Existing comment:
We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!
-- petition of many slaves, 1773
Panel 5, 1955
The title of this panel derives from a petition for freedom made by an enslaved man self-identified only as "Felix" to the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and its House of Representatives on January 6, 1773. In the petition, Felix admonished the "vicious" enslaved willing to take up arms in their fight for freedom. He then earnestly appealed to the authorities to recognize the "wise, just and good" course of action and to provide the vital "relief" prayed for by the peaceable enslaved persons for whom he adjured. In pairing this image of a violent uprising carried out by enslaved people with a petition premised upon nonviolence, Lawrence spotlighted two divergent paths to freedom. Choosing which path was still a difficult decision for civil rights leaders and participants in 1955. In Felix's petition, Lawrence likely saw a foreshadowing of challenges to Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent stance. |