Hidden Figures: Margaret Garner #BlackHERstoryMonth 3/28 (Patreon)

Hidden Figures: Margaret Garner #BlackHERstoryMonth 3/28

Margaret Garner was born a house slave to the Gaines family of Maplewood plantation, Boone County, Kentucky. Garner often traveled with her masters and even accompanied them on shopping trips to free territories in Cincinnati, Ohio. She married one of her fellow slaves, Robert Garner, in 1849, and that December, the plantation was sold along with all the slaves to John P. Gaines' younger brother, Archibald K. Gaines. The Garners' first child, Thomas, was born early in 1850, and by 1856, Margaret had borne four children. On January 28, 1856, Robert and a pregnant Margaret, together with family members, escaped and fled to Cincinnati, Ohio, along with several other slave families. Robert had stolen his master's horses and sleigh along with his gun. Seventeen people were reported to have been in their party. In the coldest winter in 60 years, the Ohio River had frozen. The group crossed the ice just west of Covington, Kentucky at daybreak, and escaped to Cincinnati, then divided to avoid detection. The Garners made it safely to the home of Joseph Kite, an abolitionist, but while Kite prepared them for their next stop, the Garners’ master, A.K. Gaines, and Federal marshals stormed Kite’s home with warrants for the Garners. Determined not to return to slavery, Margaret decided to take the lives of herself and her children. When the marshals found Margaret in a back room, she had slit her two-year-old daughter’s throat with a butcher knife, killing her. The other children lay on the floor wounded but still alive. The Garners were taken into custody and tried in what became one of the longest fugitive slave trials in history, lasting two weeks when an ordinary runaway slave trial would last a day. The core issue was whether the Garners would be tried as persons, and charged with the murder of their daughter, or tried as property under the Fugitive Slave Law. During the trial, abolitionist and lawyer, John Jolliffe, argued that Margaret’s trips to free territory in Cincinnati entitled her and her children to freedom. Although Jolliffe provided compelling arguments, the judge ruled the Garners’ were property, and returned them to Gaines. Jolliffe appealed the decision, requesting a murder case, and was granted a second trial, but Gaines had relocated the Garners to several different plantations before finally selling them to his brother in Arkansas. Margaret Garner died in 1858 from a typhoid epidemic, never receiving her second trial date. Garner's life story was the basis of Frances Harper's 1859 poem "Slave Mother: A Tale of Ohio". She also inspired Kentucky painter Thomas Satterwhite Noble's 1867 painting, The Modern Medea; as Medea was a woman in Greek mythology who killed her own children. The painting, owned by Cincinnati manufacturer Procter and Gamble Corporation, was presented as a gift to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, where it remains on permanent display. Learning about Margaret Garner's trial and story, Toni Morrison was inspired to write her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved (1987). Years later the Michigan Opera Theatre, Cincinnati Opera and the Opera Company of Philadelphia commissioned the opera Margaret Garner. Morrison wrote the libretto and music was composed by the Grammy-winning Richard Danielpour. Other pieces of fiction inspired by Garner's story include, John Jolliffe's Belle Scott (1856) and K.A. Simpson's A Coven's Lament (2017). #HiddenFigures #MargaretGarner ****************** Merchandise! MAKE SURE U GETTA SHIRT!! https://www.teepublic.com/user/sssseren Follow me on social media! Instagram: @sensei_aishitemasu Personal Tumblr: http://sensei-aishitemasu.tumblr.com Tumblr for my work: https://sssseren.tumblr.com Snapchat: sssseren GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/tc5wh7q Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seren_sensei ****************** Did you know I wrote a book? ☺️ 'So, About That... A Year of Contemporary Essays on Race and Pop Culture' Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/About-That-Contemporary-Essays-Culture-ebook/dp/B013V0CHK6 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013V0CHK6 Digital download (e-book): https://gumroad.com/l/IkUa ****************** Links: Margaret Garner Kills One of Her Children Rather than Permit Her to be Returned to Slavery: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=510 Margaret Garner, Overlooked: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/margaret-garner-overlooked.html The Premiere Performances of Toni Morrison's Libretto: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5000 Margaret Garner: http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Margaret_Garner Margaret Garner: http://library.cincymuseum.org/aag/bio/garner.html Margaret Garner (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Garner MARGARET GARNER INCIDENT (1856): https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/margaret-garner-incident-1856/