The painful, cutting and brilliant letters Black people wrote to their former enslavers [washingtonpost.com]

By Gillian Brockell, Images: Library of Congress; Onondaga Historical Association; Samuel J. Miller; the Art Institute of Chicago; Wikimedia Commons; David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, The Washington Post, March 13, 2022

Some are exquisite condemnations from learned and accomplished men who escaped their enslavement. Some are brief queries, shots in the dark, dictated by illiterate women. One is brilliant sarcasm, humorously calculating and requesting back wages.

All of these letters from Black Americans to the people who once controlled their lives show a desire for freedom and a desperate longing to be reunited with their families.

Three of these five letters were written by formerly enslaved people directly to their onetime enslavers. One was addressed to President Abraham Lincoln, who had the power to emancipate its author and had so far withheld it. One was written by a still-enslaved woman desperately searching for her daughter.

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