Comments on: Black History Month: Elijah Ables in Cincinnati, 1842-1845

By: Steve Smith

Steve Smith — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 15:05:24 +0000

Wow, amazing story, and book. I’d love to read it.

By: Alf O'Mega

Alf O'Mega — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 21:28:49 +0000

Thanks for the clarification. (Pro tip: always run your writing past the dimmest guy you know. You’ll get some helpful feedback, and he probably needs to read more anyway.)

By: Russell Stevenson

Russell Stevenson — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 20:38:11 +0000

Alf:

To me, Maryland in fact seems more apropos to the context, as it was a slave state, and Ohio, a free one. Otherwise, the statistic would not make sense. The 4/5 ratio demonstrates the likelihood that Elijah had at one point been a slave, but he could have also been part of the free 20%.

By: Alf O'Mega

Alf O'Mega — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 20:16:24 +0000

Thanks for your ongoing work on Brother Ables, Russell.

Could you clarify a couple of things for me? In the phrase “the city had faced at major race riots in the past seven years” it seems like something got garbled in the transmission.

And your parenthetical aside about “the 4/5 slave/free black ratio in the region” raises several questions.

Is the region in question Cincinnati or Western Maryland? It’s unclear given that the most recently mentioned region is the latter, but the point seems more apropos to the former.

Assuming that the region is Cincinnati, don’t you actually mean “former slave” instead of “slave?”

Finally, your ratio seems to imply that there were four [former] slaves for every five free black persons (44%). Did you mean to say that four out of five black persons in Cincinnati were former slaves (80%)?

I don’t mean to sound pedantic. I’m very interested in this subject, and I don’t want to misunderstand. Thanks again for your research.

By: Russell Stevenson

Russell Stevenson — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 17:13:24 +0000

Tim:

That’s an interesting question. I can show you primary source documentation to justify virtually every spelling of Elijah’s name: Able, Ables, Abel, and even Abels. We even have signed documentation from Elijah with variant spellings. But it is safe to say that we can narrow it down to either Able or Ables, since those are the only spellings found on documents Elijah attributed directly to Elijah (a letter, a contract, etc.)

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 16:34:51 +0000

I should say, I have a tremendous appreciation for the time and research that’s been poured into this important part of our history. Thank you for this.

Quick question–Abel or Abels?

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 15:43:46 +0000

Quite a story, Russell. From our modern vantage point, colored as it is by all the events that have happened since — the Civil War, emancipation, the LDS priesthood ban, the Civil Rights era, and the reversal of the priesthood ban — it is hard to appreciate the complex racial culture that Ables had to navigate, both within and without the Church. Joseph’s unequivocal support for Ables is pleasantly surprising, especially given the pushback he got from some of the other LDS leaders of the time.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 04:52:46 +0000

I spent a few years in Cincinnati. There’s a reason it’s one of the few large metropolitan areas in the U.S. that’s still more than an hour from any temple–there aren’t all that many members of the church there, and especially not many in the actual city itself.

And the race issues still cause problems. Almost all neighborhoods remain entirely segregated. There’s a surprising amount of racism. Most churches and schools are also pretty segregated.

About seven years ago, a “downtown” (aka African American) branch merged into a larger ward and then immediately split into two smaller wards, and shortly thereafter many of the African Americans who had been in that small branch became less active. A handful continued to come. The church is still struggling with race issues in Cincinnati, and will probably continue to struggle as long as Cincinnati itself does.