Few diaries kept by Black American women in the 1800s have been published. Here is an entry from one of them, from Salem, Massachusetts in 1855, from a free state in the northern US back in slave times. (I broke it up into smaller paragraphs for easier reading):
Wednesday, Sept. 12. To-day school commenced. – Most happy am I to return to the companionship of my studies, – ever my most valued friends. It is pleasant to meet the scholars again; most of them greet me cordially, and were it not for the thought that will intrude, of the want of entire sympathy even of those I know and like best, I should greatly enjoy their society.
There is one young girl and only one – Miss [Sarah] B[rown] who I believe thoroughly and heartily appreciates anti-slavery, – radical anti-slavery, and has no prejudice against color. I wonder that every colored person is not a misanthrope. Surely we have everything to make us hate mankind.
I have met girls in the schoolroom [-] they have been thoroughly kind and cordial to me, – perhaps the next day met them in the street – they feared to recognize me; these I can but regard now with scorn and contempt, – once I liked them, believing them incapable of such meanness. Others give the most distant recognitions possible. – I, of course, acknowledge no such recognitions, and they soon cease entirely.
These are but trifles, certainly, to the great, public wrongs which we as a people are obliged to endure. But to those who experience them, these apparent trifles are most wearing and discouraging; even to the child’s mind they reveal volumes of deceit and heartlessness, and early teach a lesson of suspicion and distrust.
Oh! it is hard to go through life meeting contempt with contempt, hatred with hatred, fearing, with too good reason, to love and trust hardly any one whose skin is white, – however lovable, attractive and congenial in seeming.
In the bitter, passionate feelings of my soul again and again there rises the questions “When, oh! when shall this cease?” “Is there no help?” “How long oh! how long must we continue to suffer – to endure?”
Conscience answers it is wrong, it is ignoble to despair; let us labor earnestly and faithfully to acquire knowledge, to break down the barriers of prejudice and oppression. Let us take courage; never ceasing to work, – hoping and believing that if not for us, for another generation there is a better, brighter day in store, – when slavery and prejudice shall vanish before the glorious light of Liberty and Truth; when the rights of every colored man shall everywhere be acknowledged and respected, and he shall be treated as a man and a brother.
– Charlotte Forten, 1855.
My heart felt like ashes after I read this – at how little some things have changed.
Forten was 18, then at Salem Normal School, now Salem State University, becoming its first Black graduate in 1856. She is better known by her married name, Charlotte Forten Grimké.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- Charlotte Forten Grimké
- American abolitionists
- Thoreau’s library – same time and place
- Black Americans: a brief history
- White Rage
- The hearts of White people, part II
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Abagond 
“These are but trifles, certainly, to the great, public wrongs which we as a people are obliged to endure. But to those who experience them, these apparent trifles are most wearing and discouraging; even to the child’s mind they reveal volumes of deceit and heartlessness, and early teach a lesson of suspicion and distrust.”
I recently heard a podcast where a rightwing academic claimed microagressions were imaginary. He claimed Black people just made up negative behaviors we witness and endure everyday of our lives.
Charlotte Forten clearly described a common microagression and its effect on a person’s emotional and mental outlook.
A long-lasting effect from “apparent trifles”.
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