click HERE for my introduction and Sydney's talk.
In the spring of 1970, I was a freshman sitting in a history class on Duke’s East Campus. Dr. Sydney Nathans was my professor. I sat in his class hoping to draw no attention to myself; to be silent and invisible. Had I known Sydney then as I have come to know him now through these months of email back and forths, I should not have worried so. He is kind, considerate, thoughtful, curious, generous. These qualities have stood him quite well in his work as a historian and author.
The descendants of Mary Walker’s benefactors, Peter & Susan Leslie, found in him someone who was both interested in their family’s stories and worthy of their trust.
The result of his research, the award-winning “To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker” is the first book of a trilogy. It was published in 2012. The second, “A Mind to Stay: White Plantation, Black Homeland” was published in 2017 and focuses on the Cameron Plantation in Alabama and those enslaved sent to work the land. The final book, “Freedom’s Mirage,” is coming out any second now.
The story of St. Matthew’s is intertwined with that of Mary Walker. The founders of our church were members of the Planter class. They represented some of the largest land holdings in the state: Farintosh, Hardscrapple, Somerset Place. There are 22 Camerons buried in our churchyard (the family that owned Mary Walker), 9 Caines, and 13 Collinses. Their sense of entitlement over those they enslaved is shocking in its scope. Hear these words written in Duncan Cameron’s will leaving Mary Walkers family and “all their increase forever” to his two daughters.
Mary Walker didn’t want to belong to anyone; she wanted to be free. She wanted her children to be free; she wanted her grand and great-grandchildren to be free. Lest we think this a long time ago, consider this: My great grandmother, who I knew well as a child, was born the year the Civil War ended, 1865. I, at least, still live in that imaginable stretch of time.
Those planters did plant something. And what they planted and tended still grows though now altered in appearance; it is a growth that needs uprooting. The writing of Sydney Nathans helps expose the human story behind an awful injustice. Between them, those three planter families owned over two thousand souls. Children of God, not chattel. Here is the story of one of them, a woman named Mary Walker.
May her story help us who live, work, and worship on these common grounds. May we plant and tend a different kind of seed. May her story help us nurture Beloved Community.
Please welcome author, scholar, and humanitarian, Dr. Sydney Nathans . . .