Story

In a 2016 study of medical students, 73% of all participants held at least one false belief about the biological differences between races. Furthermore, White medical students disproportionately believed the falsehood that Black people possessed a higher pain tolerance than White people. This survey reveals the pervasiveness of racism in the medical field, otherwise known as “medical racism”. Medical racism is an ideology that posits that racism and discrimination are profoundly ingrained in the social, political, and economic structures of society (both international and national). The ubiquity of medical racism is demonstrated in the way that minorites and people of color are afforded unequal and inequitable access to quality education, healthy food, livable wages, and affordable housing. People of color are faced with higher risks of illness and exposed to standards of care that are inferior to their White counterparts. Studies have shown that these discrepancies are present even when economic status is factored in. Hence, this unequal treatment can be attiributed to the explicit and/or implicit racial biases held by practitioners such as those in the aforementioned survey. The question, then, is how did  such racist beliefs and practices become instilled in the medical system? The answer can be found within the institution of slavery and its associated practices. The story of Dr. Thomas Hamilton and enslaved man, Fed (later John Brown), represents such a brutal and inhumane practice.

Dr. Thomas Hamilton (1790-1859) was a prominent slaveowner and physician from Washington, GA who spent the majority of his adulthood in Clinton, GA. Hamilton was the father of Colonel Charles A. Hamilton and Lieutenant Algernon Sidney Hamilton, as well as the father-in-law of Sarah “Sallie” Bowen Hamilton Swanson (1838-1912). In 1820, at the age of thirty, Hamilton graduated from what was at the time the most renowned medical school in the country, the University of Pennsylvania, and afterward relocated to Clinton, GA where on April 19, 1821 he married Malinda Clower (1803-1882), a member of a wealthy local family. Hamilton eventually became one of the original trustees of the Medical Academy of Georgia, as well as a member of the Georgia State Senate in 1844.

John Brown (1818-1876), born Fed, was born in Southhampton County, Virginia. Brown was sold to Starling Finney, a slave dealer, in 1830 at twelve-years-old and taken to Georgia where he was sold to a man named Thomas Stevens. It was during his stint at Steven’s plantation when Brown was lent to Dr. Thomas Hamilton for medical experimentation as reimbursement for Hamilton’s curing Steven’s of an illness. As a result of this trade, Brown became the unwilling subject of Hamilton’s experiments.

The first experiment that Brown was coerced into participating in required him to sit on a stool placed on a wooden plank that was laid across a lit firepit. Brown was forced to sit on the stool until he passed out from heat exhaustion. This experiment was repeated multiple times a day until Hamilton discovered that a cayenne-pepper solution assisted Brown in withstanding the heat. As a result of such experimentations, Hamilton accumulated a small fortune from selling placebo pills to the public advising each patron that the efficacy of the pill was contingent upon them taking it with a cayenne-pepper tea. Thus, Hamilton profited from the brutality that he inflicted on Brown.

The second experiment involved Hamilton carving blisters and callouses into Brown's skin in an attempt to prove the falsehood that Black people possessed a high pain tolerance due to having thick skin. In his book, Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Now in England, Brown describes this experiment as particularly cruel and painful.

As a result of Fed’s treatment at the hands of Hamilton, he escaped; eventually changing his name to John Brown and fleeing to England where he worked as a carpenter and herbalist until his death in 1876. Ironically, John Brown is also the name of the abolitionist who despised Hamilton’s son, Charles, due to Charles’s leading the Marias des Cygnes Massacre in Kansas in 1858. 

Unfortunately, the effects of those practices carried out by slavers such as Dr. Thomas Hamilton are still prevalent in our present-day medical system. These biases and stereotypes could, and often have, resulted in serious and life-threatening effects for Black patients seeking medical care.

Sources

Boney, F. N. “Doctor Thomas Hamilton: Two Views of a Gentleman of the Old South.” Phylon (1960-), vol. 28, no. 3, 1967, pp. 288–292. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/273667. Accessed 22 Aug. 2021.

Monique Tello, MD. “Racism and Discrimination in Health Care: Providers and Patients.” Harvard Health, 16 Jan. 2017, www.health.harvard.edu/blog/racism-discrimination-health-care-providers-patients-2017011611015.

The Johnson Law Office is one of three early nineteenth-century buildings that stood on Madison Street. The Honorable Richard Johnson (1847-1921) used this building during Clinton’s heyday in the 1830s. James Smith, Ellen Craft’s father, would have conducted business here as well, and it is possible that Ellen came and went from this building on errands or with the white women of the family.  The son of Francis Solomon (1809-1878) and Lucia Griswold Johnson (1816-1859). Judge Johnson presided over the Jones County Court for one decade (1877-87). He then served as a one-term Georgia state representative (1888-89) and as a state senator (1890-91). 

The office resided on property originally owned by Dr. Thomas Hamilton (1790-1859), who sold the house to Edward Taylor (?-?) for $400 on December 28, 1831. The house passed from Taylor to General William Flewellen (?-?), who paid over five times more, $2,225 for it, in February 1835.  Mary Thweatt Flewellen (?-?), his widow; Abner H. Flewellen (?-?), his brother; Bennet Bell (?-?); and Francis Solomon Johnson (1809-1878), the father of Judge Johnson, were subsequent owners. 

The law office received a historical marker on April 29, 2016.  It has subsequently been moved to a new location in Clinton, where it is being repurposed for community and educational use. 

Sources 

The History of Jones County by Carolyn White Williams 

The Old Clinton Historical Society http://www.oldclinton.org/more-about-clinton/current-projects-3/richard-johnson-law-office/ 

The Blacks were a distinguished African American family who resided in Clinton through the Reconstruction. Frank Black (1868-1928) was a farmer, mail carrier, and chairman of the Republican Party of Jones County.  Frank and his wife, Sally Barfield Black (1871-1964), of African and Mexican ancestry ((pictured below), had one known child, Frank Butler Black (1893-1979). He served in the United States’ Army during World War I.  

The Black family exemplifies how African Americans of Jones County sought land ownership, engaged in civic activities, and served in the US armed forces (Spanish-American War, World War I) during the post-Reconstruction decades and early twentieth century. These activities demonstrated their ability to be productive, patriotic Americans and to resist the social forces that attempted to prevent them from voting and exercising other rights of citizenship. Like William and Ellen Craft, who escaped middle Georgia specifically so that their future children could never be sold from them, the Black family cultivated a secure household and maintained the close bonds of love and affection that slavery threatened through constant sales and forced separation.

Sources

Vanishing Georgia, Georgia Archives, University System of Georgia 

Jake’s Woods and the grounds behind the Clinton Methodist Church contain the graves of Black and White people, including enslaved persons such as Caesar whose headstone is quoted above. Dr. J[ames]. F[inney]. Barron (Feb. 10, 1825-Jan. 17, 1898), a surgeon and doctor, owned Caesar. The headstone was erected before the Civil War since its text is similar in style to those of other antebellum headstones.  Barron would have likely lacked postwar funds to erect a headstone.   

SACRED

to the memory of 

CAESAR

The Faithful Servant

Of

Dr. J. F. Barron

Who died Dec. 8, 1862

Aged 37 y’rs.

“Faithful Servant” obscures these facts: Caesar was enslaved for life, his labor was uncompensated, his body was someone else’s property, he was not free to travel at will, and he likely never learned to read and write. Dr. Barron’s version of Caesar’s life is counterbalanced by Caesar’s silence in the historical record and his inability to rebut or affirm his enslaver’s narrative.

The burials of enslaved persons took place with enslavers’ permission usually during evenings and on Sundays, making it difficult for Blacks on neighboring plantations to attend, restricting their ability to plot mass rebellion. Mourners prayed, sang, and celebrated their loved ones in services that could last until morning. Bodies were interred so that their heads faced east, the direction of the rising sun, a symbol of resurrection and renewal.

It was rare for a grave like Caesar’s to be so close to those of White people, or inscribed with a name and birth and death dates. More often, in places like the Sea Islands of Georgia, they were “hidden away in remote spots among trees and underbrush” and placed on uncleared land (Parsons, p. 4).  They were often denoted by personal property, including pitchers, vases, clocks, saucers, and crockery that were broken to symbolize the ending of mortal life and the beginning of eternity.  

Ceasar’s headstone is slated to be cleaned, repaired, and set upright.

Sources 

Memoirs of Georgia, Containing the Historical Accounts of the State’s Civil, Military, Industrial and Professional Interests, and Personal Sketches of Many of its People.  Vol. 1.  Atlanta, GA: Southern Historical Society, 1895, p. 322.

"The Preservation of African-American Cemeteries." Grave Matters. Columbia, SC (1996).    

Sarah (“Sallie”) Eliza Bowen [Hamilton Swanson] (1838-1912) was the daughter of wealthy landowner and enslaver Dr. Horace “Horatio” Bowen (1792-1860). As an affluent young white woman, her life was dominated by domestic duties —supervising the preparation of meals and upkeep of the house by enslaved persons, gardening, and entertaining guests.  

Sallie Bowen was probably aged fourteen or fifteen when she kept her daybook (1838-1912), which she repurposed as a diary or journal. She noted horse races, balls, dances, and weddings she attended, all activities germane to the privileged lifestyles of members of the planter class.  When she was middle-aged, her grand-niece Sallie (1888-?) or perhaps her grand-niece Marion (c. 1890-?), or the two of them, both about seven or eight years old, used her daybook to write poetry, draw, practice spelling family names, and even sketch a drawing of her.  

Sallie Bowen’s luxuries came at the expense of the freedom of the African Americans her family enslaved.  Her entry of January 12, 1854 expresses this dissonance between her comfortable life and the vulnerability of the enslaved. After jotting down the state of the weather (“very warm”) and key ingredients to a recipe (“2 pounds of bacon”), she writes, “Byron* gave Silvy an unmerciful whipping for nothing.” She then closes by noting the weather: “a little shower this evening.” 

Her words “unmerciful” and “for nothing” reveal her sense that Byron’s whipping of Silvy is disproportionate to Silvy’s transgression. Enslaved people were whipped as a common punishment for wrongs either perceived or actual, including breaking tools, not working hard or quickly enough, talking back to White people, or escaping. The appearance of this sentence in the middle of a recipe suggests the normalization and banality of such trauma, for the victims of it like Silvy and for those who witnessed it like Sarah.   

Yet, this is the only entry in Sarah’s daybook that mentions a whipping. Perhaps this beating was particularly brutal, and/or perhaps Bowen had fond remembrances of playing with Silvy as a child. Is Silvy’s remark an insight into the surveillance, control, and exposure to sexual violence that Black women endured in slavery’s Big Houses?  Is Sarah reminded of how White women, no matter their status or education, were expected to submit to male authority and control in their families and communities? 

 *The “Byron” in the sentence is presumed to be William Byron Scott (1834-98), a farmer and the son of William Scott (1795-1851) and Eliza Jane Jappie Benson (1790-1850). He was the brother-in-law of Colonel Charles Hamilton (1822-79), the son of Dr. Thomas Hamilton (1790-1859), and the brother of Charles’s wife, Madaline Scott Hamilton (1832-60). Byron’s father, William, was one of the trustees of Wesleyan College, the first chartered all-female college that included founding members from Clinton’s Female Seminary. 

Sources:

Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library / University of Georgia Libraries

Griffin, Richard W. “Wesleyan College: Its Genesis, 1835-1840.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 1, 1966, pp. 54–73. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40578546. Accessed 22 Aug. 2021.

The Clinton Female Seminary occupied a two-story frame building facing the courthouse square. It reflects the emphasis on literacy, culture, and learning that distinguished Clinton during its glory days from the 1800s through the 1830s, before nearby Gray and Macon supplanted it in importance as hubs of transportation and commerce. Dr. Horatio Bowen, for example, created what Carolyn White called “one of the most complete” personal libraries, a free-standing building constructed next to his home. 

The Georgia legislature officially incorporated the Clinton Female Seminary on December 15, 1821. James Smith, the enslaved Ellen Craft’s father, was one of the original trustees and served as an interim headmaster.  Thomas Bog Slade (June 26, 1900-May 5, 1882) was the Seminary’s most famous headmaster. He facilitated the Seminary’s move to Macon in 1836 and establishment as Georgia Female College (now Wesleyan College), the first college in the US chartered exclusively for women.

At the Seminary young ladies were expected to pursue a rigorous, wide-ranging curriculum that included such subjects as Chemistry, Botany, Geography, Natural and Moral Philosophy, Reading, Writing, Grammar, Music, Embroidery, and Painting.  Serious study and intellectual growth were central, as well as instruction in cultural and artistic skills that would make the students eligible candidates for marriage and motherhood.

In the April 7, 1836 Georgia Citizen (Macon), Headmaster Slade defended his rule prohibiting students from attending “Balls and Parties.” He encouraged parents who questioned this policy to withdraw their daughters post haste.  Many of the sixty students boarded at the Seminary during the term or in the homes of local residents. They came from middle Georgia’s most affluent planter families, and their education prepared for them to attract eligible marriage partners and become honorable wives and mothers. Slade, who lived in the building, and his teachers were responsible for their conduct. A student who became pregnant out of wedlock or developed a reputation for promiscuity would have been the death knell for the Seminary.

“Jessie Lin,” aka Jane Thigpen (c. 1824-Feb. 9, 1914), is the Clinton Female Seminary’s most famous student. Born the same year as the enslaved Ellen Craft, she had access to education, unlike Ellen, and eventually taught in both Clinton (Georgia) and Rome (Georgia), and became a published poet.

As was customary for nineteenth-century writers, Thigpen published under a nom de plume or pen name.  Perhaps she chose “Jessie Linn” as a romantic homage to Sir Walter Scott (Aug. 15, 1771-Sept. 21, 1832), one of the nineteenth-century’s most popular anglophone poets, whose verses she would have memorized for school exercises.  A woman only known as “Jessie” had been the recipient of love letters from Scott, and “linn” is a Scottish name for “waterfall.”

In addition to at least one poem in Nashville’s antebellum Home Circle, Thigpen published a collection of her verses, The Lover’s Revenge (J.W. Burke & Company, New York, 1876). In this volume, “The Last of His Race” may have been inspired by the Muscogee Creeks, the original occupants of middle Georgia. Thigpen depicts the physique and homelands of a fictive Native American warrior in romantic, yet stereotypical ways. Perhaps she was sensitive to the role that White people had played in the removal of the Creek Nation, the stereotyping of their culture, and the appropriation of their lands. She may have meditated upon this bygone warrior and his culture as a form of nostalgia, to express the desire for a slower, more agrarian time as Georgia and the US became more urban and industrial.

Sources

“Clinton Female Seminary.” Georgia Messenger (Fort Hawkins). May 18, 1837, 70.

“For the Messenger. Clinton Female Seminary.” The Georgia Citizen (Macon).  April 7, 1836, 70.

Thigpen, J[ane]. The Lover’s Revenge and Other Poems. New York, J.W. Burke & Company, 1876. 9.

 Williams, Carolyn White.  History of Jones County, Georgia for One Hundred Years, Specifically 1807-1907.  Macon: J.W. Burke Co., 1957, pp. 208, 565.

On December 22, 1869, after two years as a political organizer, Jacob P. “Jake” Hutchings (c. March 1831-June 1909) was sworn in as the first Black and first Republican member of the Georgia legislature. He is the only Black state legislator ever elected in the history of Jones County. He actively fought to enable Black men access to the ballot, even though White county officials made every effort to stop them.

The August 18, 1868 Federal Union reprinted a Macon Telegraph article that accused Hutchings (misnamed “Jake Hutchinson”) of organizing drills and secret meetings of 125 armed Black male “agitators.” It complained of Black farm laborers leading “entirely idle lives” and “getting slack about their work.” The Jones County News (Jan. 30, 1908-Nov. 25, 1909) had earlier published an article by Hutchings that suggested the source of such unfounded anxieties. In spite of threats from the Ku Klux Klan, he said, Black men would not be deterred in their attempts to vote. Hutchings reported that election officials in Clinton outright refused to open the polls to the hundreds of Black men he had organized to vote. Those who could spare the time and expense had to travel instead to Macon to cast their ballots.

Hutchings’s story demonstrates accomplishment and determination to succeed in spite of dehumanizing voter suppression policies and bigoted attitudes towards African Americans. His determination to exercise his 15th Amendment right and to ensure access to the ballot by other Black men (the 19th Amendment of 1920 granted women the right to vote) anticipate the mid twenty-first century tensions regarding restrictive voting policies that adversely have affected Black and people of color communities.

Sources

 “Affairs in Jones.” Federal Union (Milledgeville, GA), August 18, 1868, p. 3.  Georgia Historic Newspapers.

Daily Intelligencer (Atlanta, GA), January 28, 1870, p. 60.  Georgia Historic Newspapers.

Foner, Eric.  Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996, p. 112.

Hutchings, J. P. [Jake]. Letter. Samuel Hardeman Griswold, Jones County News (Gray, GA), April 28, 1868.   

Williams, Carolyn White.  History of Jones County, Georgia for One Hundred Years, Specifically 1807- 1907.  Macon: J.W. Burke Co., 1957, pp. 19, 186. 

Jacob P. “Jake” Hutchings (c. March 1831-June 1909) was born in slavery in Virginia. He was sold in 1842 to Alfred George of Jones County, Georgia, and then soon owned by Richard Henry Hutchings (c. 1817-74), whose granite quarry near Clinton occupied an area now known as Jake’s Woods. 

After Emancipation, he taught himself how to read and write, served as a teacher and minister (many Black churches doubled as schools), and purchased the quarry where he once had been enslaved.  Tall and impeccably dressed, he was regarded as polite, strong, courageous, determined, and respectable.  His white ancestry (was he the son of his enslaver?) may have helped him secure credit to open a short-lived grocery store and, as the 1870 census reports, purchase $1500 worth of farmland and real estate.

Jake became the main mason serving the county, often called upon to cut headstones for the deceased. His work included the stone for the walls of Clinton’s courthouse and jail and stone on the grounds around the Jones County courthouse in Gray.

Sources

“About Jones County Cemeteries.”  Fields of Stone: Cemeteries of Jones County, Georgia.

http://www.friendsofcems.org/jones/default1.htm?AboutJonesCem.htm,2.

Daily Intelligencer (Atlanta, GA), January 28, 1870, p. 50.  Georgia Historic Newspapers.

US Census, 1870.