Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. In this episode of our great work series, I want to take a look at a really short work, but something that I think is extremely valuable for a couple reasons. It is the narrative of Sojourner Truth, and it was written, I believe, the year 1850. So just ten years about before the the beginning of the civil war. So one of the the reasons that I think that this is important is because we get to hear another voice.

Derek: 01:02

I think we've had Douglas in here in this great work series, but we get to hear another work here from somebody who had been raised under the system of slavery and just brutal violent oppression. So to hear somebody who has experienced and witnessed and still lived under, in a nation where such atrocious violence was continuing and yet be a pacifist. But second, I think I like this piece, because we know what ended up happening to Sojourner Truth's pacifism. It ended up going away just like Douglas's did when the civil war came. And that's something interesting.

Derek: 01:48

I'll I'll expound on that a little bit more at the end. But it it's something that just shows the complexity of holding to these sorts of convictions. You know, there's always the accusation that, well, you're just being an idealist when you're a pacifist, and it doesn't work in the real world. And you've got people like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass that and plenty of others like Garrison and and such, a lot of people during the civil war who end up throwing that off. Right?

Derek: 02:15

So is it idealism? And I've always asked the question myself, if my family was confronted with gratuitous evil with somebody coming in to seek to do my family harm, would I really maintain my pacifist convictions? And that's really difficult to to know how you'd respond when you have the opportunity to fight violence with violence when you think that you can overcome it. And so this is this is a work that adds the complexity of that sort of discussion. So here it is, an excerpt from the narrative of Sojourner Truth.

Derek: 02:57

At a meeting in New Lisbon, Sojourner Truth interested an audience in New Lisbon, Ohio at the Methodist Episcopal Church for nearly an hour talking of slavery in this country and the suffering and injustice inseparable from it. If Ernest Ness' eloquence, she has a just claim to that appellation, for she makes some powerful appeals which cannot but strike a chord of sympathy in every human heart. She sang the following original song at the close of the meeting. I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race who dwell in freedom's boasted land with no abiding place. I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored, for they have long been toiling and yet have no reward.

Derek: 03:41

They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield, although both late and early, they labor in the field. Whilst I bear upon my body the scars of many a gash, I am pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash. I am pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair upon the hated auction block and see their children there. I feel for those in bondage. Well, may I feel for them.

Derek: 04:08

I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men. Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt, I still would have them live. For I have learned of Jesus to suffer and forgive. I want no carnal weapons, no engineery of death, for I love not to hear the sound of war's tempestuous breath. I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife.

Derek: 04:33

I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life. But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam, I would ask you to remember your own oppressed at home. I plead with you to sympathize with sighs and groans and scars, and note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars. And that's that's really powerful, especially those those three stanzas. Yet those oppressed steeped in guilt, I still would have them live, for I've learned of Jesus to suffer and forgive.

Derek: 05:05

I want no carnal weapons, no engineery of death, for I love not to hear the sound of war's tempestuous breath. I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife. I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life. So I'm not exactly sure how much Sojourner Truth was engaged in the civil war. I believe she recruited some people, individuals to the Union Army, so she was at least complicit in that way.

Derek: 05:32

And like I said, a lot of people during this time, they saw that slavery wasn't ending, the South was digging in more states, you know, half of the states that were coming to the Union were going to be slave holding states, so the slave holding states were expanding. There's just there's a lot going on there, and there was an opportunity to overpower that, and they did. And that is good in its own way that that happened. Yet, you've got other people like Aiden Balu and and some others who held to their nonviolence. And that's a difficult thing to know, you know, to in retrospect, to know that slavery was ended in part through violence.

Derek: 06:22

It makes it easy to say, well, look, those pacifists were wrong, right? Obviously, force was needed to to end that, Even though it wasn't force that was needed to end it in the British Empire, right? What would it have looked like to wait twenty more years maybe and have British boycotts or whatever else and pressure exerted from from without. We know that all of the other countries ended official slavery. I think Cuba is one of the or Brazil was one of the last ones.

Derek: 06:54

In our episode on Haiti, we discussed that a little bit. But essentially, everybody ended up within the next fifty years ending slavery, and so could we have done that without sacrificing, what, a million lives? I don't know how many were were killed in the civil war. So, yeah, there's there's really a lot to think about in that. But then on the other hand, you have things like CRT, which again, I don't agree with their solutions, and I don't think that replacing the oppressor with a new oppressor, like somebody else who's going to wield power and domineer, I don't think that that's the answer.

Derek: 07:33

But CRT really does a great job of of saying, hey, look, you guys are all positive about the civil war ending slavery and all this. It didn't really end slavery. And what do you think sharecropping was? You read books like The Warmth of Other Suns, and I think that goes all the way up through like the the thirties or so. And you're like, oh, man.

Derek: 07:55

I didn't realize that these sharecroppers, they were trapped into that system and even attempting to migrate. Like, you attempted to leave your your town, that could be deadly. Like, you don't you don't leave the system. And so there there was not de jure slavery, but there was de facto slavery in the South. What was Jim Crow?

Derek: 08:19

Okay. It's better than slavery to an extent. Right? You don't you don't have a a master who can tell you per se what to do. But who are you working for?

Derek: 08:28

You're probably working for some white guy who's basically a master. You're getting paid not a living wage, so it's basically like you're on a plantation. You get forced into ghettos, which is basically slave quarters. Your your men get lynched because now you've got the rise of the KKK who's trying to keep them in their places now, at least if they're on a plantation, you know, you know your place. But now you've got the KKK who's kind of making sure like, nope, we gotta make sure that you know that things are still the same.

Derek: 09:04

So did the civil war really do that much? In one sense, sure. But in another sense, really just masked continued slavery and injustice. This violence that they thought was going to end things didn't end things, and it exacerbated problems and violence in certain ways. So I don't think the civil war gets you gets you what everybody thought it was gonna get you or what people still think it got you, And and it's all hypotheticals to say what would have happened if nonviolence if people would have clung to their nonviolence.

Derek: 09:42

So this is a a great piece because it shows you that clinging to nonviolence is hard. When you when push comes to shove, it's extremely tempting to take to take the route of power. But we get a glimpse at Sojourner Truth here, and what her heart was like when she didn't recognize that power was within her grasp, when she recognized the the love of enemy. And I don't know if that love for enemy ever went away and and to what extent she was complicit, but, you know, you can you can sympathize with that. You can empathize with that, and it's tough.

Derek: 10:25

So I hope you enjoyed this the complexity of this piece and this discussion, and there are lots of of other pieces you can go listen to Frederick Douglass' I forget the the title of that one, but the work we read from Frederick Douglass towards the beginning of this season, and some of our discussions throughout the various seasons on on CRT and race and such. That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.