This is the story of getting to justice. It’s a story with gnarly plot lines and narrative tensions that lie beneath the surface. It's a rocky road to get there, best understood, perhaps, through the phrase, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” But when we stop denying historic wrongs, the seeds of justice implanted within each us can begin to bloom.
The phrase derives from a well of origins. The exact phrase is oft-attributed to Liverpool-born of Scottish ancestry Parliamentarian and four-time non-consecutive British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, who said in 1868, “But above all, if we be just men, we shall go forward in the name of truth and right, and bear this in mind, that when the case is ripe and the hour has come, justice delayed is justice denied.”
On the question at hand for this post, Gladstone was a gradualist about slavery in the British empire. Not a pure abolitionist, he advocated “moral education” and the creation of “honest and industrial habits” (that colonizing voice speaks loudly, doesn’t it?) but to his credit, he believed in and worked toward what “the utmost speed that prudence will permit [the arrival at] that exceedingly desired consummation, the utter extinction of slavery.”
It disgusts me to read lines like this, as generous as its author purports to be. Don’t dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back, Bill. Whatever. But he did get there.
Anyhow, the gradualism of the eradication of America’s Original Sin – slavery – was on my mind this weekend when I walked through the Abyssinian Meeting House in Portland, Maine, a center for Abolitionist organizing in the 19th century. Portland, on the Atlantic coast and an easy transit hub to Canada, which was free, was an important and oft-overlooked center of activity in the fight to abolish slavery in the United States. My friend, the Portland-based artist Daniel Minter has created a truly inspiring and educational display of these uncommon acts of moral and civic bravery with his Portland Freedom Trail Walking Tour, a project I am working to adapt and replicate in New York City. Daniel’s work is rooted in art and narrative, in the creative drive and the intellectual doggedness of making an argument over and over and over again until victory is won. Until justice is no longer denied. And consider the team it takes to enable an artist to achieve his or her vision. In the case of the Portland Freedom Trail, Daniel was joined by the City of Portland, the Davis Family Foundation, Lisa and Leon Gorman, the Maine Humanities Council, the NAACP Portland Branch, the State of Maine, the Thomas Family, and the United Way of Greater Portland.
The Abyssinian Meeting House is undergoing a renovation (you can help support their fundraising efforts HERE). Abyssinian’s most notable pastor was Amos Noë Freeman, educated in African Free Schools in Manhattan and a student of Rev. Theodore Sedgwick Wright, the first Black person to earn a PhD in Theology from Princeton University, whose own home on West Broadway and White Street in Lower Manhattan was also a hub of the Underground Railroad and the home of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
The New York Times did a story on Rev. Wright’s home this summer and while walking through the guts of the Abyssinian in Portland on Sunday I was reminded of the modesty, humility, grace and proud moral grandeur of the structures that created space to end slavery. Even Noah’s Ark was humble in its construction. When building vessels for the conveyance of freedom, is there a better medium to deliver the message?
Let’s think about the architecture of freedom and justice. A hammer, a nail, hewn wood. A roof, four walls, windows to convey light. Pay heed to that which the hand can build. Get to it now. Justice delayed is justice denied.
By the way, let it not be lost on us that everything old is new again. The Rabbis in Pirke Avot said, “The sword comes to the world for the delay of judgment.” We have been dealing with the destructive effects of our judicial ineffectiveness for a long time. Patience is what is required of true warriors for freedom and equality.
Wood, once a living, breathing tree, absorbs into its rendered grain the stories and songs of those it sheltered. Songs of love and peace and yearning hymns to freedom and justice.
great piece Andy! I've spent a lot of time in Portland, and was unaware of the freedom trail, thank you!!
great article Andy - thank you very much! Hope all is well.