Reparations Service. 2/18/24
Remarks Dick Prouty
As you look around this sanctuary today and take in the wonderfully designed woodwork and stained-glass windows, how many of you are aware that this building was built in large part by the fortunes of families on Cape Ann that earned much of their money in the slave trade?
Over the past seven years, our church, and members of the Rockport UU Church have been steadily working to build a record of the history of Cape Ann Slavery and Abolition from early colonial days up to the Civil War period. It is all there in detail on our Cape Ann Slavery and Abolition website (capeannslavery.org), which includes the record of our churches in the slavery and abolition movements.
We have begun to acknowledge our own ancestors who built a wealth on the backs of slaves, a wealth which still benefits this church and all of us as its members. This church was literally built on the backs of slaves sold in the trade. And why did these local captains and investors stay involved in the trade, especially after it was outlawed by the British in 1808? Why did they risk hanging if caught by a British frigate patrolling the Atlantic to look for vessels with hundreds of Africans under decks?
Greed! It was so much more lucrative than fishing or farming. The greed was widespread.
To learn more about CASAT, I invite you all to a program put on by the Cape Ann Museum on February 24 in the afternoon in the auditorium of the Museum. Jeremy Melvin is the Chair of the Sargent House Board and will lead a dialog with Rev Janet and me and others from the CASAT Board participating. It promises to be a lively event. The Sergeant family was involved in the slave trade and benefited in multiple ways. Judith Sargent ended up being buried on a plantation owned by her family in Mississippi, that owned hundreds of slaves.
I also invite you to the next program of the Cape Ann Museum on the Vessels Project: a project of over this year funded by the Museum. Five women of color, including my daughter Ila, are coming together at MARS quarterly to find a creative way to honor the people of color, many enslaved, who lived on Cape Ann over the last few hundred years. The next Vessels public meeting is Sunday, March 16 at CAM in the afternoon.
It is clearly time for us as a church to begin to repair in some way, the harm to many thousands of slaves, from which all of us have benefited.
What can we do that makes a difference? I have been talking to Reverend Janet for several years about the possibility of our church doing something, to begin to repair the harm, to set the record straight, and to honor the enslaved people who were the victims of this evil that is the shadow that has haunted this country, since its inception. Perhaps a memorial statue on the Green with an inscription of our history with the slave trade, for all to see. Perhaps a book with an apology for our involvement, such as Yale has recently published. Perhaps an annual scholarship to a person of color to attend college or advance their education. To honor the memory of my late wife, Doris, the Doris Prouty Foundation is giving scholarships away annually to young women of color. Perhaps a local campaign to bring an understanding of the history of slavery and the central role it played in the creation of wealth of Cape Ann to the children of our public schools.
If you are interested in getting involved in planning for a reparations project, please see me at coffee hour or email me of your interest. It is time…time to do something substantive and meaningful; long past time, in fact.
Thank you.
