RACE + HISTORY
The Feminist Who Wanted To Create A Whites-Only Thanksgiving Holiday Celebration
Sarah Hale advocated creating a whites-only national celebration. Let's unpack this
All abolitionists were not created equally as the stories of Abraham Lincoln, and Sarah Hale demonstrate. Their idea of Black liberation involved Black people "going back where they came from," an idea most Black Americans vigorously rejected. "Hale mobilized White racial fears in the antebellum era through the language of colonization to build support for a holiday with the capacity to transcend sectional discord." In other words, Hale wanted the White people in the North and South to get along, and she felt that the presence of Black people in America was nothing more than a fly in an otherwise lovely punchbowl.
Hale rose to prominence as a window of five children, who used her poetry and gift of gab to provide for her family. She said of the time there were "very few employments in which females can engage with any hope of profit," and became a women's advocate. Best known for her curation of Godey's Lady's Book, a magazine highlighting fashion of the time, Hale wanted women to have more opportunities.
However, like many White feminists, Hale hardly concerned herself with the wellbeing of Black people who she deemed unfit for freedom. "She portrayed a unified America as a country of White people — an idea that remains embedded in the celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday." That's right, Thanksgiving wasn't only racist because of the White pilgrims' horrible treatment of Indigenous people, though that's undoubtedly an unshakeable foundation of the story. On top of that racism, Thanksgiving is inherently racist towards Black people.
How ironic that White feminists could see the injustice of their lower status compared to White men but rarely sympathized with the oppression Black women experienced. The same disparities continue in the modern era as White feminists focus on "equal pay" issues while mainly ignoring the racial wealth gap, mass incarceration, and high maternal mortality amongst Black women. Feminists like Hale concerned themselves with kitchen table issues, but only the ones discussed in White homes.
Remember. that time Abraham Lincoln tried to get the slaves to leave America? On August 14, 1862, Lincoln met with Black leaders to discuss Black folks getting the boot. A little more than a year later in September of 1863, Hale wrote a letter to Lincoln petitioning him to formalize the Thanksgiving Holiday. The so-called progressive White people of the time were blatantly dismissive of the concept of Black liberty. Instead of listening to Black leaders' post-abolition plans, White folks like Lincoln and Hale wanted Black people to get out.
Thanksgiving had nothing to do with coming together no matter your religion, color, or way of life — it started as a tool of white supremacist, religious propagandists. And for those who think Thanksgiving has nothing to do with religion, consider Lincoln proclaimed, "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heaven," calling on God himself to heal the nation. Thomas Jefferson opposed the holiday because he supported separation between church and state.
Sarah Hale loved the idea of Thanksgiving bringing people together, but the truth is, White people were the only ones she considered full citizens. Unlike Lincoln, who supported abolition even though Black leaders refused his offer to "leave America," Hale believed Black people leaving was "a necessary precondition for Black freedom because "the Anglo-American will be master over the Negro, if the latter is near him. So I intend to help colonize Liberia." Instead of holding racists accountable, they wanted Black people to leave.
Just like White folks in the modern era, Hale's idea of helping Black people was to install their idea of Black liberation, ignoring the ties Black and Indigenous people have to the country we now call America. Hale pled, "for the sake of both Black and White prosperity and safety, national separation was the only acceptable formula."
Many White people wanted and still want to "fix" the problem of Black people in America instead of accepting them as an integral part of America's foundation. Remember White men used to say, "cotton is king" in the South? Well, who do you think made cotton king — Black enslaved people were the ones picking the cotton, building state and federal buildings, and even helping an ungrateful White populous win a revolutionary war against the British monarchy.
Back in 1827, Hale published a novel called "Northwood," in which she explored "themes of nationhood, patriotism, faith, regional identity, race, gender, and slavery," and she discussed the concept of a "fixed and uniform national Thanksgiving celebration" in great detail. White historians dubbed Hale "The Godmother of Thanksgiving," because of her efforts in advocating for a holiday to become official. Finally, in 1863, Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a federal holiday.
Even though neither Lincoln nor Hale got their wishes granted, Black people did not leave America en masse after abolition, Thanksgiving will always wear a scarlet letter for its’ numerous ties to White supremacy. In the modern era, folks may assume that White feminists align with Black people and other marginalized groups because of their marginalization. But the truth is much more nuanced because White women have usually picked their whiteness over their womanhood by excluding Black women and the concerns of their community. Like Alice Walker said, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”
Sarah Hale had a dream of America that was wholly different from Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of a multiracial democracy. Instead, Hale dreamed of the whites-only version of America and a Thanksgiving holiday that celebrated their white privilege, basking in the fruits of stolen land and labor.
🌹Learn more about the author here. 🖊Sign up to read all my stories and thousands more.
