Margaret Garner

The Margaret Garner painting or The Modern Medea by Thomas Satterwhite Noble , which took up Margaret Garner's story

Margaret Garner (* around 1834 in the United States of America , † around 1858 ) was an African-American slave. She killed her two-year-old daughter in 1856 when she faced the captors trying to bring her back into slavery . Her case received a lot of public attention and was heatedly discussed, as it provided arguments to opponents and supporters of slavery (slavery leads to inhuman behavior such as murdering one's own child, or on the other side: African-Americans must be protected from their own inhuman nature, which she does not even shrink from murdering her own child). It forms the template for the child murder in the book Beloved (German: human child ) by Toni Morrison , who also wrote the libretto for the opera Margaret Garner , which premiered in 2005, with music by Richard Danielpour .

Life

Margaret Garner belonged with her husband Robert, his parents and their four children to a group of African-American slaves who fled over the Ohio River from the slave-owning state of Kentucky to the state of Ohio in January 1856 . The group left on a Sunday. For the first part of the way they used one of the owners' sleds and horses, and they crossed the icy river on foot. By the time they got to Wester Row, across the state line, it was Monday morning and they decided to split up so as not to attract too much attention. The nine other refugees later reached Canada with the help of the Underground Railroad .

Garner's family were looking for a Mr. Kite (his first name is not recorded) who had been ransomed by his father years ago. They had to ask for directions several times, drawing the attention of passers-by. Upon arrival, Kite soon left to seek advice from a friend, and on his return found the hut already surrounded by people from the slaveholders and the local sheriff. Robert Garner shot one of them in the arm. Margaret Garner declared that she and her children should rather die than live in slavery again, and cut the throat of the second youngest child, a girl, with a butcher knife. She was overwhelmed and taken to jail with the seven others, where she waited a month for her trial, which then lasted a spectacular two weeks.

One of her lawyers ( Jolliffe ) argued that she had been free since her owner had let her work in Ohio a few years earlier, as had her children, all of whom were born afterwards. So it was a murder case, her companions were to be seen as accomplices. From this point of view, after all, they would have been condemned as people in a free state, not as property. The strict Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 ("Federal Law on Fugitive Slaves", see Abolitionism ) would not have been applicable to them. In his defense, he tried to prove that both this law and slavery in general were contrary to the American Constitution . However, he could not prevail, Margaret Garner was convicted of "property destruction".

Margaret Garner, her husband and the youngest child, also a girl, were sold south. On the steamship to New Orleans , the ship threatened to sink and Margaret Garner fell into the water with the baby during the rescue maneuver. She could be found alive, but the child was not. When she heard of his death, she was delighted and expressed her desire to drown as well.

Her husband later announced that she had died of typhus in 1858 . On his deathbed, she implored him not to remarry until he was a free man.

reception

Toni Morrison , who wrote her biography, also wrote the libretto for the opera Margaret Garner by Richard Danielpour . The opera premiered in Detroit in 2005 at the Michigan Opera House with Angela M. Brown and Rod Gilfry in the leading roles.

literature

• Levi Coffin: Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad . London 1876 ( digitized ).
• Toni Morrison: Beloved . Vinatge, London 1997, ISBN 0-09-976011-8 .

Web links

Commons : Margaret Garner  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• http://www.rootsweb.com/~kypendle/slavemargaretgarner.htm
• http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/muckley.htm

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Margaret Garner ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 2, 2016.