On May 24, 1800, a young Black slave named Lucia gathered her two small daughters, 7-year-old Rachel and 5-year-old Esther, and fled their life of captivity in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They traveled an incredible 90 miles to Greencastle, Pennsylvania, a place to which she hoped they would never be tracked.
This was not the first time Lucia had run. In 1794, she tried to escape with six-month-old Rachel. A Returned Slave notice shows that she was captured and returned to Zachariah Moore, their slave owner.
This time, however, Lucia and her daughters made it to freedom, despite the notice that Zachariah placed in the Lancaster Intelligencer and Weekly Adventurer on Dec. 24, 1800.
“Eight Dollars Reward, RAN away, on the 24th of May last, from the Subscriber, living in Donegal Township, Lancaster County, a Negro Woman named LUCE” The notice lists the two children and their slave status as “Runaway.”
The Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery passed by the Fifth Pennsylvania General Assembly on March 1, 1780 gave legal freedom to many slaves in Pennsylvania. However, as is true for most Acts purportedly passed to establish human rights and correct wrongs, there were qualifications and exceptions written into the law to make it more palatable for whites. This same Act resigned little Rachel to remain a slave for another 21 years.
Perhaps this was one of the reasons Lucia took her children and fled. The obvious reason she ran, however, is the fact that Rachel’s father was Zachariah Moore, Lucia’s owner and rapist. He owned Lucia, Rachel and Esther, and had no intention of ever voluntarily freeing them, as evidenced by a document that still exists, written in spidery quill ink in Zachariah’s own handwriting:
“In pursuance of an Act of Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania, I Zachariah Moore….do hereby enter an action that Rachel, a Negro female child, the daughter of Negress Lucia, a Female slave, was born on the fourth day of January in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-Three….and that the female Negro child is my Property, and liable to remain until it shall arrive to the age of Twenty Eight years.”
Lucia did not accept Zachariah’s ownership of her family, and her fierce determination to escape was ultimately successful. Rachel grew up free, married a free Black man in Pennsylvania, and raised 11 children. Free Blacks in Pennsylvania during this time were not treated much better than slaves themselves, and could be sent back into servitude for petty offenses. Freedom was better, but not the same freedom enjoyed by whites.
One hundred seventy-eight years after Rachel was born, a baby girl was born in New York. In 1973 when she was 2 years old, her father’s promotion as an insurance underwriter allowed the family to move anywhere they wanted to live in Connecticut or Massachusetts. However, due to redlining and other racist practices enacted by realtors, the family was only shown houses in neighborhoods deemed acceptable for Black families.
Despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that prohibited discrimination in housing due to race, these practices continued well into the 1970s and beyond. The family was told that there were simply no homes available for purchase in better (read: white) towns like Glastonbury or Longmeadow. Eventually they purchased a small ranch house in a blue-collar neighborhood in Enfield, Connecticut and this is where the little girl grew up.
When she was a teenager, her 11-year-old brother was harassed by Enfield police while he was home alone one day. Her mother was advised by lawyers to drop the issue to avoid relentless bullying by the police in the town the family had been forced to live. The girl and her siblings continued to be harassed by police in various towns for playing on a playground, for sitting in a car talking to a friend at night and for driving down a street while Black.
Despite the fact that this girl was born 106 years after the abolition of slavery and seven years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, systemic and calculated racism continued to impact her family, her physical and emotional health, her education, and the future of her own children. She and her children were born into a society that still believes deep down that Black people are inferior and deserve to be treated as such.
That little girl was me.
Lucia fought back against violence and dehumanization by refusing to allow her children to grow up as slaves. Likewise I, the fifth-great-granddaughter of Rachel, follow Lucia’s example and fight back against today’s continued inequity and injustice against Black people to make a better world for my children.
Tolley M. Jones lives in Easthampton with her two children. She has worked with children and families in western Massachusetts for over 30 years. She is currently an intensive care coordinator.