A couple of months back, I was in our archives looking for materials related to 19^th century spiritualism. Expecting to find John Hooker describing séances he and Isabella held and attended, I opened a manuscript and instead read “I soon saw they considered me a white man and this gave me great uneasiness because I did not know what consequences might follow if I allowed them to go on. To come right out and tell them I was a negro slave I could not do…” This was clearly not the document I was looking for, but curiosity got the best of me, and I had to keep reading to figure out what I was looking at. As often happens, following curiosity proved fortuitous and has brought to light a hugely significant manuscript detailing the life of Dr. Rev. William H. Phillips.

Briefly, Dr. Phillips was born enslaved in Virginia in 1841. By 1897, he was a nationally respected minister at the Shiloh Baptist Church of Philadelphia. He learned to read as a child, an empowering though dangerous skill for an enslaved child of 8; was forced into apprenticeship as a blacksmith; learned stories of Nat Turner from his mother; and always had a clear vision of freedom for enslaved people. Following the Civil War, he went to school, attaining an honorary doctoral degree; raised two daughters, both of whom attended college; and traveled the country with Mary, his wife and partner of decades, having married on January 18, 1862. In 1897, he spent a week with John and Isabella Hooker and told them his life story, which they wrote down. That hand-written manuscript is what we hold in our archive.

Dr. Phillips’ life intersected with nearly all of the major themes of 19^th century America: the brutality and horrors of chattel slavery, the resistance of enslaved communities, the implications of literacy, issues of race and relationships among racial groups, changing economies, religious thought, movement and liberation, and many others. The Stowe Center is privileged to be working with an incredible advisory group of scholars, educators, and community members to help guide research and ensure that the best and most respectful scholarship is done around Phillips’ story.

While Dr. Phillips included a brief biographical sketch in a history of the Shiloh Baptist Church, the manuscript we hold in our archives has never been published as far as we know.  What I think makes this manuscript unique is that it is a very early, if not the first, draft of Phillips’ life story. It has not been edited or smoothed over. John and Isabella Hooker, who switched back and forth writing down his narrative, seem to have done no “correcting” and simply wrote what Phillips said. Many 19^th century “slave narratives,” what we call freedom narratives, come to us already published, and so this hand-written drafted version feels very special. I often find myself trying to imagine the process of Phillips narrating and the Hookers writing it down.

At this point, we have many more questions than we do answers, both in the factual details- how Phillips and the Hookers connected, verifying the names and places he mentions, lining up dates and events to better understand the timeline; and in the larger research questions and themes.

Two prominent themes in Dr. Philips’ life that stand out to me are literacy and movement, both deeply entrenched in the system of enslavement and its lasting effects. Phillips learned to read as a child. As a young man, Phillips found an abolitionist newspaper on the road while transporting some mules, despite such publications being illegal in Virginia. From this paper, he learned that people were calling for the end of slavery and willing to fight for it. He wrote “from this time I became a means of communicating to the negroes of the subject of slavery and the war- I would keep the blacks who could not read posted. I would learn all I could from the newspaper. My interest was so intense that I learned to read rapidly…” From this point on, reading and conveying information were central to his life, both when keeping other enslaved people informed about resistance efforts and after the war as a reverend.

Movement is likewise a strong theme in his narrative, both in the movement of information and ideas, and his own physical movements through the country. And each of these types of movement was closely tied to liberation. From secreting newspapers to enslaved people, to being tied to a mule while imprisoned, to traveling from California to Philadelphia to take reverendship at Shiloh Baptist, Phillips describes routes taken, modes of transportation, and his experiences along the way. We truly get a sense not only of the geography, but of the psychogeography; the impact and interaction between Phillips’ mental and emotion landscapes and the physical landscape.

These themes, literacy and movement, are woven throughout his story and touch his experience of being enslaved, his relationship with others, his religious life, and his professional life. We will be further exploring these themes and others as we continue to work with this manuscript.

Dr. Phillips’ narrative is remarkable in the many details he recalls of his experiences, the people he interacted with, and the places he occupied. Phillips’ recall of experience adds depth and texture to the experiences and agency of enslaved people leading up to and during the U.S. Civil War, and emancipated people creating opportunities following the war. With keen insight, Phillips documents a country in transformation and a group of racialized people achieving agency.  

Cat White is the Director of Collections and Public Programs of the Stowe Center for Literary Activism. Our vision is a world in which engagement leads to empathy, empowerment, and change for good.