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Learning from Old Elizabeth: to New Orleans

Learning from Old Elizabeth: to New Orleans

Last updated on: April 28, 2017 at 12:19 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Learning from Old Elizabeth: to New Orleans 2017-04-28T12:19:45-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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A Prophet to America: Old Elizabeth

In 1863, Old Elizabeth (the pen name she chose) published her life story. You can read it for free, it is not very long, blunt, and full of the Holy Ghost. If you wonder why many of us rejoice that monuments celebrating rebellion and slavery are being taken down at last, you owe this woman a few minutes of your time.

Imagine having pious parents teach you about Jesus, love you, teach you wisdom, only to have your “owner” sell you at eleven to another farm. You get so lonely that you slip away to see your mother:

At parting, my mother told me that I had “nobody in the wide world to look to but God.”*

Elizabeth was beaten with a rope for seeing her mother. If you can imagine that without hating the evils of three hundred years of slavery, pray. The story of Old Elizabeth does not end there, thank God. Elizabeth did not use the evil done to her as an excuse to dismiss her own evils. Her heart was far from God until she cried out, spontaneously a form of the Jesus Prayer:

My spirit was then taught to pray, “Lord, have mercy on me—Christ save me.”**

Like Saint Nina, equal to the Apostles, she was given a mighty message of repentance for the world. Like the ancient saint, she was given visions and God’s blessing. Finally, one “master” acted as all should have done and recognized Elizabeth’s liberty:

Some years from this time I was sold to a Presbyterian for a term of years, as he did not think it right to hold slaves for life. Having served him faithfully my time out, he gave me my liberty, which was about the thirtieth year of my age.***

She had been given a prophetic word, but few would hear her. Some could not hear from a woman, forgetting that God had raised up women as prophets in times past. They confused the pastoral role with the prophetic preaching of those like Saint Nina. Others were afraid of Old Elizabeth’s enthusiasm. Spiritual lethargy always fears the unbridled, untameable move of God. Most of all, people opposed her preaching liberty . . . God’s liberty in a land that bowed to the the slave power.

Old Elizabeth lived just long enough to see that Emancipation was surely coming, but died before she could see that the victory would be incomplete. It is still incomplete.

This history still matters.

Now read an inscription on the monument that New Orleans just removed:

[Democrats] McEnery and Penn having been elected governor and lieutenant-governor by the white people, were duly installed by this overthrow of carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers, Governor Kellogg (white) and Lieutenant-Governor Antoine (colored).

United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.

He broke the terrorists only to see his victory wasted.

The monument celebrates the triumph of white supremacy and the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the state. This was a second civil war fought by terrorists of the White League against the Union and President Grant. President Grant defeated the terrorists, but the GOP flushed away his triumph in 1876 to keep the White House under Rutherford B. Hayes. The terrorists won. To celebrate the victory of treason and terror, the White League erected the “Liberty Monument.”

To call the victory of the white supremacists “liberty” is typical of tyrants: our chains are their liberty.

This monument is an affront to my great-great grandfathers and all the brave patriots who fought for the Union and freedom for the enslaved against the autocrats of the slave power. It is a slap at the Emancipation Proclamation and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Most important, and most shamefully, it celebrates the continued persecution of African-American citizens of this Republic. Rebellious men tried to ignore the witness of millions like Old Elizabeth who had exposed their sin.

This is history, but it is history that should bring “the white race” to repentance and not be celebrated. This is heritage, but it is a shameful inheritance, like inheriting a vial of plague from our ancestors. It is not political-correctness for a Christian to side with Old Elizabeth and against the White League: it is simply being correct.

Let’s raise a monument to Old Elizabeth. That’s our better heritage.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal. iii. 25.

——————————-

*N/A (2012-05-16). Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman (Kindle Location 16). . Kindle Edition.

**N/A (2012-05-16). Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman (Kindle Location 28). . Kindle Edition.

***N/A (2012-05-16). Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman (Kindle Locations 60-61). . Kindle Edition.

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