From Concord to California: Ellen Garrison and Her Fight for Freedom

BY CAMILLE JOHNSON

“I think that it is our duty as a people to spend our lives in trying to elevate our own race.” Ellen Garrison Jackson [Clark], 13 June 1863

Concord has a reputation for producing people of radical ideas, justice, and bravery. From the minutemen of the American Revolution to transcendentalist writers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the town of Concord has an ability to grow a sense of social justice in all its citizens. The story of Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark, an African American woman born and raised here in Concord who went on to fight for freedom at a national level, is a less well-known example—an injustice that The Robbins House and the Concord Museum are seeking to rectify.

As an abolitionist, teacher of freedmen, and equal rights activist, she has only recently begun to be recognized alongside the many other influential figures of her time, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Nonetheless, she played an important role in the fight for justice during the nineteenth century, committing her life’s work to uplifting her community and ensuring certain essential freedoms for Black people. I think sharing Ellen’s story grants us an opportunity to celebrate an important contribution to the ongoing fight for liberty.

Ellen was born in 1823 to one of the few African American families living in Concord. While there is no evidence that her parents could read or write, they made sure that Ellen and her siblings could. They were the only Black students at the desegregated Center School, and it was lonely. However, her life in Concord was paramount to her development as an activist. Susan Garrison, Ellen’s mother, was a founding member of the Concord Female Antislavery Society, which no doubt inspired a young Ellen. Her family’s investment in her early education and their penchant for social activism started her on her path to becoming a teacher of freedmen.

After completing school, she moved to Boston, joined the local abolitionist group, and attended meetings and worship in the now-famous African Meeting House in Beacon Hill. It is likely that she watched speeches by some of the most famous abolitionists of her time, encountered those escaping slavery through the Underground Railroad, and raised money for the abolitionist cause. Ellen was not only living in the heart of the abolitionist movement; she was also driving it forward as a member of its collective effort. She married her first husband, John W. Jackson, while in Boston, but he died just a few years later. Ellen was ready for a change.

The Robbins House

©Camille Johnson

Ellen had already begun teaching professionally in Boston. In 1863, she applied for a position with the American Missionary Association (AMA) and the Freedmen’s Bureau, which were working to educate the formerly enslaved population across the South. It was often illegal for enslaved persons to learn to read or write, which set them at a severe disadvantage in their ability to become fully engaged citizens. To Ellen, there was no better way to help those in her community than by providing them with an education; she had found a new calling. During the end of the Civil War and the start of Reconstruction, Ellen was assigned to the town of Port Deposit, Maryland, in 1865. She taught there for three years before briefly being transferred to Virginia, then returned to Port Deposit. While teaching and traveling, she experienced a range of communities and living situations. African Americans in Maryland lived vastly different lives to those in Virginia, and they all lived differently from how Ellen had grown up in Concord or lived in Boston. In one of her letters to the AMA while in James City County, Virginia, Ellen wrote that, “the style of living is unlike any that I have ever seen.” She explains that African Americans there have more land, yet far worse homes than she was used to. Other letters cite major differences in ideas regarding education, politics, and worship.

Jack Garrison, carte-de-visite, about 1866

Concord Museum Collection; Gift of Mrs. Olive Brooks Banks. Pi1103.2

“Our soldiers went forth with sword and bayonet to contend for right and justice. We could not do that. But we contend against outrage and oppression wherever we find it.” Ellen Garrison Jackson [Clark], 21 May 1866

A map of Port Deposit, An Illustrated Atlas of Cecil County, Maryland 1877

Library of Congress

Ellen was still teaching in Maryland when the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed, and she found herself at the forefront of one of its first tests. The law was intended to grant African Americans the same legal protections and rights in court, but the country had yet to see if they would be granted those protections in practice. While at Baltimore’s President Street Station, Ellen and a colleague were forcibly thrown out of the station because of their race. After counsel from the Freedmen’s Bureau and African American residents of Baltimore, she decided to press charges and sue. The case was thrown out by the court, but Ellen showed great resolve in seeking justice for the treatment she and many others of her time endured. Ellen was one of the first to put the new civil rights law under necessary scrutiny.

Passenger and freight station, Baltimore

Library of Congress

When the threat of racial violence began to rise after the Reconstruction era, Ellen left the South in 1879 to pursue different teaching opportunities in Kansas. She was among the “Exodusters,” a group of African Americans who moved west for land and farming opportunities. After passing the Kansas teacher’s exam, she taught African American children in Barton County. There she met her second husband, a homesteader named Harvey Clark, raising four children on his own. Ellen and her family farmed the land and became active in Kansas’ African American community before moving to Pasadena, California, in 1890. Whether it was the draw of a warmer climate or the presence of several former abolitionists, they headed west by train and settled in the foothills of Pasadena. Ellen and her family participated in a growing community of activists. Ellen died of tuberculosis in 1892, just two years after moving to California. She was buried in Mountain View Cemetery along with many fellow activists that had come before her, and after.

A freedman school on Edisto Island, South Carolina. Samuel A. Cooley, 1860s.

Library of Congress

Born in Concord, Ellen bore witness to some of the most notable events of the nineteenth century. The abolition of slavery, Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and westward expansion are all taught about in textbooks. Ellen not only witnessed these significant moments in history but contributed to the social movements central to them. She is an important part of Concord’s legacy, and her memory deserves to be honored. Her story teaches us an important lesson: that anyone can be witness to history and be a part of shaping it themselves. It also reminds us that Concord’s African American history runs deeper than many visitors and residents know. Expanding the town’s narrative to include these stories will only improve our understanding of Concord itself and its ability to foster the ideals of revolution and justice.

Camille Johnson is the 2022 Thomas Dugan Intern for the Concord Museum and The Robbins House. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Museum Studies in the Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY College at Oneonta.