The Legacy and Ministry of Charlotte Forten
Part of spiritual formation is learning from our personal and collective histories. We find history in Scripture, and that is intentional. We look at history to lament, recognize sinful patterns, and hear the warning to cease, but also there is a call to remember the faithful witnesses along the way. So, as we continue to recognize Black History Month, we can learn about our present witness from aspects of Black history. We will celebrate the efforts of so many to make America a better place to live for all its people, and we will praise God for His sovereign hand, which moved among them.
Image from Museum of the American Revolution
Charlotte Forten was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 17, 1837.
Born into a wealthy and influential African-American family, Forten is best known for her writings, which offered insights into late 19th-century America. Her diaries chronicle the social and political issues of the times—the fight to end slavery, the Civil War, and the state of race relations.
Forten had a very comfortable upbringing. Her grandfather, James Forten, helped make his fortune with an invention that assisted sailors with heavy sails. He was an outspoken member of the abolitionist movement and supporter of William Lloyd Garrison's antislavery publication The Liberator. Forten's parents were also active in the movement. Her mother, Mary, helped establish the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, and her father, Robert, often lectured to support the abolitionist cause.
When Forten was 3 years old, her mother died. She spent much of her early years as an only child in solitude, educated by tutors. When she was of school age, her father decided to send her to an integrated school in Salem, Massachusetts, where she lived with the Remond family.
While living on the East Coast, Forten began keeping a diary. In it, she wrote about her involvement in the antislavery movement in the Boston area. During her time there, she deepened her connections to family and friends in the movement, such as Garrison and John Greenleaf Whittier.
After completing her studies, Forten became a teacher in Salem. She was the first African-American teacher hired to teach white students in the town. Unfortunately, she had to resign after two years because of ill health. Returning to Philadelphia, Forten started writing poetry while she tried to regain her health.
In 1862, Forten traveled to St. Helena Island, South Carolina, to work as a teacher. There, she participated in what became known as the Port Royal Experiment. During the Civil War, the Union Army took over Port Royal, a Confederate military base in South Carolina. The area was home to thousands of enslaved persons who their owners had abandoned. Many of them lived in isolation on the Sea Islands off the coast. These formerly enslaved persons were largely illiterate, and some did not know English. The Union Army desired to help these people learn to live independently.
For 18 months, Forten worked with children, adults, and soldiers stationed there as part of this program. The only African-American teacher to participate in the experiment, her efforts to help the project became a personal mission and often reached outside the classroom. She found herself visiting the homes of the various families to instill "self-pride, self-respect, and self-sufficiency," she once wrote.
Forten wrote about her experiences in her diary, and a series of her entries were later published as the essay series "Life on the Sea Islands" for the Atlantic Monthly in 1864. Once again, however, she experienced terrible headaches and went home to Philadelphia in 1864.
Forten worked for the Teachers Committee of the New England Freemen's Union Commission for several years. She later returned to teaching, spending time in Charleston, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C.
In 1878, Forten married Francis J. Grimke, a Presbyterian minister. He was the nephew of two famous social activists, Sarah and Angelina Grimke. The couple had one child together, a daughter named Theodora Cornelia, who died during her infancy.
Throughout the rest of her life, Forten wrote and spoke out on social issues, including women's rights and racial prejudice. She also supported her husband's work at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.
Forten died on July 23, 1914, in Washington, D.C. Her diaries, published numerous times over the years, have proved to be her most lasting legacy. Her writings provided an eyewitness account of a pivotal and turbulent time in American history. Forten also offers her readers a glimpse at famous figures like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and many other leading activists of her day.
Reflection
Charlotte Forten is an amazing example of a woman who faithfully discharged her life-long call to ministry. She did so not behind a pulpit, but in the classroom where she taught and loved her students and their families well. In doing so, she reflected the clear example of our Lord Jesus Christ, who intentionally chose to live and serve among the vulnerable.
Her example is one all of us can follow today. Whether God has called you to the ministry of education, health care, finance, IT, law, the arts, sales, etc. Your vocational passion could be the key to the way our gracious God demonstrates His love, care, and compassion to the vulnerable for His glory, your fulfillment, and the witness of our Lord Jesus who so loves the least of these.