Laurence Fishburne Reads a Former Slave’s Unbelievable Letter to His Outdated Grasp (1865)

Lawrence Fish­burne brings a point of grav­i­ty to his roles presented through few oth­er liv­ing actors. That has secured his position in pop cul­ture as Mor­pheus from The Matrix, for examination­ple. However he may even mar­shal it ear­ly in his occupation, as evi­denced through his position as Apoc­a­lypse Now’s “Mr. Blank,” which he took on at simply 4­teenager years previous. But it surely used to be a a lot more contemporary according to­for­mance he gave for Let­ters Are living, which you’ll be able to see in the video above, that transparent­ly brings out the qual­i­ties that experience made him a cherished and endur­ing fig­ure onscreen: now not simply his ethical seri­ous­ness, however this humorousness as neatly.

“To my previous mas­ter,” Fish­burne starts, get­ting amusing immediately. The let­ter in ques­tion, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture, used to be orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in 1865 through a person named Jour­don Ander­son, who had escaped a lifetime of slav­ery in Ten­nessee together with his spouse the pre­vi­ous 12 months. Hav­ing since fall­en on onerous occasions, that for­mer mas­ter had writ­ten to Ander­son and requested him to return again to paintings at the plan­ta­tion. “I’ve frequently felt uneasy about you,” Ander­son writes. “I believed the Yan­kees would’ve hung you earlier than this for har­bor­ing Rebs that they discovered at your home,” amongst oth­er crimes he recollects.

Hav­ing set him­self and his fam­i­ly up in Ohio, Ander­son may onerous­ly have felt tempt­ed to head down South once more. “I wish to know par­tic­u­lar­ly what the nice likelihood is you professional­pose to offer me,” he writes. “I’m doing tol­er­a­bly neatly right here. I am getting $25 a month, with vict­uals and material­ing, have a com­castle­in a position house for Mandy — the parents name her Mrs. Ander­son — and the chil­dren, Mil­lie, Jane, and Grundy, pass to college and are be informed­ing neatly.” However “if you are going to write and say what wages you are going to give me, I can guess­ter have the ability to come to a decision whether or not it’s going to be to my advan­tage to transport again once more.”

Fish­burne deliv­ers those traces with a thick lay­er of irony, as Ander­son surely intend­ed. “Mandy says she can be afraid to return with­out some evidence that you simply had been dis­posed to regard us type­ly and simply­ly, and we’ve con­clud­ed to check your sin­cer­i­ty through ask­ing you to ship us our wages for the time that we served you.” When Fish­burne says that, he prac­ti­cal­ly will get a stand­ing ova­tion, and certainly, the let­ter met with a want­in a position recep­tion in its day as neatly — now not from Colonel P. H. Ander­son him­self, however from the learn­ers of the scoop­pa­pers by which it used to be reprint­ed. In any case, Jour­don Ander­son saved his unfastened­dom, and were given repute remaining­ing greater than a cen­tu­ry after his dying to head with it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Listen the Voic­es of Amer­i­cans Born in Slav­ery: The Library of Con­gress Fea­tures 23 Audio Inter­perspectives with For­mer­ly Enslaved Peo­ple (1932–75)

What the Textual content­books Don’t Inform Us About The Atlantic Slave Business: An Ani­mat­ed Video Fills In His­tor­i­cal Gaps

The Names of one.8 Mil­lion Eman­ci­pat­ed Slaves Are Now Seek­in a position within the Global’s Greatest Genealog­i­cal Information­base, Assist­ing African Amer­i­cans In finding Misplaced Ances­tors

A New Information­base Will Document­u­ment Each and every Slave Space within the U.S.: Dis­cov­er the “Sav­ing Slave Hous­es Mission”

The Atlantic Slave Business Visu­al­ized in Two Min­utes: 10 Mil­lion Lives, 20,000 Voy­ages, Over 315 Years

“Ask a Slave” through Azie Dungey Units the His­tor­i­cal Document Instantly in a New Internet Collection

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and vast­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns, the ebook The State­much less Town: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video collection The Town in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.