Stephan Salilsbury of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes:
Old Black Alice, who died in 1802 at the wondrous age of 116, remembered well lighting the pipe of William Penn, when the proprietor and slave owner needed a puff.
She remembered attending nascent Christ Church at a time when the nave ceiling was so low she could touch it with the tips of her weathered, slender fingers.
She remembered it all: working the boats of Dunk’s Ferry to help white passengers across the river during the day. And working secretly at night to help fellow slaves disappear across the water to freedom.
When Alice died, she was mourned and eulogized as the keeper of the city’s memory, a long-lived resident whose life was intertwined with the lives and deaths of the city, a teller of history who saw much and forgot little and passed it all down to eager and younger listeners.
Now Christ Church, where Alice was a parishioner for decade after decade (never attaining freedom herself, despite helping many achieve theirs), has decided to make her life and stories the centerpiece of a new effort to dramatize the city’s early experience with slavery.
Read it all.