Addie Brown
Addie Brown (December 21, 1841 – January 11, 1870) was an American working-class free Black woman, who worked in various New England towns and wrote of her difficulties to earn a living.
Her letters depict not only the racism and sexism faced by Northern[Notes 1] Black women, but also her struggles with education, her awareness of politics, and her romantic friendship with Rebecca Primus.
An acute observer, she provided through her letters perspective on the lives of working-class people in the nineteenth century, as well as on women's intimate relationships.
The letters tell of Brown's fourteen different employers and eight addresses during the period, in addition to giving information about her chronic illnesses and fatigue.
Housed in the Primus collection of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, her letters give rare insight into the lives of working-class Black women in the period immediately preceding and following the American Civil War.
She lived briefly with an aunt in Philadelphia,[7] and then cut off ties with her family, except for a brother, Ally Brown, who served in the Civil War.
[27] By early 1861, Brown was living in the household of John H. Jackson, proprietor of an eating house and saloon in New York City.
Elizabeth allowed Primus to spend the night with Brown at her home, but these visits stopped when Rebecca's father, Holdridge, objected.
At that time, Brown was working for various Hartford ladies – Mrs. Couch, Mrs. Doughlass, and Mrs. Swans – sewing garments and hoping to make enough money to get through the winter of 1866.
Brown objected and was successful in the dispute, but did not like the work and left in April, taking in sewing until she secured a position with the Crowell family in May.
[43] Brown remained at the Crowells for a year, but in May 1867 moved to Farmington to work at Miss Porter's School, as an assistant to Raphael Sands.
[46] Her political conscience was growing at the time and she reported in letters to Primus that she refused to attend a minstrel show and protested against the local church's segregated seating.
They contain critical observations about the details of her life and work, society and politics, gossip about their community, her search for affection, and her expression of deep feeling for Primus.
[60] Writing about a novel, Women Friendships by Grace Aguilar, that she had read, Brown analyzed whether the characters' differing social status, age, and education mirrored her own relationship with Primus.
[62] Besides Brown's own declarations of love for Primus, the letters also gossiped openly about topics like incest and sex outside of marriage,[63] as well as of encounters with other women with whom she had shared a bed.
[12] They reveal the precarious economic and political circumstances of African Americans living in New England both before and after the war;[6] Brown had at least fourteen employers and eight addresses between 1859 and 1867.
[10][11] Research on romantic friendships has also focused on White women's relationships, which do not typically depict an erotic nature to their passionate attachments.
[68] Some scholars, such as Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Lillian Faderman, have argued that liaisons between White women at the time describe kissing, hugging, and sharing a bed, but not sexual contact.
[71][72][73] Nevertheless, Brown's letters add dimension to the analysis of nineteenth-century same-sex relationships,[13] as she openly wrote of their passion, kisses, and touching of the breasts.
