History Articles: BLACK HISTORY MONTH & THE CASE OF SARAH ESTELL.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH & THE CASE OF SARAH ESTELL.

by James B. Jones, Jr.


As a public historian I believe public recognition and commemoration of February as Black History Month is very important. o­ne of the jobs I have at the Tennessee Historical Commission is to help promote the erection of historic markers, those ubiquitous aluminum roadside signs with which I am certain you are all familiar. Just down the road here, for example, is o­ne memorializing William Lytle and that man's role in the early settlement of Murfreesboro. These markers are meant to be educational, to impart an awareness of the past, to communicate a feeling of enduring activity and presence, a sense of time and place. These markers then provide a very basic and legitimate social purpose, and that is to justify what is done in the present by memorializing what was done in the past, to provide historic examples as proof that what is done today is legitimate. If it was o.k. then, it's o.k. now, to put it succinctly. The reverse also holds true, however.
 
Take,  for example this early 20th-century example of  public commemmoration which took place o­n February 1, 1914, south of Jonesboro, Tennessee.  A massive granite monument was placed marking the grave of Dr. Samuel Doak, founder of Washington College, the historic Presbyterian school south of Jonesboro. Funds were raised by college alumni and the Morristown chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Doak delivered the prayer to ask God's support for the Overmountain Men who marched across the Blue Ridge mountains to defeat Tory General Ferguson at the Battle of King's Mountain in 1780. According to o­ne newspaper report this was "the first step looking to the proper marking of the graves of a number of men who were conspicuous in the early history of this region." There was no thought given to the role played by women, or bondsmen, who were not considered similarly conspicuous. Often much of what gets into history books gets there because of what was left out.

Yet, do historic markers, not to mention the larger body of historic knowledge they represent, provide a limited or comprehensive view of the past? Do the examples provided to us by the markers fairly address the history of all groups or are they skewed dramatically to just o­ne group?


I asked myself these questions in 1985 and began a study of historic roadside markers to see just which groups they might address. I found, to be brief, that far and away the marker texts celebrated famous white men and the wars they fought. The attitude taken was best summed up in the remarks of a 90 year old Italian born American, Mr. C. Primo Bartolini. In 1953 the THC Committee in charge of the then new marker program was asked if a marker memorializing o­ne William Driver - the white man credited with giving our flag its nickname "Old Glory," - could be placed in his yard o­n Fifth Avenue. Bartolini agreed, and his reply was telling: "If we take care of our great men, we will help to make people better." You will notice Bartolini said nothing about our women ("great" or otherwise,) or African-Americans, or native Americans. So, this public history program became o­ne which effectively eliminated mention of any minority group's participation in Tennessee history. What had happened then is that black Tennesseans were all but completely eliminated from the past - and without a past there is little hope of a future.


In 1985 I found that of the total number of markers, 1,170, 8, or, not even o­ne per cent of the total (.7%), were dedicated to the role of black's in Tennessee's history. (White women, who were all "famous," it should be noted, accounted for o­nly 9 of the total, also less than 1 per cent .9%) Accordingly, it was not difficult to see that the well-to-do Protestant white male was most heavily represented, and would lead o­ne to conclude that o­nly they were important in our past, and o­nly they could provide examples for us in our present. Certainly something was wrong.


Once the results of this study were made known to certain key members of the legislature, a special appropriation was made to increase minority representation in the marker program. By 1991 another 40 markers dealing with black history were approved and most have been erected. o­ne marker which has yet to be erected is dedicated to an independent free black female entrepreneur in Nashville during the days of slavery, o­ne SARAH ESTELL.



Now, some may not think there is any value to knowing about a free African-American female who ran a successful catering venture in antebellum Nashville. After all, she was neither male, white, Protestant, a general, a governor, a politician, a president or business executive, or an Indian fighting frontiersman. This is where the public historian must work to expand our definition of the past, so that hitherto overlooked groups can have their equal place in our past and so our present and ultimately our future. If history's purpose in society is to teach us lessons, and believe me it is, then what kind of lesson does the following marker text about Sarah Estell tell us? First of all, she was free either because she had been freed, or because her conditon followed that of her mother.  If the latter is the case, her mother was either a freed slave, of a white woman.  A marker text could read something like this:

Sarah Estell, a free black woman in the slavery era, ran an ice cream parlor and sweet shop near here (5th Ave.). She overcame the many hurdles faced by free persons of color, and her venture thrived. Her catering firm met the banquet needs of the city's firemen, church socials, and political parties from 1840 to 1860.


Does this brief story of Sarah's life and work teach a positive lesson to and about people who were and are neither white nor rich? Sarah was a minority among a minority. For example in 1860 there were but 719 free blacks in Nashville out of a total slave population of 3,326 slaves - or about 2% of the total black population in the capitol city. It is difficult for us to appreciate the nature of the obstacles free blacks faced in the antebellum South. To begin with, slave owners feared free blacks because they might aid runaway slaves, or, even more insidious, the might help start slave rebellions, a great anxiety after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831. They feared free blacks also because they could compete with them in business. And the Tennessee legislature passed the so-called "black codes" which defined the status of slaves and drastically limiting the activities free blacks in the state. o­ne must not discount racism either. The lives of free blacks were not a happy o­nes, and the term "free black was in any case a misnomer - 'free blacks' were by no means as 'free' as the whites were." Among the things in the Tennessee black codes stipulated was that no "free person of color shall engage in the business of peddling or bartering, by making a business of buying up market stuffs or other articles, or bartering them for selling them again." How could anyone run a catering business with these kinds of legal obstacles? Sarah Estell did, even though her business options were as limited as her environment was hostile. The fact that she did also shows us that she competed successfully with her white male business rivals. Her venture's success provided such strong competition that at least o­ne white male confectioners in Nashville complained in 1849, that a "respectable [sic] class of our community have not o­nly been slighted but insulted" by the existence of Sarah's business. Moreover, said her rival, not o­nly was she black, but she paid no taxes. This complaint was publicly answered by another white male who spoke proudly of her business, which, by 1849, had been operating in Nashville for about eight or nine years (or, since 1840). He clearly stated : "I hope I may never see that day when I will be too proud to eat food prepared by negroes [sic]...." Another patron publicly testified as to her business skill, astuteness and worth to the white urban community:


...Sarah is peculiarly fitted for this sort of business. She makes a profession of it, is enabled to procure not o­nly cakes and sweet meats, but everything requisite...and in fact performs to admiration all of the other duties of the best housekeeper, all of which is out of the regular business of our confectioners....



As for Sarah, personally, she is industrious, neat, accommodating and unassuming - grateful for favors - and anxious to perform her duties fully and promptly. In fact she is very much of a lady....With the fairer proportion of our population, she is quite a favorite and they never hesitate to encourage and respect her.



The message provided by the Sarah Estell marker is o­ne that speaks to competition in business, perseverance and success under hardship, of minority participation in our history. The point of the Sarah Estell story is that it provides the lesson that as o­ne black woman did in the past, so another may do in the present. It teaches those American values of hard work and success which many recognize as essential to living the good life in America.



Just because their is an absence of abundant traditional historical evidence - letters, journal entries, newspaper stories, court records, etc. - which restricts our knowledge of the black community's participation in our past doesn't mean there was no such participation, as Sarah Estell's story shows us. The brief mention of her in newspaper articles and census records is enough to establish her importance in history.

Her significance also lies in the lesson her outstanding business operation teaches to other Tennesseans today, that of her ability to overcome incredible racial and legal odds to own and manage a proficient business that was in existence for nearly twenty years in downtown Nashville, the very capital of a slave state which by statute, forbade the existence of enterprises conducted by this extreme minority, free blacks. So, during February we might we might paraphrase C. Primo Bartolini's admonition to read: "If we take care of our minority history too, we will help to make people even better." Sarah's story can o­nly help to make people better, more knowledgeable and even tolerant.


A marker was erected at 217 5th Avenue North, Nashville, after many objections had been answered. It is Tennessee Historical Commission Historical Marker No. 3-A-139, “Sarah Estell.” It was a small step for public history, but a giant step toward a more inclusionary past. Since that time a public history initiative, supported by key  African-American members of the Tennessee Legislature, provided a special appropriation for the erection of markers commemorating many African-American Tennesseans who hitherto had been overlooked and neglected due to too tight a focus o­n history as the exclusive story of famous white men and the wars they fought.


This paper was presented at the Eighth Annual Local Conference o­n Afro-American Culture and History, Tennessee State University, Nashville, February 8, 1989.
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