Augustus Juba Freeman was born in 1866 to a young enslaved woman in Virginia named Sula, whose intelligence and beauty had driven more than one man to distraction. The master was kind enough, and treated her as well as he would have a prized mare, and he agreed to let her name the child he had fathered. The end of slavery was in sight, though, and if he was irked by Sula’s choice of a surname for Augustus, he did not let it show. When Augustus was four years old, he and his mother were emancipated, and they left the home of his father.
Sula, a woman born into slavery but raised in a home where kindness prevailed, had a realistic grasp on the ways of the world, and a personality into which bitterness simply did not fit. She boldly negotiated a generous grub stake from the master, and with this money, brought her son north to Washington, D.C. Augustus Freeman had a clever parent who gave him the dignity of having lost his father to a farming accident, so he never had to admit to being the illegitimate son of a slaver. This secret she carried to her death, and none was the wiser, for Augustus possessed African features and a deep coffee complexion that did not betray his real ancestry.
On their journey, Sula met and spoke freely with other emancipated slaves, and a woman gave her the name of someone who was said to be looking for a housekeeper. Sula lost no time contacting this family, and was hired on the spot. Though the matriarch wished for Sula and Augustus to move into her “servants’ quarters,” Sula declined, and she and her son lived in a tiny apartment a few miles away. Winter and summer, Sula walked to work, to keep house and cook and care for another woman’s children. Augustus was enrolled in a public school and fended for himself every day after school until his mother came home in time to question him on what he’d learned that day, and to put him to bed.
By age nine, Augustus was completely self sufficient, cooking all their meals, doing his and his mother’s laundry, and keeping their little flat clean. These chores were the nuisances he had to get out of the way every day so he could settle down to travel the world and its history in books. Teachers had recognized his potential, and provided him with a wealth of reading material, opening the world of ideas for him. This child was quiet, self-possessed, and driven. He intended to go to college and become a teacher, wanting nothing more than to give other children what he had been given: a love of learning and history and philosophy and literature.
Sula remained fiercely supportive of her son and his ambitious drive for education and a career in teaching. She and her employer grew to middle age together, becoming close in spite of their differences. They saw their children reach adulthood and graduate from college, Augustus from Hampton Normal and Agricultural School in Virginia, founded in 1868, whose mission was to provide education to promising young people of color. Hampton graduates went on to provide education to their peers, newly freed slaves from all over the South.
This photo of Augustus was taken on his graduation day, and on the day he was offered, and accepted, a teaching position at Hampton.
Even though returning to Virginia seemed to Sula a backwards step, she moved with Augustus, and they set up house on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay, in a spacious, simple frame house. Augustus married a fellow teacher, and Sula helped to raise their children. Satisfied with her son’s success, Sula then turned her attention to her own education, and became one of the first black women in the United States to earn a law degree. At age fifty-eight, she married, but kept her self-chosen name, Sula Freeman.
Written by Leslie Modena, Mangopunch’s Blog
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