Devo, Florida Ruffin Ridley and "obscurity"

                                          

 

Interesting. Over at Facebook BHS 1971 some of my classmates say Florida Ruffin Ridley was “obscure" and only chosen to be "politically correct."  Obscurity?  Don't get me started!  Edward Devotion was and is not exactly a "household word" as we said back in the day. One could easily support the argument the Devotion name was tacked onto a school to be subservient to political and economically powerful folks which is another way to be "politically correct."  Edward Devotion is only known and honored for having accumulated a fortune. Full stop. His wealth, like most settlers of his time, was founded on land and wage theft. From whom did he “purchase” his large estate in 1645? And, on whose backs did he build his fortune? Native Americans, enslaved Africans and indentured servants?   Gonna send a big "slow clap" to his descendants for not wasting and then donating a portion his ill-gotten gains to education and the common good.  And I’ll send a raspberry to the Devotion family for insisting on getting name credit.

It puzzles me, as a descendent of later immigrants, some of whom who came to the US to escape brutal serf-like servitude in the Southern Italy why my co-ethnics or other descendants of vicious, violent anti-semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe would want to celebrate Edward Devotion? What exactly are we, grandchildren of immigrants, clinging to? Trying to fit in with the winners?  Around the same time the Devotion school was named, 11 Italian Americans were lynched in Louisiana.  As author Chinua Achebe  said — 'Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.' More recently, in  May, then Attorney General Bill Barr gave his take to CBS reporter Catherine Herridge about  the “historical perspective” of his dismissal of all charges against former national security advisor Michael Flynn.  Barr responded, “Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.” Florida Ruffin Ridley is an “obscure” name to us because our history has been written by the “winners.” What we are witnessing is a long overdue change in “the game” and I for one think it is a change for the better of us all.

What we name things is historically quirky and definitely lopsided. Definitely we tend to name things after rich and white men.  Let’s looks at the non-controversial naming of the Tobin Bridge so named for Maurice Joseph Tobin who was a Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, the Governor of Massachusetts, and United States Secretary of Labor. He was a Democrat and a liberal who supported the New Deal and Fair Deal programs, and was outspoken in his support for labor unions.  How about the Callahan Tunnel, named for the son of Mass pike chairman William F. Callahan, who was killed in Italy days before the end of World War II?  Compare these norms with the more recent brouhaha over the Zakim Bridge. The bridge's full name commemorates Boston area leader and civil rights activist Leonard P. Zakim who championed "building bridges between peoples." But my Irish co-ethnics and some neo-Nazis in Charlestown pitched a fit over the name. Why? One wonders. Yet there was nary a peep over the Tip O’Neill Tunnel or the tunnel named after the former Red Sox legend Ted Williams. 

My Devo friends may argue that my lack of feeling about tradition comes from the fact that I went to Lawrence School. Fair enough. And who is the Lawrence School named after ? Amos Adams Lawrence (July 31, 1814 – August 22, 1886) an American businessman, philanthropist, and social activist. He was a key figure in the United States abolitionist movement in the years leading up to the Civil War and the growth of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts. He was instrumental in the establishment of the University of Kansas and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.. Well, I didn't know much about Amos Lawrence except I like his bio a bit better than Edward "Devo's."  Especially his part in Abolitionism and the Civil War according to Wikipedia"

Lawrence credited the Anthony Burns affair in the spring of 1854 with radicalizing him and other cotton merchants on the issue of slavery: "[W]e went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs & waked up stark mad Abolitionists."[6] Lawrence contributed large amounts of capital to the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company and funds for the colonization of free negroes in Liberia.[7] He donated guns, specifically Sharps rifles, which were shipped to Jayhawkers and abolitionists in Kansas as "books" and "primers." During the bloodshed in Kansas, Lawrence wrote frequently to his cousin President Franklin Pierce on behalf of the free-state settlers.

He also provided funds for the activism and legal defense of John Brown, though he deplored Brown's fanaticism and urged against violent resistance to the federal government. When Brown was arrested at Harpers Ferry, Lawrence appealed to the Governor of Virginia to secure a lawful trial.[7]In 1862, he raised a battalion of cavalry which became the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, of which Charles Russell Lowell was colonel.[7]

Amos A. Lawrence

But let's not devolve into a "Our dead white guy was more woke than your dead white guy" battle. Let's stay focused and carefully compare Ms. Ruffin Ridley and Edward Devotion.

ICYMI

Florida Ruffin Ridley (born Florida Yates Ruffin; January 29, 1861 – February 25, 1943)[1] was an African-American civil rights activist, suffragist, teacher, writer, and editor from Boston, Massachusetts. She was one of the first black public school teachers in Boston, and edited the Woman's Era, the country's first newspaper published by and for African-American women. With her husband she moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1896, where they may have been the town's first African-American homeowners. Ridley was one of the founders of the Second Unitarian Church in Brookline which since 1944 has been home to Temple Sinai at Charles and Sewall Ave.

Edward Devotion (1621-85) settled in Brookline around 1645. At that time, Brookline was a farming community known as Muddy River. Devotion's acreage along Harvard Street included apple orchards and pastureland for sheep and cattle. His grandson,* also Edward Devotion, left a bequest to the town for public schooling in his 1744 will. (This second Edward Devotion was a slave-owner; an accounting of his possessions at his death included “one Negrow” valued at £30.) The Edward Devotion School, which today surrounds the house on three sides, was named for him in 1892 in recognition of his earlier bequest for a school.

There are 11 public schools in Brookline and now 2 are named after a woman. One is the Edith C. Baker school. Try as I might, and I am a prodigious googler, I can find zero biographical material about Edith C. Baker.  The one citation and siting online is the  http://brooklinehistoricalsociety.org/history/proceedings/1927/1927.html “We welcome the new members of 1926. Our member, Mrs. Edith C. Baker, has become a life member this year…”  Has Edith Baker another woman been erased from history? That is quite likely. But Baker's relative “obscurity” hasn’t caused any stirs that I have heard.   

Now, 100 years after women "won" the right to vote, progressive Brookline has two schools honoring women in their names. Again, I offer a slow clap for that.  One was an accomplished African-American who lived and contributed to civic life in Brookline and did all this at a time when Black people were excluded from opportunity and under attack in every realm. She is certainly worthy of honor.  This mother of 4 daughters, Irish-Italian American granddaughter of immigrants can’t help but notice and call attention to a clear pattern of exclusion and lack of diversity in our naming norms. So, I am delighted to honor people like Florida Ruffin Ridley, who, with energy and personal sacrifice, started the movements that made it possible for me, my beloved colleagues of color and our daughters to enjoy greater equity, dignity and inclusion.