant held a candle near the woman's crotch, the doctor looked carefully, then reached in -- without medical instruments -- and performed the abortion.

Humorous opening:

After-the-fact opening:

In the 1980s, if you were a pregnant woman in Israel, you might have made prenatal appointments with the woman once called Gisi doctor. She had gone from performing the most dangerous abortions on the planet to bringing as many children into the world as possible.

iampunha

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Saturday January 25, 2014 · 10:05 PM PST

2014/01/25 · 22:05

Every time we tell these inspiring stories, we also need to put them into context. Maybe X number of slaves escaped on the underground railroad. But how many times that number were killed trying to escape?

— John Chapman Read More

Daddy always told me, 'Do a proper job.'

iampunha

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Friday January 24, 2014 · 7:29 PM PST

2014/01/24 · 19:29

I for one am glad to have you with us.

— OllieGarkey

I am here because of my father.

iampunha

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Thursday January 23, 2014 · 5:21 PM PST

2014/01/23 · 17:21

"WHAT? Phoenix has NO veterans who are homeless?"

Phoenix last month was credited as the first city to end chronic homelessness among military veterans, part of a nationwide push.

Skip to the end for that story, or just go Google -- 's why I quoted that.

And now the beginning I wrote before I happened upon today's happy-tearsiest story:

Probably five minutes before I clicked to publish yesterday's diary, I saw more articles about "the homeless," that homogeneous mass we all know and too many people ignore.

Coincidentally, around this time of year, groups all over the country count how many people in their areas are homeless so money can be either appropriated or fought for on behalf of people whose address is a park bench or a shelter.

I didn't know that event was looming when I wrote Cold. I just ... you see so many pictures from warm showing cold, and what about the people who can't get to the warm and don't have a camera to display the cold?

Today and for the next week or so -- the event has different names in different places, and the counts all seem to be taking place around now -- we will find out roughly how many people in America are homeless, according to the best efforts of the tens of thousands of volunteers who count them.

iampunha

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Wednesday January 22, 2014 · 6:54 PM PST

2014/01/22 · 18:54

I think it is good to be this cold. I think that the majority of us in this country are too comfortable for empathy and although an apartment with walls can never be as cold as outdoors, it gives me a little bit of an idea of what that must be like. It also makes me aware of how quickly ones hands and feet can actually start to hurt due to being cold.

— rubyr Read More

Cold

iampunha

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Tuesday January 21, 2014 · 5:15 PM PST

2014/01/21 · 17:15

This morning, miles from the nation's capital, in a suburb big enough for nearly anyone, I woke up cold. Sometimes the chill outside is just that fierce -- that even with three blankets, I'm a bit cold at 6:15 a.m.

This morning, in capitals across the country and in the smallest towns anyone ever bothered keeping around, men my age who have done more or less than I have woke up colder.

iampunha

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Monday January 20, 2014 · 8:47 PM PST

2014/01/20 · 20:47

I was all set to write an amazing diary on Paul Cuffee, and then amid the research, I happened upon someone beating me to it.

I couldn't be happier. Why?

Because integral to Paul Cuffee's life is that he was black and Indian. And the diarist is as well.

I can talk at some length about my minority status -- I'm part queer, and I have native blood on both sides -- but I can also hide it. Nobody looks at me and sees other. So someone who has that personal history can more usefully discuss it.

iampunha

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Sunday January 19, 2014 · 7:17 PM PST

2014/01/19 · 19:17

I was sixteen in the summer of 1998, and my mother had driven me up the two hours to see Grandmother and Grandfather -- her parents.

They had moved in 1974 to the temperate, pleasantly breezy Eastern Shore after his retirement ended his military career in 1972. So the house they'd bought meant little to her -- probably more to me, since they had a pool (Grandmother played games with us!) and piles of toys and a neat upstairs area suitable for several people to sleep over.

They also had a motorboat, and Grandfather had directed me one summer when I was eleven as I drove it, realizing as he was telling me to go left, then right, then left again, that I was driving a boat -- with him, Grandmother, my mother, my sisters and my brother in it behind me.

iampunha

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Saturday January 18, 2014 · 2:34 PM PST

2014/01/18 · 14:34

First:

I've missed a story in telling this larger story. Her name is Thelma Glass, she died about a year and a half ago, and she was -- your lack of shock is impending -- a teacher.

Second:

Some pictures of media coverage of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Third:

I was wandering around, all innocent like, thinking I had done a reasonably complete service to the less-told elements of the story behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when I got a message from a diarist about a book.

Have you seen this book, he asked. No, I said. And I looked.

And my eyes floated to something horrifying:

It was even illegal for local black newspapers to publicize the protest; in an almost exasperated tone, the law forbade ''publishing or declaring that a boycott ... exists or has existed or is contemplated."

I knew that travel segregation had existed for decades in many places, but these speech prohibitions -- because another law forbade boycotting at all -- told me I had more work to do. Read More

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John Parker, Eliza and the kids

John Parker: foundry by day, freedom by night

John Parker bought his freedom

The life of the mother

Family or freedom

Daddy always told me, 'Do a proper job.'

People count; and, how Phoenix housed every veteran who was homeless

People who are homeless

Cold

Seward's wisdom

Unionville: Grandfather's last story

1891-1907: The Streetcar Boycotts