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“Slavery wasn’t discussed. It was painful and shameful. You knew not to ask anything about anyone who wasn’t here before a certain period. We knew we had a slave in the family, but we didn’t discuss it’ shared Cousins Bertha and Barbara.
And here we were. Our unknown origin story was in the bedroom of a memorabilia collector in West Philadelphia.
I consulted my dad, Oliver Gilbert’s great grandson, who’d played a mastery role in preserving and promoting our family’s history. His apathy over the situation frustrated me. Completely disconnected, dad couldn’t focus long enough to absorb my questions, let alone the experience as it was unfolding. Only months later it was revealed that dad was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, which would aggressively progress over the next 11 years, eventually taking dad from us in September of 2020 during a time when mom, too, had lost the ability to care for herself due to a more aggressive form of dementia, Lewy Body. On the morning of dad’s funeral, and with mom living with me, I got her out of bed, dressed, hair and makeup done. I then retreated to my own bedroom to prepare. Noticing the black limousine now parked in front, I returned to mom to ensure she was ready to go. She’d undressed and was back in bed. ‘Mom, why are you back in bed’? I asked. ‘I’m tired. Why? Do we need to go somewhere’? Mom had completely forgotten that we were leaving for dad’s funeral. They’d been married for 55 years. They’d celebrated 54 anniversaries tother until the pandemic had rendered them apart for the last one. I reminded mom that dad’s funeral was that morning and we needed to go. Her tangled mind had erased the memory of his death, and she wept at the news. That was the last time I’ve reminded mom of dad’s death. She forgot it after that dad and now believes he’s at work. Dad’s been ‘at work’ for almost 3 years and we miss him so. Lord, please give us a cure for dementia and related diseases!
Back to 2009:
Ethel and I spent hours at a time on the phone learning about each other and our respective families. She lived alone, was a widow, and had no children. At the time, she wasn’t operating her Lancaster Avenue storefront as it needed repairs, which she wasn’t in a position to make. She also shared that her home’s roof was leaking, and her front porch was in trouble. I got the sense that we wouldn’t see the museum materialize anytime soon, as Ethel was battling several domestic challenges which required her full attention.
I’d suggested that perhaps someone like Henry Louis Gates or Charles Blockson might appreciate seeing and analyzing the pages.
Blockson was my personal choice, as a local Philadelphia scholar and global superhero his collection is one of the nation’s leading research opportunities for the study of the history and culture of people of African descent, Africa and its diaspora. His catalog dates back from 1581 to the present and contains more than 700,000 books, documents and photographs.
Blockson had co-founded the African American Museum in Philadelphia and has contributed to the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African-Americana and the African Diaspora at the Pennsylvania State University and the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
In 2016, Blockson donated Harriet Tubman’s signed hymnal and other personal items to the Smithsonian. He once said that when he inherited Harriet Tubman’s 39 personal items from her great-niece Merlie Wilkens, including the shawl that Queen Victoria presented to Tubman, “it was the crowning point of his life as a collector.”
It was a perfect solution! I suggested that Blockson could house the autobiography and scrapbooks until Ethel got her museum opened. Further, Blockson may offer to consult with Ethel on the process to open such a museum.
Ethel wouldn’t hear it. She said the collection was perfectly safe in her bedroom and NOBODY would see it until the museum was ready.
Ethel had a great distrust, and despite my intense frustration, I didn’t blame her. Having my own archival collection, I’ve experienced the incredible sense of regret when something is loaned out and never returned. At some point, I’ll write about my Mary Church Terrell collection and what happened with the autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World, which she’d inscribed to my grandmother Helen, who was her daughter, Phyllis’, bestie.
I had questions for Ethel about the contents of Oliver’s autobiography. She suggested that I document my questions and send them to her, inclusive of a postage paid, self-addressed return envelope. “What if I don’t ask just the right question”, I vented to Jody Fernald via email. Jody wisely counseled me to find patience and let Oliver have his way, as he always does. Sage advice.
Ethel and I considered how celebrity-historians might give her museum notable press and help bolster fundraising campaigns. If she wasn’t interested in Blockson or Gates, was there someone she felt comfortable with consulting? I knew I needed another voice at the table. Being the great-great granddaughter of Mr. Gilbert wasn’t enough. It was the Gilberts, after all, who had let this incredible story fall victim to Philadelphia’s sanitation department.
Ethel shared that she really liked Michael Coard, Esq, a local attorney and activist. She was a regular listener to his radio show, Radio Courtroom – WURD Radio.
Coard was/is a somewhat controversial figure who gets things done in sensational form. I’ve never listened to his show but have seen him on the news and appreciate his relentless spirit. I suspect we wouldn’t always agree, but that’s par for the course in these circles. Coard and I now jointly sit on a Philadelphia commission for the Bethel Burial Ground historic site, and he’s been a strong supporter of that effort. But, in 2009, I didn’t know him.
At the request of Ethel, I outreached to Coard on a number of occasions in 2009 to have a conversation about the situation, the autobiography and scrapbook pages. The calls were never returned.
According to Coard’s website for ATAC -Avenging the Ancestor’s Coalition:
“Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) is a broad-based organization of African American historians, attorneys, concerned citizens, elected officials, religious leaders, media personalities, community activists, and registered voters. Based in Philadelphia, its influence is international. ATAC was founded in 2002 to compel the National Park Service (NPS) and Independence National Historical Park (INHP) to finally agree to the creation of a prominent Slavery Memorial to conspicuously permeate the President’s House project. The purpose of the Slavery Memorial is to honor primarily the nine African descendants enslaved by President George Washington at the President’s House, which is also known as America’s first “White House” and which was located at the current site of the new Liberty Bell Center in Philadelphia at Sixth and Market Streets. Those nine were among the 316 Black men, women, and children enslaved by Washington at his Mt. Vernon, Virginia plantation.”
Eventually, I was able to reach a woman who may have been Coard’s assistant and who shared my request to speak with him. Allegedly, Coard replied that if I needed to speak with him, I was welcome to come to one of his ATAC meetings. I wasn’t interested in sitting in an open meeting of activists to have a conversation about this topic, nor potentially exposing Ethel to a public forum or demands for the documents from an assortment of interests. So, I simply never went. I shared the feedback with Ethel and left it to her to decide for herself. If she felt compelled to attend a meeting, I’d join her. She never did.
Ethel and I traded notes and cards. She loved to talk about figures from Black history and was superbly knowledgeable. She’d ask “Have you ever heard of….”? (Insert name of little-known historical figure whose effects were in her collection) I’d listen and learn. It was always fun and fascinating to spend time with Ethel.
I offered the following: “If you’d please send me a sample list of items in the Gilbert collection, I’ll send you undated checks for various items, in various dollar amounts. You can hold those checks and if you ever change your mind about selling, just cash the check and send me the corresponding item”. I was desperate and this was all I had to offer, aside from my offer to build a website for Ethel to create an online museum to leverage virtual reality and attract a young audience. Nope! She wanted it to be a brick and mortar, and in West Philadelphia, and “the people” needed to come and see it all, and she’d be onsite to teach them. She envisioned schools sending busloads on field trips.
I wrote a series of checks, placed them into a single envelope and mailed them to Ethel. What’s the worst thing that can happen? She could cash all of the checks and send me nothing. At least I’d then know I was likely being frauded on the whole thing. Keep in mind that none of our living relatives had seen this alleged autobiography, so there was no proof that it existed, or was legit. Jody had a few pages of it, which aligned with her research, but still.
I trusted Ethel, and, somehow, understood her.
A couple of quiet months passed. The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays came and went. And, without warning, a package arrived on January 29, 2010. I took my excitement to Facebook with this post and photo.
“I think UPS just delivered my GGGrandpop’s original slave, fugitive and life thereafter memoir, courtesy of the lady in west phila who bought it 10 yrs ago. The package is from her. Afraid to open it. I might wait to open it with my older cousin, Bert, who is my sidekick in this journey. Can’t breathe! She and I had been corresponding over the last month”.
The autobiography in its packing on the day of its arrival.
Facebook friends piled on, expressing excitement and asking that I ‘open it already!”
Later that day, I followed up:
“Folks, That was IT!! At 5:30 I arrived at my cousin’s and we opened it together. Wrapped in brown paper were two large, thick pieces of cardboard, and inside of them was the treasure. First, there was a nice note from the lady. She ‘d also enclosed a Black Americana print from 1924 as a gift. Then there was what I was looking for….70 legal sized pages of my GGGrandfather’s life story. It is handwritten and we were only able to read to page 4 before her grandchildren were pulling at her (she was babysitting for little ones) and Gabbi was calling for a ride home from the mall. I can’t wait to read the rest. What we read so far was so descriptive & interesting. My cousin also gave me the copies of the papers we requested from the Univ of Maryland. After many years, the memoirs of Oliver Cromwell Gilbert, fugitive slave and abolitionist, jubilee signer and public speaker, is finally back with the family, thanks to a stranger, the internet, Univ of NH and GOD.”
Also tucked inside was a handwritten note from Ethel, thanking me for being the museum’s first donor. I’ve saved that note.
As I sat and digested the autobiography over the next few days, I realized that the story was familiar.
Julia! Julia’s handwritten 10-page summaries were condensed versions of this. Each version, each copy, fact-checked the other. This document was legitimately from the mouth Oliver Cromwell Gilbert. The handwriting matched that of Maria, from letters in our collection and at the University of Maryland in the Governor Warfield collection.
Over the next couple of months, more checks were cashed, and more items arrived, inclusive of massive charcoal portraits, individually of Oliver and his wife Maria, which must have hung on the walls of their home. They are now framed together and reside in my den.
Ethel and I kept in touch, and as the years passed, she seemed to have ever-increasing difficulty with returning calls and letters. I feared that the museum wasn’t meant to be and that her remaining collection would be lost (to obscurity, as the University folks had warned. I HATED for them to be right about that).
At some point, her responses stopped, and her phone rang without an answering machine on the other end. I took trips to West Philadelphia to knock on her door and also to visit her storefront on Lancaster Avenue, which seemed to have been emptied at one point and later converted to a doll shop. I subscribed to a people tracing service to try to locate relatives, leaving messages for strangers in hopes that someone would update me on Ethel. Her sister, the only living relative we knew of, was no longer employed at Drexel. Years passed. I kept trying, often using Facebook to message people who may have been relatives. Nobody replied.
Finally, in March 2023, I left a voicemail with someone who was connected to the connection of a connection in the skip-trace profile for Ethel. It seemed to have been a niece, but I’d had zero luck over the years, so held little hope.
A couple of days later I was in my kitchen having just closed the door behind a Washington Post journalist who’d spent the day interviewing me about Oliver and his story, past and present, when my phone rang. On the other end of the phone line was Florine, Ethel’ sister, who was glad to hear from me but also sad to share the news –her voice cracked – Ethel had died a few years earlier.
I had to ask, “what happened to the collection”? She replied, “what collection”? My heart sunk.
Just then, in the middle of that call, there was a knock at the door. The Washington Post journalist had forgotten her cell phone which had crept down into the seam of the chair in which she’d been seated. My cell phone was on speaker. The journalist shot me a puzzled look. I mouthed “Ethel is dead”. The journalist let herself out while I composed myself at the kitchen island, listening to Florine expand on what had happened with Ethel.
I shared with Florine that Ethel had retained not only some of Oliver Gilbert’s documents, but many others from notable figures in Black history.
Ethel had shared that Oliver’s ‘trash’ collection contained an original signed cabinet card of Frederick Douglass, which was a prized possession, along with a number of special items she was retaining for the museum. She refused to give me any details, but always said “You’re going to LOVE it when you see it! Just wait and see”. And, of course, her collection was much more extensive that that associated with Oliver.
“Where did her things go”? I asked.
Florine shared that Ethel had started to experience dementia at the end of her life and had suffered from cancer, which was well advanced at the time it was discovered. Things had come undone for my friend, Ethel, and she hadn’t made provisions for the collection.
Someone had cleaned out Ethel’s home to prepare it for sale. The collection wasn’t identified.
“I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.” Khalil Gibran
