Thanks to the efforts of the Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman Honorary Host Committee, a monument of Elizabeth Freeman was unveiled Sunday, August 21, 2022 in front of Sheffield’s Old Parish Church. Learn more, see photos from the ceremony, and read my remarks from this joyous event below.
Hello. My name is Gwendolyn VanSant, and I have lived in the Berkshires for three and a half decades by way of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, which is located just up the road. I have raised four children here and am the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of BRIDGE, Berkshire Resources for the Integration of Diverse Groups and Education, a culturally specific organization led by women and people of the global majority dedicated to justice and equity in our workplaces, cultural institutions, schools, and communities.
Thank you Representative Smitty Pignatelli for actualizing your vision for this moment today. I also want to thank you for your invitation to the Elizabeth Freeman Monument’s Host Committee to run the 1781 Elizabeth Freeman Essay Contest.
Elizabeth Freeman was, yes, a formerly enslaved woman, AND she was courageous and wise, a healer and midwife, clearly a deep listener, and she was also an entrepreneur, land, and property owner and an activist in her own right. She held all of those roles and performed all of those functions as a Black woman in the Berkshires in the 18th century. I and my children have been and will forever be inspired by and in awe of her legacy.
For me as a Black woman, today's events symbolize the bittersweet journey of liberation that Americans of African descent have been on for centuries now as well as the insurmountable struggle for peace and shared valuing of our humanity that we find ourselves still engaged in even today. It is a bittersweet acknowledgment that Elizabeth Freeman’s story has been largely understated and untold (if not erased) from our American History. The stories of her life indicate how Elizabeth Freeman embodied the tenets she overheard in the 1780 MA Constitution Article 1 in regards to defending life and liberty, possessing and protecting property, and obtaining safety and happiness as essential and natural rights.
She embodied–and this monument memorializes–the quest for economic freedom and liberated voice for Black people and women alike;
She embodied–and this monument memorializes–the strength of her ancestors and those who continue to follow in her footsteps to endure, stand up, and prevail all at once against sanctioned and carefully constructed systemic racism;
She embodied–and this monument memorializes–the combined resolve, ability, and seeming birthright of a Black American woman to lead us all by example down the path to liberation.
As I stated earlier, I am here today because State Representative Smitty Pignatelli approached me as a member of the Host Committee to steward a project (to develop and curate as an inaugural process) an essay contest between BRIDGE and Southern Berkshire Regional School District. I immediately said yes. I would like for you to hear from one of my reasons why, and then I will briefly summarize our process and vision ahead.
[Student Jaziyah Forte speaks]
The following is an excerpt from her remarks:
While being a part of BRIDGE I've been able to learn about many leaders and groups of color in our Berkshire history through our Berkshire Legends program… One of the leaders I had the opportunity to learn about over the years was Elizabeth Freeman which a lot of you might also known as Mum Bett.
I hope you know who Elizabeth Freeman is by now but, if you don't, I'll tell you who she is and why it is important to see this statue today. She was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. It's important for me personally to see this statue built because it shows how long my culture has been leading and claiming our freedom and how far my culture has come. To be able to see such an important woman standing in the center of Sheffield is truly inspiring. It has inspired my bravery and perseverance as a young Black woman.
Thank you, Jaziyah.
The Host committee, State Rep Pignatelli, and I wanted to engage youth like Jaziyah in this historic event and given the monuments homebase, the steering committee had decided to start with the SBRSD Mt Everett Regional High School this inaugural year. I saw the opportunity for education and engagement, not just of students but family, community, and school. It was so clear that this was an opening to continue our equity and justice work.
Within the last two years–right here where we stand today with Elizabeth Freeman–there was an unresolved hate crime that involved the repeated vandalism of an intersectional Black Lives Matter and Pride sign. Also, I hold close to my heart and spirit that BRIDGE is home and has been home to several youth in southern Berkshire who have suffered derogatory racialized remarks. We seek to provide leadership opportunities for them while providing healing spaces filled with joy, peer support, and also tools/strategies to recognize their internal strengths, affirm their cultural identity and pride, and develop their own pathways to success and thriving.
And THIS essay project afforded us at BRIDGE the unique opportunity to work collaboratively with the school-based educators in a way that would provide each high school student an opportunity to dig deeper with their teachers into the rich history of our local Berkshire Black legend Elizabeth Freeman and relate it to the context of the racialized America we still live in today.
Principal Jesse Carpenter, his faculty, and I developed the inaugural prompts with feedback from fellow Host Committee members; the SBRSD High School Faculty developed and taught lessons through the History and English Language Arts departments; the students attended an assembly presented by our BRIDGE team, sharing our local culturally specific community partner perspective; and then in the Spring… the students got to writing! This just wasn’t a contest, it was an invitation for the entire Mt Everett high school body of students to be empowered and equipped as ambassadors in their homes, school, and community on the significance of this Elizabeth Freeman monument in our Berkshire community today.
Over the summer, the work continued as I recruited an essay review team and developed the initial rubric and then… our intergenerational, diverse review team (listed in your program) set out scoring the 100+ essays anonymously in pairs. With support of the rubric and engaged discussion, our pool became 30 essays. Following that, a subset of the essay review team developed the second rubric that rendered a pool of 16 finalists to review of which the top three emerged along with a runner up. It was a dynamic, fun, and collaborative process! You will hear the first prize winner’s essay today and the finalists are listed in your program. All of the winning essays will be posted on the Sheffield Historical Society website.
The sum total of prizes given today is $1,781 in honor of Elizabeth Freeman’s year of emancipation. Today's awards were donated by the Wright Family of Sheffield.
In closing we, as the Host Committee with our State Rep, have raised enough money to have this be an ongoing essay contest that renders at least three sets of award winners with scholarships along the Upper Housatonic African American Trail, including all of our Berkshire County Schools in perpetuity. This project will expand AND our inaugural 1781 Essay Review Committee will support developing the review teams and process next year.
I am filled with anticipation to witness this unveiling of the Elizabeth Freeman Monument today and to know that here Elizabeth Freeman will stand for more than that minute she dreamt of and won in the year 1781!
I am sure that we will hear this quote many times today, but it is so important to hear it over and over again. And so I close with the words of Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman (if you will close your eyes or lower your gaze and take three deep breaths through this brief meditation):
“If one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God's airth a free woman—I would.”
And now to hear from our first place prize winner, Anouk Bizailion… Congratulations!