Black History Trailblazers and Changemakers 2020--Day 5: Jordan Anderson

black history month 2020 Feb 05, 2020

I'm celebrating Black History Month by looking for changemakers and trailblazers. #BlackHistoryMonth

DAY 5-Jordan Anderson, after being freed from slavery by Union troops in 1864 and having later settled in Ohio, received a letter from his former slave master, Henry Anderson, asking him to return to the plantation in Tennessee to work for him. Because Jordan was illiterate, he asked a Dayton banker, Valentine Winters, to read the letter to him. After giving the slave master’s request some thought for a few days, Jordan dictated his response verbatim to Winters who sent it to the slave master and also published a copy of it in the Cincinnati Commercial. The “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master” became famous as a masterpiece of satire and has been circulated around the world.

Jordan never returned to the Anderson plantation and enjoyed the remaining 40 years of his life with his wife Amanda and their 11 children.

'What’s amazing is that the current living relatives of Colonel Anderson are still angry at Jordan for not coming back,' knowing that the plantation was in serious disrepair after the war’,” said Raymond Winbush, Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Maryland’s Morgan State University.

Learn more about Johnson and see/hear the famous letter in its entirety on this video

If you are encouraged by this story to be a changemaker, join us to share your thoughts in my Facebook group, Your Life Story Matters

Black History Trailblazers and Changemakers 2020--Day 5: Jordan Anderson

Two Step