Guest contributor: Daniel F. Silva*
When Martin Henry Freeman graduated from Middlebury College (in Middlebury, Vermont) at the top of his class in 1849, he was the first recognized person of African descent to earn a degree from the college. More than a century would pass before the racial background of Alexander Twilight—the first person of color to graduate from Middlebury (1823) and the first to graduate from any American college—was publicly acknowledged.
The circumstances and historical context, both national and global, of Freeman’s relationship to Middlebury tell an important story about the reproduction of Black unfreedom in Vermont, even at a time of growing abolitionism in the state and the nation.
Freeman enrolled at Middlebury during the tenure of its fourth President, Benjamin Labaree, a well-known abolitionist who nonetheless opposed concerted efforts to enroll students of color. Labaree would make a notable exception to this policy in 1845 when he co-signed the admission of Martin Freeman. Labaree was a proponent of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which was founded in 1817 with the purpose of deporting freed African Americans to Liberia and, in the process, establishing a settler foothold in Africa for an emerging U.S. imperialist project. In Liberia, Labaree argued, “‘the colored race’ … would not only improve itself but also could affect ‘the civilization and Christianizing of Africa.’”
Middlebury College’s ties to the ACS were especially strong, with members among the administrators, professors, and students. Labaree himself served as vice president and president of the Vermont Colonization Society (VCS), the first state chapter in the country.
Freeman was a native of Rutland, Vermont, about 30 miles south of Middlebury, where his grandfather settled after fighting in the Revolutionary War. Freeman was mentored by Rev. William Mitchell of the East Rutland Congregational Church, who was also a vocal proponent of the ACS and a member of the Vermont chapter. Both he and Labaree shared the view that free Christianized African Americans, like Freeman, could play an important role in Liberia, and more broadly in “evangelizing that vast and benighted continent.” Mitchell wrote a letter of recommendation to Labaree (now lost) advocating for Freeman’s admission. And so, in 1845, Mitchell and Labaree “colluded to enroll Freeman at Middlebury College for just that purpose [colonization]” (to quote my Middlebury colleague, William Hart).
In 1849, when he graduated, Freeman opposed the project of the ACS and the implied mandate of his admission to Middlebury. It is likely that Labaree or other ACS agents offered Freeman the opportunity to move to Liberia. Later he wrote, “I feel more and more every day, that I made a great mistake in not going there, when I was untrammeled by family ties, and had the opportunity.” Instead, he accepted a teaching position at Allegheny Institute, a historically Black college near Pittsburgh (later renamed Avery College).
In accepting the position at Allegheny, he became one of the first Black professors at an American college. In Pittsburgh, he became friends with several local Black nationalists, including Martin Delany and Dr. David Jones Peck (whose sister, Louisa, Freeman would marry in 1857). Delany and Jones both supported the notion of Black emigration from the United States but parted ways with the ACS on strategy.
Freeman would later adopt their stance, resigning from Avery College in 1863 and accepting a teaching position at Liberia College. In applying for this position, Freeman procured a letter of recommendation from none other than Benjamin Labaree. Freeman would go on to teach at Liberia College for 24 years until he returned to the United States on a leave of absence (for health reasons). In 1889, he was appointed president of Liberia College and returned to Monrovia with his family, where he died two months later.
In seeking freedom in Liberia, Freeman ironically became a cog in a colonization machine built on the hierarchization of global Black life, in which African Americans were expected to administer a U.S. imperial project. As Labaree’s quote above proposes, a negation of Black humanity in the U.S. could only be countered by African Americans if they partook in the dehumanization and unfreedom of Black people in Africa. This was implicit in the ACS program—and often made explicit by ACS supporters.
Today, Freeman is remembered at Middlebury as one of its first Black graduates. The Anderson Freeman Center—the college’s intercultural center—is partially named after him, along with Mary Annette Anderson, the first Black woman to graduate from Middlebury. Nonetheless, few of the complexities surrounding his admission and career are widely known on campus.
Works Cited:
William B. Hart, “Black History Month: Early Racial Diversity at Middlebury, Part One” (February 15, 2016). LINK
William B. Hart, “‘I Am a Man’: Martin Henry Freeman (Middlebury College, 1849) and the Problems of Race, Manhood, and Civilization,” in Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, eds., Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), pp. 148–178. LINK
Russell W. Irvine, “Martin H. Freeman of Rutland: America’s First Black College Professor and Pioneering Black Social Activist,” Rutland Historical Society Quarterly 26:3 (1996), pp. 71–99. LINK
William Mitchell, The Claims of Africa: A Discourse Delivered at Montpelier at the Annual Meeting of the Vermont Colonization Society, October 19, 1843 (1843). LINK
*Daniel F. Silva is associate professor of Luso-Hispanic Studies and Black Studies and director of the Twilight Project at Middlebury College. The views expressed here are his own, not necessarily those of Middlebury College or the Council of Independent Colleges.
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