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Remembering Pamela Discussion and Resources

We do not know exactly when Pamela died or where she is buried. The same is true of most of the Black people in this story. In fact, many Massachusetts towns, including Newton and Brighton, do not have records of where in their vicinity most Black people were buried prior to at least the mid-19th century. The best available information suggests that Pamela probably died in the late 1840s. For a Black woman at this time to live to be almost 90 was extraordinary.

Pamela’s is a story of survival and resilience. Black people have always been a part of Newton’s history, in slavery and in freedom, even though wealthy white people dominate the city’s early published histories. But much as those Newtonians wrote themselves into history, so too did Pamela, by registering her marriage and petitioning her government to recognize and restore the kinship bonds that slavery had severed.

Despite all the question marks that remain about Pamela’s life, and about the lives of the others mentioned here, their stories are alive in the historical record, if only we look diligently for them. We bring her story into the light here in honor and remembrance of all those whose stories have been lost.

Pamela's petition is signed with her mark. She likely could not read or write in English, and the petition was prepared for her by a man named Timothy Fuller. Her mark, the X in the middle, is the one thing written in her hand.

Questions to consider and discuss...

Why might Eliphalet Fitch have chosen to enslave a young girl for his mother instead of someone older?

Why might Pamela have never been taught to read or write in English?

How do you think Pamela felt as she listened to the Rev. Jonas Meriam and others in Newton discuss fighting for freedom from England?

Why would enslavers have permitted their enslaved people to marry but not live together?

Why do you think Pamela and David Sparhawk settled in Brighton, rather than in Newton?

What are some reasons the Sparhawk children might have left the Brighton area?

Why do we not know when Pamela died or where she is buried — and why do some communities not know where their Black residents were buried before the 19th century?

How does this exhibit and confronting the realities of slavery in Newton and Black resistance help you understand the lasting legacies of slavery today?

Resources for further reading:

Emily Blanck, Tyrannicide: Forging an American Law of Slavery in Revolutionary South Carolina and Massachusetts

David Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behavior in Early English America

Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household

Jared Ross Hardesty, Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in 18th Century Boston

Saidiya Hartman, "Venus In Two Acts"

Jessica Marie Johnson, Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World

Emma Nogrady Kaplan and Sidney Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the Revolution

Jennifer Morgan, Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic

Claire Parfait, Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry, and Claire Bourhis-Mariotti eds., Writing History from the Margins: African Americans and the Quest for Freedom

Patricia Smith and Charles Johnson, Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery

Charles Sullivan and Susan E. Maycock, Building Old Cambridge: Architecture and Development

Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America

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Historic Newton
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