(soft piano music)
Long before the revolution, Africans and people of African
descent hated being enslaved and fought for their freedom.
Then, in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, colonists
started arguing over their rights to liberty from what they
saw as an oppressive government. And enslaved people listened.
They watched as colonists protested and resisted by
breaking British laws, and they understood how the ideas of
freedom and equality apply to their own lives.
My name is Maryann Zujewski. I'm a park ranger at Salem Maritime
National Historic site. Today we're going to examine some
primary source documents to answer the question, how did
enslaved people shape the American Revolution?
Let's dive deeper into this history with the stories of two
men named Richard Derby and Obed.
Richard Derby was a well known citizen, merchant and shipowner
in Salem.
In 1768, he joined a mob of Salem colonists attacking Thomas
Row, also a Salem man whose job was working for the British
Customs Service.
The group included merchants heavily involved in the West
Indies trade who joined together to protest the Sugar Act, a law
requiring colonists to pay taxes on imported sugar and molasses.
Richard Derby was identified at the head of the mob, as recorded
in this witness affidavit.
The patriots tied Thomas Row to a tree and covered him in warm
tar and feathers before beating him and banishing him from town.
The attack was similar to other protests across New England,
like a 1774 Boston tarring and feathering illustrated here. In
other primary source documents we find evidence that Richard
Derby enslaved at least six people in his lifetime.
And six years after he protested the Sugar Act, one of these
enslaved men, Obed, found his own way to resist oppressive
rule by emancipating himself from slavery.
In 1774, Richard Derby placed this sign in Salem announcing
Obed's escape. It reads in part, Ran away from the subscriber
last Saturday, a man named Obed, about 25 years old. Whoever will
take him up and secure him or return him to his master, she'll
have three dollars reward, all necessary charges paid.
Obed likely lived in Richard Derby's house or somewhere on
his property here on Derby Street. But the broadside
mentions he was born in Cohasset, a Massachusetts town
southeast of Boston.
From the Cohasset vital records seen on this typed page, we know
Obed's father's name was Joe, his mother's Phyllis, and that
he was baptized on August 28th, 1748.
We know Obed had an older brother, Asher, that his
grandmother's name was Jane, and that both his grandmother and
his mother were enslaved by a man named Joseph Bates.
There's no existing illustration of Obed like there is of Richard
Derby. We don't know how old he was when he was taken from his
parents and forcibly moved to Salem. We don't know when he
first understood that he would be treated as property.
But we do know he participated in a powerful protest by freeing
himself from slavery.
Just like Richard Derby found a way to resist British rule, Obed
found a way to challenge the control of his enslaver and
break down a system of injustice.
The ideas of freedom and equality enshrined in the
Declaration of Independence just two years after Obed's escape
were not meant to extend to people other than land owning
white men. But advertisements like the one announcing Obed's
escape frequently appeared in revolutionary era newspapers
like the one seen here. These men and women, adults and
children, refused bondage and abolished the practice of
slavery in their own lives.
They fundamentally shaped the revolutionary period in
Massachusetts by making the ideals of freedom and equality
true for African people and people of African descent.
(soft piano music)