Restricted Pittsburgh Removes Stephen Foster Statue

[donna]

I got my typo fixed. Thanks to Southern Unionist for catching it. It is my last post before this one.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

Foster was one of the long-time members of the American Anti-Slavery Society where he met radical abolitionist Abby Kelley, his future wife, and traveled the church and anti-slavery meeting circuits with Douglass, Garrison, Redmond, Phillips and others, giving speeches.

"In the annals of the antislavery movement, the throwing of rotten eggs is as commonplace as the tossing of custard pies in vaudeville. Garrison told his wife of one such episode in Syracuse that November: 'Our friend S. S. Foster then took the platform, and . . . made his favorite declaration . . . that the Methodist Episcopal Church is worse than any brothel in the city of New- York. Then came such an outbreak of hisses, cries, curses! All order was at an end. Several ruffians rushed toward the platform to seize Foster, but were not allowed to reach him. The tumult became tremendous. Several citizens, who were well known, attempted to calm the storm, but in vain. Rotten eggs were now thrown, one of which was sent as a special present to me.'"
Frederick Douglass, William S. McFeely, pg. 102

 

[WJC]

One wonders whether the forces behind this realize that Foster was an abolitionist. His most well-known song, My Old Kentucky Home, was a slave's perspective on the imminent disruption caused by his master having to sell off his slaves. It was a favorite of Frederick Douglass, who said it and other Foster songs "awaken the sympathies for the slave in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish".
<Frederick Douglass, My Bondage, My Freedom. (New York, Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1855), p. 462.>