ABSALOM BOSTON!!!! honestly the best of 19th century whaling captains and a man who successfully campaigned to get ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN MASSACHUSETTS INTEGRATED through organising boycotts and petitions in 1845 so that his daughter could get the best possible education!
let’s review his life!!
– his uncle was Prince Boston, who was the first enslaved man in Massachusetts to successfully win a court case for his freedom in 1773. His father Seneca Boston was also born into slavery; his mother, Thankful Micah, was Wampanoag and had probably got that name from surviving the epidemics to that community.
– went to sea age 15 in 1800 and managed to rise to captain (extremely difficult) and also, like, not die. captained the ship Industry with all African-American crew who remembered him so fondly that they WROTE A BALLAD ABOUT HIM. this is a rare level of affection for your captain; also no one died.
– promptly came home to Nantucket, opened a store, and became a community leader, careful investor, and prominent abolitionist alongside Captain Edward Pompey
– his daughter Phebe was denied entrance to high school in 1846, having only been permitted to study at the African Meeting House, a segregated school.
– there had been a protracted struggle over this since 1840 when Eunice Ross was denied entrance to the high school; for one brief moment in 1843 the School Board voted to integrate the schools, only to be immediately voted out and replaced with more racist school board members. Black families began a public boycott of the African Meeting House.
– in 1845 Edward Pompey had submitted a petition of over 100 signatures to the state legislature; a law actually got passed that all children had the right to access public education. but in practice the schools did not
– but it meant that Absalom Boston, who had at considerable personal peril made quite a lot of money at this point, was ready and willing to hire MULTIPLE LAWYERS and file a suit for his daughter Phebe and Eunice Ross
– the Town of Nantucket gave in!! And age 24 Eunice Ross got to start ninth grade
– I HAD NO IDEA PEOPLE WERE ORGANISING LIKE THIS IN 1845
– Absalom Boston everyone!!!!!!!
Mooncustafer 