Love and Sacrifice

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise – Episode "Love and Sacrifice"

Date: June 25, 2026
Host: Higher Ground Audio (Malcolm Gladwell, Ashley C. Ford, guest: Farrah Jasmine Griffin)

Episode Overview

"Love and Sacrifice" delves into the personal, often-overlooked stories of Black women during Reconstruction, centering on the intimate, deeply emotional relationship between teacher Rebecca Primus and her friend Addie Brown. Through their preserved letters—and guided by leading scholars and storytellers—listeners are offered a unique lens on the era’s promise, the complexity of identity and citizenship, and the ongoing struggle for dignity and belonging in post-Civil War America.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Launch of the Freedmen's Bureau (00:04–03:31)

• Establishment: Malcolm Gladwell recounts the founding of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865, created to assist the newly emancipated, impoverished Southerners—both Black and white—transitioning after the Civil War.
  • Quote: "You couldn't simply conclude a war, declare slavery over and tell people to move on. They needed help getting started in a new world." – Gladwell (00:27)
• Purpose: Legal aid and primary education became central missions. Northern teachers were urgently recruited—with teaching among freedpeople considered both a moral duty and a revolutionary act.

Uncovering Hidden Voices (03:31–05:56)

• Gladwell and Ashley C. Ford discuss how history often prioritizes "great men," neglecting the transformative influence of everyday people, especially Black women, whose stories endured mainly through personal letters.
  • Quote: "Black people were writing the story of Reconstruction all along. It's just that their stories weren't being published in newspapers or books." – Gladwell (03:31)

The Lives of Rebecca Primus and Addie Brown (06:18–12:12)

• Rebecca Primus: Middle-class, northern-born, raised in a family committed to Black uplift, responded to the call of the Freedmen's Bureau.
• Addie Brown: Orphaned young, itinerant domestic worker, struggled with illness and poverty, but was educated and highly expressive.
• Their paths crossed in Hartford, Connecticut, forming a powerful, loving bond documented in Addie’s letters.

Love and Intimacy in Their Letters (08:37–13:01; 24:33–27:20)

• Addie’s letters reveal a partnership marked by profound emotion, deep longing, and sometimes erotic affection.
  • Quote: "If I went without eating for two or three days and then a person was to bring me something to eat and a letter from you...I would take the letter and that would be enough food for me." – Addie Brown (24:33)
  • Quote: "I wish I was near you in my head, reclining on your dear bosom. It is useless to wish that, my love." – Addie Brown (25:23)
• Farrah Jasmine Griffin, whose scholarship rescued the letters, affirms the rarity of such uncensored, cross-class Black women’s correspondence.

The Reality of Black Women’s Work (12:23–22:48)

• Rebecca leaves to teach in Baltimore and then Royal Oak, Maryland, while Addie continues her cipher of menial, often exploitative jobs in the North.
• Both detailed the ceaseless threats and violence faced by Black people, inside and outside the South.
  • Teaching as Resistance: Freedmen schools were attacked—underscoring literacy as a revolutionary act.
  • Quote: "People knew the power of literacy, that it had to be powerful for them to pass laws and for them to brutalize people." – Griffin (19:57)
  • Quote: "I trust something like justice will be given to the Black man one of these days. For some are persecuted almost as badly now as in the days of slavery." – Rebecca Primus (22:08)

Letters as Lifelines (24:33–32:18)

• Through gifts, updates, and emotional affirmations, Addie and Rebecca sustain one another across distance and difference.
  • Quote: "Oh, dear, I am so lonesome...If I was only near you, you and having one of those sweet kisses…” – Addie Brown (25:13)
• Their relationship, lacking the contemporary categories of sexuality, was nonetheless "romantic, emotional and erotic" (Griffin, 31:26).
• They navigated gender and social expectations, even as Addie ultimately chose marriage for security.

The Enduring Significance of These Letters (32:38–35:34)

• Rebecca preserved more than 100 of Addie’s letters for decades, allowing their story to survive.
• Addie dies young (age 28, from tuberculosis); her final letters are loving and poignant.
  • Quote: "Addie's letters teach us so much about friendship and intimacy between women...they are rare because they're two women from different class backgrounds...they aren't censored." – Griffin (35:34)
  • Quote: _"If the world doesn't recognize you, I recognize you. I see you in that way, in it's absolute necessity, I think, in the lives of Black women." – Griffin (36:45)

Reflections on Black Women's Dignity and Self-Definition (35:05–37:46)

• Addie's and Rebecca’s friendship acts as a "vessel for maintaining a sense of one's dignity and oneself in a world where everywhere else is saying that you are of little value” (Griffin, 35:34).
• Their story broadens our understanding of Reconstruction, citizenship, and belonging—reminding us that the era’s promise was lived and shaped most vibrantly by its most marginalized.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On historical storytelling:
  "There's no single story that sums up Reconstruction. And you can't tell this history only through the actions of so-called great men."
  – Malcolm Gladwell (01:00)

• On class and caring:
  "Rebecca had considered leaving Hartford on many occasions. When the Freedmen's Bureau offered her the job, she took it…Addie was especially heartbroken. Devastated, really. Her beloved sister Friend would be hundreds of miles away."
  – Ashley C. Ford (12:23)

• On radical love:
  "When you read Addie and Rebecca's letters very closely, it is clear that...these are indeed love letters."
  – Farrah Jasmine Griffin (24:58)

• On their story’s legacy:
  "The important role of friendship as a kind of a vessel for maintaining a sense of one's dignity and oneself in a world where everywhere else is saying that you are of little value."
  – Farrah Jasmine Griffin (35:34)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:04–03:31: Setting up the Freedmen’s Bureau and the call for teachers
• 05:06–06:18: Rebecca Primus’ background and family
• 08:37–10:38: The tone and intimacy of Addie’s letters
• 13:27–14:08: Rebecca arrives in Baltimore, overwhelmed by the Black community’s vibrancy
• 17:47–19:40: Educating the newly freed and the obstacles teachers faced
• 21:27–22:27: Violence and insecurity after the war
• 24:33–27:20: Letters expressing love, longing, and love’s survival despite hardship
• 31:26–32:57: Their relationship defined outside of modern categories; preservation of Addie’s letters
• 35:05–37:46: Addie’s death and what their correspondence teaches about dignity and friendship

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Tone & Narration

The episode creates a vivid, intimate portrait—its tone by turns scholarly, tender, raw, and reverent. Narration is layered with readings of historic letters, candid interviews, and personal reflections. This immersive storytelling brings listeners close to the lived realities, hopes, and heartbreaks of Black women during one of the nation’s most formative decades.

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Summary prepared for listeners who have not yet heard the episode, capturing its central themes, emotional resonance, and critical historical context.

Transcript

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Let's go back a few years to March 3, 1865. Abraham Lincoln is still President of the United States, and the Civil War is still not officially over. The Confederacy would not surrender for another few months. The Union Congress has passed the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery nationwide, though it still has to be ratified by the states. Now Congress wants to do something to help those displaced or impoverished by the war to start creating some order from the chaos in the South. Because you couldn't simply conclude a war, declare slavery over and tell people to move on. They needed help getting started in a new world. So Northern lawmakers establish the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, and President Lincoln puts it under the Department of War. The agency quickly becomes known as the Freedmen's Bureau, which implies that it only existed to help the formerly enslaved. That is not strictly true. The Bureau also offered aid to poor whites in the South. There was so much to do and so many people in need. The agency offered legal support and also helped to establish primary schools. The goal was to educate those who had until recently been forbidden to learn how to read and write. These schools desperately needed teachers. And so, starting in the summer of 1865, the Freedmen's Bureau put out a call. Its publication, called the Freedman's Record, detailed strenuous requirements for applicants. In the first place. It began, health is requisite not merely on account of any supposed disadvantages of the climate, but to ensure energy, cheerfulness and courage for the work. They got thousands of applicants from the North. We don't know many of their stories, but here we want to slow down just a little and hear the story of one of those teachers who applied, a free black woman born in the North. We'll hear her story mostly through the words of someone she left behind. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and this is the Unfinished Promise. When I spoke with President Barack Obama, we kept coming back to the question of why we know so little about Reconstruction. There's no single story that sums up Reconstruction. And you can't tell this history only through the actions of so called great men.

[Podcast Host (possibly Malcolm Gladwell or another narrator)]

There are figures that

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

because they hold

[Podcast Host (possibly Malcolm Gladwell or another narrator)]

political office, because they are men, because they are white, because they are titans

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

of industry, because they hold traditional stations

[Podcast Host (possibly Malcolm Gladwell or another narrator)]

that we understand have power. We think of them as the history makers. Right?

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

And you have all these people who

[Podcast Host (possibly Malcolm Gladwell or another narrator)]

may not have occupied formal positions of

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

power, who

[Podcast Host (possibly Malcolm Gladwell or another narrator)]

entirely bend the course of

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

our history and our collective understanding in powerful ways and the course of our narrative.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Black people were writing the story of Reconstruction all along. It's just that their stories weren't being published in newspapers or books. Those people were writing their stories to one another, most often through letters. What follows is an intimate story of two young women from very different backgrounds. Neither was famous, but their letters to one another reveal something crucial about the country doing Reconstruction. It was a time in which so many Americans, so many black Americans in particular, were searching. Rebecca Primus was a young teacher from a close knit middle class family in New England. Addie Brown was a domestic worker who was essentially orphaned at a young age in Philadelphia. Their lives intersected in Hartford, Connecticut around the time of the Civil War. We have only one side of their correspondence, Addie's letters to Rebecca, because Rebecca kept them carefully preserved until her death. When we were looking for someone to bring this story to life, the first person who sprang to mind was the writer and podcast host Ashley C. Ford. Ashley is the author of the best selling memoir Somebody's Daughter, a book about womanhood and self discovery. Ashley brings us the story of Rebecca and Addie with the help of the scholar who edited a collection of their letters.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Why do you think Rebecca held on to Addie's letters for so long? More than 60 years.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

I think she preserved Addie's letters because she loved her deeply. And I think that she, she liked the Rebecca that she saw reflected in Addie's letters. It gives us a very valuable window into the intimate nature of that relationship that we would not otherwise have.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Farrah Jasmine Griffin is a professor of African American literature at Columbia University and the school's inaugural chair of African American studies. She edited a book of Addie's letters to Rebecca and Rebecca's letters to her own family.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

So Rebecca Primus was the daughter of a somewhat prominent family, Black Hartford family, the Primus family. They were a family devoted to service, a family devoted to the black, very small black community. So she would have been brought up with, with a sense of purpose and mission.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

During Reconstruction, Hartford was a small manufacturing town, a city less overwhelming than New York or Boston, and perhaps a place where a young woman like Rebecca might dream of a world beyond the safety of her childhood home. Reconstruction offered her an opportunity to pursue those dreams. When Rebecca heard that the Bureau was looking for educators, she applied to go and teach formerly enslaved people. While Rebecca set her eyes on a new southern horizon, her beloved friend Addie faced a much different reality. In the early years of Reconstruction, Black life for women like Addie in the north was not entirely different from black life in the Southern states. Rampant discrimination and violence were pervasive in both parts of the country. Still, I imagine Addie, like Rebecca, dreamt of new possibilities in a country where black people were poised to gain new rights.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

We're not really sure how she comes into Rebecca's circuit. It seems that she may have migrated somehow to Hartford. She might have boarded with Rebecca's family because her family took people in. Addie lived as a kind of live in domestic throughout New England and in New York. And that while we didn't have very much information about 19th century women, period, we certainly didn't have information about 19th century working class women who had been a domestic.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Addie must have come to Hartford as a teenager not long before the Civil War began. Records show that at some point she lived and worked in the Primus household. Late in the night, Addie would visit Rebecca even while living under the same roof. The two girls passed letters back and forth.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

The correspondence between 19th century women tend to be very romantic and very open and. And expressing their love for each other.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

My own truly loved sister. Dear Rebecca, I don't know how it is I feel nearer to you now than ever before. Although you have always been very, very dear to me since I have been here. I have enjoyed your society very much. So much so I hate to have you away from me. One moment from your darling little sister it is. Goodbye, Addie.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

I read through the letters and just, you know, held them in my hand and you know they were hard to read because, you know, they were preserving every bit of paper and writing along the sides and everything.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

As Malcolm mentioned early on, we only have the set of letters written by Addie to Rebecca. Remember, Rebecca's letters to Addie have not been discovered. Still, what remains is a reminder to us all these women existed, documenting some of the region's most noteworthy historical events. From presidential speaking engagements to the presence of the United States Colored Troops. The letters have been edited for brevity and clarity.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

My dear sister, I hear President Johnson expects to be in Hartford on the 26th. I suppose his friends will make a great time over him. I wish some of them would present him with a bullet through his head. The 29th Regiment expected home tomorrow in the city of Hartford, if there will be many. On our way home we visited the Samuel Coates Willow factory. I was very much pleased with the. I will offer to come to a close for my head aches me quite bad as ever adopted sister Addie,

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

she was often very ill. There was a kind of insecurity around her health and her economic circumstances which were very similar to those of People of her class.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Addi was born in 1841 in Philadelphia as a free person. Her father died when she was a child and her mother abandoned her to remarry. From a young age she had no choice but to work as a servant. 90% of black women cooked, cleaned, washed and tended to other women's children to earn some sort of living. The Primuses were a well respected family who ran a boarding house for African Americans. Their home was essentially a precursor to the agencies that provide social services now in the Hartford Courant, a daily newspaper that still exists today. Rebecca's father was featured as one of the most dignified of men. Colored men to be exact. Rebecca's mother, an entrepreneur and dressmaker, had a similar reputation. Their skills were highly sought after by a number of the aristocratic families throughout Connecticut. Addie tried her best to live up to the standards of the Primus family. She attended the same church and social gatherings as the Primuses, looking to them for work opportunities, a compassionate ear, a few dollars, or even a loaf of bread. Addie was part of their circle.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

My dear ever friend, I'm very obliged to you for that skirt. In what way can I ever repay you for your kindness?

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Rebecca had considered leaving Hartford on many occasions. When the Freedmen's Bureau offered her the job, she took it. She collected her things, said her goodbyes and made her way south to teach the newly freed men, women and children. Rebecca's departure left Addie especially heartbroken. Devastated, really. Her beloved sister Friend would be hundreds of miles away. The following letter from Addi was dated within weeks of Rebecca's arrival to Baltimore where she was first stationed as a teacher. It's clear that Addi was not handling the separation well.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

My dearest sister, I. I am greatly disappointed not hearing from you today. You have been so kind to write me every week since your absence. Until this week. I went to the post office this evening hoping to receive a letter. I cannot express my feelings when told there was none for me. I'm getting sleepy, so I must close. Hoping to hear from you tomorrow. Good night.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Without Rebecca's responses, it's hard to know how she felt about leaving Addie in the North. But we do know that she encounters a more vibrant world than what she left behind in Hartford. Rebecca sent this letter to her parents upon her arrival.

[Rebecca Primus (reading of letters or narrator reading her letters)]

Baltimore, November 8, 1865. My dear parents and sister, it is beautiful here today and quite mild. And I guess I have already seen almost as many colored people as as there are in the whole of Hartford. Please excuse hasty writing and all mistakes. I had to stop to eat my dinner.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

Rebecca Baltimore has a very large, free black population, and so Rebecca would have encountered all kinds of black people when she gets to Baltimore. It's similar to when people first arrive in Harlem in the Harlem Renaissance, and they're just overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of black people, the diversity of black people. We see her eyes being opened and a sense of awareness that she's part of a community that is much more heterogeneous than she had been aware of when she was in Hartford. And that, in fact, it might be. It might be more complex sense of blackness than what she is used to in her small, protected New England society.

[Podcast Host (possibly Malcolm Gladwell or another narrator)]

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[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

While most white women at the time were encouraged to keep home and tend to their family's needs, black women were encouraged to work and become educated. Their success would aid in the betterment of the race, what scholars of the past called racial uplift. Rebecca was convinced of this as well. What can you tell us about the Freedmen School and what it was like for Rebecca to be a teacher?

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

The Friedman School was an institution, a vibrant institution that was bringing this thing that had been denied, this thing that was so prized, so prized that being able to read and write was a foundational skill that they needed to move forward. Like, how do I read this deed? How do I do this? How do I write that? Those were all things. They were communal things.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Rebecca was barely able to get settled in Baltimore before she was transferred to another school some 60 miles away in Royal Oak, Maryland.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

So Royal Oak, Maryland, is a rural community that's outside of Baltimore. It's on the Eastern Shore. It is very much unlike Baltimore. And this is where she will teach, where she will found her school, the community that she will become a part of. It is probably fits more like her sense of what Southern black life was like to the extent that she had one. These are people who really had been enslaved. There are still people who are devoted to the Confederacy there. She's going to encounter former Confederates.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Rebecca devoted her entire being to serving her students, or as she called them, her children. At the Freedmen School, she taught children by day and adults at night. At times, upwards of 50 students in one classroom.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

People knew the power of literacy, that it had to be powerful for them to pass laws and for them to brutalize people.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

White supremacists and local residents regularly taunted students, vandalized the Freedmen schools or worse.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

So Rebecca's school didn't get attacked, but the schools of some of the teachers she knew and went down there with were being challenged and threatened. Those teachers were being harassed, and sometimes the schools were being burned. So that just underscored for them the power of what they were doing, that this was a revolutionary act.

[Rebecca Primus (reading of letters or narrator reading her letters)]

April 7, 1866, I received a letter from Ms. Dixon at Trap Tuesday. She has 74 schools, and until the last month everything has gone on quietly. And while now she's stoned by white children and repeatedly subjected to insults from white men, in passing they have brushed by her so rudely, she says, as to almost dislocate her shoulders. She says she tries to bear it patiently. I feel sorry for her. Her position is truly an unenviable one.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Both Rebecca and Addie witnessed firsthand other forms of violence.

[Rebecca Primus (reading of letters or narrator reading her letters)]

I forgot to tell you in my last letter of a murder that occurred at Easton last Sunday night. It seems a very respectable colored man who resided with his family there was on his way to church and en route he was shot by a white rascal so that he fell a dead man. Immediately the villain made his escape and has not yet been caught. He is said to be skulking about in the woods and sustained by his secesh sympathizers.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

By secesh, Rebecca was referring to the secessionists or Confederate sympathizers.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

She continues, there are some very lawless

[Rebecca Primus (reading of letters or narrator reading her letters)]

fellows in these towns and there is nothing too bad for them to do to a colored person. I trust something like justice will be given to the black man one of these days. For some are persecuted almost as badly now as in the days of slavery.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

As Rebecca was adjusting to life below the Mason Dixon line, conditions for Addi were improving. She found new work as a seamstress, making $19 per month, which is around $500 today. Addie would work for nearly 15 different employers in total, all throughout Connecticut and New York.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

My dear and adopted sister, I am not feeling well today. I have been lying down all the morning for the past three or four days. I have the most excruciating pain in my back. I have been out sewing for two weeks. I guess sitting so steady is the cause of my pain.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

The tragedy of Addie's life is the economic precarity of it. You know that she's living day to day from job to job to job. So the skill of being a seamstress actually brought you much more economic security than domestics had.

[Rebecca Primus (reading of letters or narrator reading her letters)]

So.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

So the ones who were like Addie, who were in service, if you were fortunate, you could have a long term job with a family or something. Addie is much more itinerant than that. She's competing with white immigrants, mostly Irish immigrants. So it's a much more precarious situation. It's a day to day and we get that in her letters.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

The Freedmen's Bureau picks certain kinds of people to go teach in Their schools in the south and Rebecca fit the mold. Northern born? Check. Middle class?

[Rebecca Primus (reading of letters or narrator reading her letters)]

Check.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Single and childless, Check. And check. Addie would likely not have qualified. Their lives traveled down very different paths. But the two continue to write despite their busy schedules. And Rebecca's mother would often say if one of them were a man, they would have married each other. They were that close to my only

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

dear and loving friend. Rebecca. I want to tell you one thing. That is, if I went without eating for two or three days and then a person was to bring me something to eat and a letter from you, and they say that I was only to have one or the other, I would take the letter and that would be enough food for me.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

Oh, Addie. So beautiful. When you read Addie and Rebecca's letters very closely, it is clear that at some point in their relationship that these are indeed love letters.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

Oh, dear, I am so lonesome. I barely know how to contain myself. If I was only near you, you and having one of those sweet kisses,

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

saying how much she loves Rebecca.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

I wish I was near you in my head, reclining on your dear bosom. It is useless to wish that, my love.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

We have Addie saying how much she misses Rebecca.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

Oh, my dear friend, how did I miss you last night? I did not have anyone to hug me and to kiss.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

Addie is filling her in on everything that happens. On all the social life, on all the gossip, on, you name it, she's filling her in on all of those things.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

The massive banquet came up very nicely. Quite a number of people attended and several strangers was there. Mrs. Knott was there and was dancing all the time. I saw her that afternoon and she told me that she was not going to dance. Did I tell you in my last that Ann Freeman expect to be married to Justin Francis soon? That what Madame Rumer says. Now, my dear, I must go and take a bath.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

There are very kind of erotic things that she's reporting. She's reporting, you know, how much she misses physical encounters with Rebecca. She's reporting things that you almost think are meant to make Rebecca a little jealous.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

Rebecca, don't you think I'm foolish? I don't want anyone to kiss me now. I turned Mr. Games away this morning. No kisses is like yours when she's

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

working at a school where some of the other servants are actually Irish women. You know, she says, you know, this one wants to see my bosom, but I'm saving that for you. Things like that one letter is very funny, she says. She keeps trying to, you know, sleep close to me and snuggle with me.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

The girls are very friendly towards me. I'm either in their room or they in mine. One of them wants to sleep with me. I am not very fond of white I can assure you.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

But don't worry, I don't like white women or something like that. You know it's so fascinating.

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[Podcast Host (possibly Malcolm Gladwell or another narrator)]

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[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Insurance plan Addie's job as a seamstress was short lived. Her next gig involved caretaking for the family of a professor at Trinity College. He paid Addie. $2 per week, much less than many of her other jobs. This job doesn't last for long either. Addie wrote that she found it demeaning to appear in public as the caregiver of a white child.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

Do you know that I have five pairs of stairs to go up 20 times and sometimes more? There is 107 steps. When it is time for me to go to my bed, my limbs ache like a toothache.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

I'd like to read an excerpt from another one of Addie's letters. In this one, she uses a pet named Stella. Can I read it to you?

[Rebecca Primus (reading of letters or narrator reading her letters)]

Yes, please do.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

My dear, I dreamt of you last night. I don't sleep good. I'm so cold. I miss you very much. And also your feather bed. I took a hot iron up to bed and warmed the bed all over. Jumped right into it. I kept a little warm. By that means, I wish that we could sleep together this winter. I would like it very much. Would you not, Stella? What do you make of the pet names Addie, referring to Rebecca? Estella? Addie also refers to herself as Arthenia.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

I bet you they're literary, you know, because they don't sound like the kind of pet names that Addie would have made up.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Right.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

I think that they're alluding to something. They might be alluding to something that they'd read together, you know, because they were reading books together, they were reading poems together, they were reading stories together. She's so expressive about her love for Rebecca and her longing for her, you know, like meat to a hungry wolf sometimes. It's one of. One of her phrases. We have two women who don't have the kind of contemporary categories of. Of sexuality to define themselves. But clearly Addie is in love with Rebecca. They have a romantic, emotional and erotic relationship with each other. At the same time, they are writing each other about the men they are courting.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

Dear Rebecca, you ask me if I correspond with Fred. No, I do not. For this reason, his letter is always about one thing, nothing interesting. So I have not got any three cents to spare.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus exchanged letters for about 10 years. It's incredible to know that Addie's story might have been lost to history if it hadn't been for Rebecca. She held on to more than 100 letters and poems for several decades.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

Sometimes it'll be years and I won't hear anything. And then sometimes people will write me and tell me. A group of people did a dramatic reading of Addie's letters or something. It's always Addie's letters, you know. Yeah. Because Addie's letters are one. They're passionate and they're. But they also have the movement, you know, Rebecca is in Royal Oak, but Addie's letters move. They travel because she travels. And so it's not surprising that she generates a lot of excitement.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

The Freedmen schools lost funding in Royal Oak in 1869 after only four years. By this time, Rebecca had raised funds to build her own school, the Primus Institute. It's notable that Rebecca never invited Addie to visit her in Maryland, despite Addie asking repeatedly to come see her. We don't know why. Perhaps Rebecca felt the separation was easier if it was absolute. But it does appear to have taken a toll on Addie. Eventually, Addie reluctantly chose to marry a man she had known since childhood in Philadelphia. Mr. Joseph Tynes.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

Dear Sister, I am very much delighted to hear that you say you like Mr. Tynes. If I should marry him, I hope to have some pleasure and comfort. I would like to hear, will you tell me who is Emily?

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Only Addie could announce her pending nuptials in one line and then question Rebecca's friendship with another woman in the next phrase. After her marriage, Addie continued to write to Rebecca at least once a month. Her last note to Rebecca was suddenly cryptic.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

10am this morning. Dearest sister, they tell me, seek and ye shall find. Is that true? No more this time. Your darling little sister, Addie.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Although there's no date, the note was written in 1868, the same year Addie got married. There's one more remnant found in Rebecca's possession. On the back of an envelope, Rebecca has written in pencil. Addie died at her Residence, Philadelphia, the 7th of January, 1870, at 11:00am Addie Brown was 28 years young when she

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

died and she will pass away of consumption, tuberculosis, which many, many black people were taken from us with that horrible disease. Especially, especially poor black people, working class black people. Addie's letters teach us so much about friendship and intimacy between women. And I think really they are rare because they're two women between two different class backgrounds and because they aren't written for public consumption, they aren't censored. The other thing that I've learned from them is the important role of friendship as a kind of a vessel for maintaining a sense of one's dignity and oneself in a world where everywhere else is saying that you are of little value.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Oh, say more about that, that black

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

women are of little value. You know, that you are a beast. Of burden, that that's all you are. And in these letters, you are clearly a person with an intellect. You're a person with a spirit. You're a person with the capacity to grow. You're a person with a sense of interiority. You're a person with a relationship to the divine. You're all those things that I recognize you as being, that if the world doesn't recognize you, I recognize you. I see you in that way, in it's absolute necessity, I think, in the lives of black women, because they aren't getting it anywhere else right? And Addie and Rebecca teach us that. Addie certainly teaches us that.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

In our next chapter, we head to the Deep south, where even more schools were being established to educate people newly freed from slavery. We'll hear how an unlikely group of men came together, fired up by the promise of reconstruction.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

It gives me pride to know that against irreparable odds, those nine black men, with the aid of black women, succeeded in starting this school and seeing it survive and go through tremendous turmoil.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

On the broadside, we take you into

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

the heart of the south with stories that'll surprise you. Bigfoot apparently loves glow sticks.

[Addie Brown (reading of letters)]

He likes to party, I guess.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

He's a raver.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

And topics that dig into the muddy margins of history. Right. The good, the bad, the ugly.

[Podcast Host (possibly Malcolm Gladwell or another narrator)]

It's not clean at all.

[Audible Advertiser/Announcer]

It's so messy. Wait a second.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

This.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

This is actually real.

[Farrah Jasmine Griffin]

Listen to the broadside. One story every week exploring the rich traditions of the South.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Ashley C. Ford)]

Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlemagne, the God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts,