In light of how our current presidential campaign has brought up covert & overt racism, it was interesting to visit New Bedford, MA and learn of its historically racially mixed communities. From the little I gleaned, this was in part due to whaling, in another part due to the Quakers. It was news to me that part of the town is a National Park and since I have never gotten all the way through Moby Dick, it had not registered that the town figures in Melville's Masterpiece.
Nor did I remember that it was in New Bedford that Frederick Douglass started to come into his own. This combination of escaped & freed slaves; people from the Portuguese colony of Cape Verde and from the Azores; and the nearby native people from Martha's Vineyard, the Wampanoag, made for a community quite unlike any other of its time. Given the importance of whaling in providing the energy for people to see by and the danger of the pursuit, I was impressed by this part of our history.
1 comment:
fascinating.
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