Rodney French is more than the second major bus stop for the inbound South Coast Regional Transit Authorities 201 bus to Fort Rodman in the city of New Bedford. He was an American abolitionist, politician, merchant, and eventually the Mayor there. He was the person who first hired the unknown Frederick Douglass, newly arrived in 1838, after having helped begin the New Bedford Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society two years earlier. He hired Douglass to work as a caulker on one of his ships, but Frederick decided to turn it down because the White workers said they would quit.
In 1843, French was appointed Collector of Customs for the Port of New Bedford by President John Tyler, but that was rescinded when Tyler found out that he was a vocal opponent of slavery.
He got the people of the city to include the use of physical force against bounty hunters when proposing it be included in permitted approaches at a meeting of the city’s abolitionists and freed blacks where the majority supported it in spite of violence not being favored by the Quakers of the time.
He submitted a petition to US. Representative Horace Mann bearing the signatures of 1,729 New Bedford women demanding the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, and was such a strong abolitionist that he was seen as a major leader and his ships were boycotted at Southern ports.
His biggest claim to fame, however, or at least the one for which most people have come to know him, was when the Fugitive Slave law of 1850 was passed.
When he heard of a possible raid on the town of New Bedford by United States Marshals to search for self-emancipated people, and perhaps throw in a few just because, and observing an unfamiliar ship entering the harbor while he, as a merchant in the city who owned ships, was familiar with what ships should be arriving and leaving, he went to Liberty Hall in the center of town and rang its bell to get people to look around for the reason of an unexpected ringing which would have people see that ship as the town still had a clear view of the harbor, to warn local African-Americans.
That building burned down later and was replaced with a stone building with a plaque containing a piece of the bell that melted in that fire.
Although Bristol County, and more specifically New Bedford, a city built by immigrants, had to recently exorcise the former pro-ICE, anti-Immigrant county sheriff who was the polyp in Trump’s colon, it now has to deal with unidentified black clad men wearing masks who are sneaking into town and grabbing people from work, entering homes to scoop up parents preparing to go to work and, for good measure, their kids just getting ready to catch the school bus.
The nice guy at the bus stop isn’t there anymore, the woman behind the counter of the bodega where I get my Guatemalan Tamales is not there. Shift change? Day off? On a break? No longer here but in a country now that she has no memory of?
Once at a 1841 meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, French exhorted those present to declare “that the church and clergy of the United States, as a whole, constitute a great brotherhood of thieves, inasmuch, as they countenance and support the highest kind of theft – manstealing” and to “renounce them as Christian Church and clergy.”
It was a bit much for some, too truthful at the time when you consider the birth of the Southern Baptist Convention for others, what needed to be said by some. He got voted down.
Presently there are raids taking place and we only know of them after the fact.
This is a church heavy town with lots of bells. The ones across from my present place toll the hours and play seasonal hymns at appropriate times of the day. We even have a monastery in the center of town by City Hall and the Public Library’s main branch that tolls the hours with an actual monk pulling a rope -the real thing- and it is Catty corner to where Liberty Hall once stood. The biggest and most visible building that anyone sees approaching the city from any direction is the huge church in the North End, St. Anthony’s. All these bells could be used in respect to French and as a way to let people know that somewhere a raid is happening.
Some will know that somewhere a raid is taking place and they could later learn that was a friend or neighbor disappearing, or, being close by, might be able to get over to where it is happening and make some “Good Trouble”.
Many want to do something and recording what is happening could help or at least can annoy and frustrate the aggressors. They will be denied secrecy and the cover of expected silence.
Churches can make up for what Rodney French rightfully accused them of then, by informing the community now of the rape of our fellow citizens as a form of belated recompense as a signal to a hopefully formed quick response team.
All it takes is for churches, or anyone with bells, when reasonably possible, to ring them when they hear a raid is taking place and this will mean people have to be observant and willing to be true to their lament that “If only there was something I could do”. They won’t catch them all, but one is more than none, and ICE and friends will know they are being seen and that with this being Sanctuary, there will be follow up.
When Rodnet French rang that bell, people instinctively looked around to see what was up.
We still have that instinct.
We need to actively protect our neighbors.
Mass law still on books: General laws: Part 1:Title XV: Chapter 93: Section 102.
“(a) All persons within the commonwealth, regardless of sex, race, color, creed or national origin, shall have, except as is otherwise provided or permitted by law, the same rights enjoyed by white male citizens, to make and enforce contracts, to inherit, purchase, to lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.”
.
.
.
.
