Reclaiming the Legacy of Alethia ‘Lethe’ Tanner: A Pioneering Voice in the Fight for Democracy

Cook, Susan, Alethia Lethe Tanner, Https://Www.alethiatanner.com/, 2014

Given the outcome of the most recent American presidential election, the story of Alethia ‘Lethe’ Tanner (c. 1785–1864) feels particularly necessary to recount and reclaim. Her narrative underscores the often-overlooked but vital role Black women have played, and continue to play, at the forefront of the fight for democracy in America. Lethe, an enslaved woman in the early nineteenth century, surmounted enormous obstacles to purchase her freedom and become a community leader in modern-day Washington, DC. She not only secured freedom for herself and eighteen relatives but also made significant social and financial contributions to local churches and schools that were critical to the newly freed population in Washington. Her efforts were rooted in her entrepreneurial beginnings as a produce cart vendor on what is now Lafayette Square, just outside the White House.

The Misrepresentation of Lethe Tanner

A precursor to note is that while Alethia is often referred to as “Alethia Browning Tanner,” this name is historically inaccurate. Key documents, such as her manumission papers and her final will and testament, consistently show that she signed her name as “Lethe Tanner.” Lethe, likely a shortened form of Alethia, reflects the name she preferred and will be used accordingly in this article. The first appearance of “Browning” in connection to Lethe occurred in 1868, four years after her death, in the report Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Condition and Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia. This report contains many factual inaccuracies, such as misrepresenting the means Lethe used to purchase her sister’s freedom. Such errors undermine its credibility as a source for remembering Lethe’s life and reflect a recurring pattern of government documents inaccurately depicting the identities of enslaved individuals.

Reconstructing Lethe's Life

Reconstructing Lethe’s life requires us to fill in the gaps left by archival silences, an endeavor historian Annette Gordon-Reed describes as an “imaginative enterprise.” To minimise conjecture, we turn to firsthand accounts, such as those of Susan Cook, Tanner’s four-time great-niece, whose memory has been preserved through generational rediscovery. Interviewing Cook has been indispensable to this article, offering unique insights into the significance of Lethe’s story and the lessons it holds. Given, however, the scarcity of these accounts, interpretive frameworks are useful to understand and reconstruct Lethe’s life.

Her story is often placed within the self-emancipation historiographical narrative, advanced by scholars like James McPherson and Michael Johnson, which emphasises the agency of enslaved people in securing their freedom through independent resistance, separate from abolitionists and external forces. However, this framework is ill-suited to Lethe’s story and fails to do it justice. The narrow focus on the Civil War era overlooks earlier acts of resistance in the early nineteenth century and remains heavily androcentric, often neglecting the experiences of enslaved Black women. Moreover, and most importantly, its emphasis on exceptional acts of freedom obscures the broader, collective dimensions of resistance that shaped enslaved people’s lives and aspirations. Instead, I adopt Tamika Nunley’s commendable concept of ‘self-making’ as a more fitting lens for interpreting Lethe’s life. Unlike the traditional self-emancipation narrative, which centres on the singular act of achieving legal freedom, self-making explores the ongoing process of constructing a self-determined identity, even within systems that denied enslaved individuals legal or social recognition.

Freedom vs. Liberty

This article maintains a clear distinction between freedom and liberty: while freedom often marks the breaking of legal barriers, liberty reflects the broader, ongoing struggle to fashion an identity and live on one’s own terms. Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “afterlives” resonates strongly here, arguing that America’s ideals of “democratic individuality” often failed to extend to formerly enslaved women who continued to face systemic constraints rooted in race and gender even after manumission. Lethe, as a free woman in a slave-holding region with no tangible power or resources to rely on, exemplified this struggle. Her afterlife was defined by sustaining her produce cart business until 1853, purchasing the freedom of her relatives, and establishing a school — all of which reflected her enduring commitment to community and liberation.

Early Life and Path to Freedom

Originally enslaved on the Chelsea Plantation in Upper Marlboro, Maryland — first by Tobias Belt and later by his daughter, Rachel Belt Pratt — Lethe began her path to freedom as a produce vendor on today’s Lafayette Square. Through her earnings, she was able to purchase her own freedom, a significant moment documented in July 1810 when she provided $275 to Joseph Daugherty. Given the legislation of the time barring a direct transaction, Daugherty paid Pratt on Lethe’s behalf. The purchasing of her own freedom was not a transactional, isolated act of emancipation; it was rather the culmination of a longer history of her “small” — as Cook describes — everyday acts of self-making which served as catalysts for lasting change. This narrative challenges conventional accounts that often exclude figures like Lethe from exploration within the archival record, merely reducing them to generalised and simplified examples of emancipation. Moreover, her freedom was the product of sustained identity formation, resistance, and self-determination within a system built to suppress her very existence.

Cedric Robinson’s outline of ‘racial capitalism’ further contextualises her within this system that relied on the persistent subjugation of Black people in the American labour economy. Lethe’s navigation of this system reflects her awareness of how her race and gender shaped her proximity to the law and how self-making involved managing diverse pathways between her imposed social position and reimagining herself outside their confines. Viewed through this lens, Lethe not only resisted the structures of power that sought to define her identity but actively destabilised them; challenging the misconception of passivity, showing that resistance was not confined to overt or isolated acts but included the transformative power of striving for identities that transcended the legal and social constraints of their time.

A Commitment to Family and Community

Fifteen years after her initial manumission, Lethe remained persistent, paying approximately $1,400 in multiple installments to secure the freedom of her sister Laurana Cook in 1826, along with her six children — reflective of her selflessness and commitment to family over her own financial benefit. Drawing on N. Z. Davis’s micro-historiographical framework, which focuses on human agency within systemic contexts to reveal broader social practices and collective mentalities, Lethe’s story demonstrates that freedom was neither a singular nor isolated act. Instead, it was part of a larger, interconnected network of community efforts that made her emancipation — and that of those around her — possible.

Hartman’s concept of afterlives is evident in Lethe’s post-emancipation life, as her establishment of the Bell School in 1807 fostered an ethos of community-driven resilience and self-determination, particularly for young girls, enabling Black women to articulate their readiness to assume societal roles otherwise denied to them. Lethe’s legacy also included providing her nephew, John F. Cook Sr., with the space to establish both his church and school in her home; institutions which played a crucial role in educating and raising the next generation of key figures, including Charles Hamilton Houston, who would go on to drive the Civil Rights Movement. These vital educational institutions symbolised Lethe’s commitment to creating a self-sufficient community, showcasing the vibrancy and resilience of free Black Washingtonians in the early nineteenth century. By the time of the Civil War, this commitment of personally freeing more than eighteen individuals contributed to the District’s transformation into a majority-free Black population, growing from 2,549 in 1810 to 11,131 by 1860.

The Ongoing Struggle for Freedom

Yet, the shadow of slavery persisted, as enslaved women faced exploitation from neighbouring counties in response to the declining Chesapeake tobacco economy between 1800 and 1820. For free Black residents during the Antebellum period, the dangers were severe, with violence and laws that made their freedom precarious. Without freedom papers, they could be legally abducted and sold back into slavery in the Deep South. This underscores the deeply entrenched systems of power designed to maintain the status quo — structures that have endured for centuries.

For Lethe, self-making was not solely about achieving freedom, both before and during her afterlife, but also redefining her relationship to her context, her space, and her community’s future. Indeed, the sociological context of Lafayette Square carries layered spatial significance. Lethe’s reality unfolded in the shadow of the White House and Congress; buildings which imposed the normative and legal powers of the legislative and executive branches of government, where both de jure and de facto influence was felt upon those in proximity. Her daily occupation of this public space directly challenged the exclusion enforced by these surrounding powers, exemplifying sustained resistance to systemic oppression. Rather than relying on isolated acts of defiance, Lethe actively shaped an identity that transcended her immediate circumstances.

The Legacy of Alethia Tanner

Lethe’s life, situated at the intersection of personal agency and spatial significance, exemplifies how Black women’s self-making was both an act of resistance and a means of reshaping their environments. As Nunley asserts, Lethe transformed the square into a stage for experimentation and the assertion of freedoms at a time when the nation’s capital was still defining itself. Underscoring, however, the paradoxical nature of the District itself: while the nation’s founders envisioned the city as a beacon of Republican virtues, it instead embodied the contradictions of a country built on the lack of freedom of many. Most importantly, through the claims she made, the life she built, and the identities she forged, Lethe laid the foundation for a free Black Washington, asserting agency and equality in a space that professed liberty while excluding Black women from its vision of freedom.

Defiance of these codes underscores the navigational strategies these women must have employed. Historians have uncovered aspects of these women’s experiences through sources like runaway advertisements, vigilance networks, kidnapping cases, and judicial accounts, including criminal records. Reading these sources against the grain reveals how the Black codes of the time shaped the legal parameters of Black women’s claims to liberty, even after manumission in their ‘afterlives’. What is particularly striking about Lethe’s case is her absence from criminal records, suggesting she navigated the law with remarkable skill and resilience, in an atmosphere overtly against her. This absence speaks to the power of perseverance — a legacy embodied in her daily acts of showing up and refusing to be erased. Remembering Lethe in this way defies the long-standing narratives that underestimate the agency of enslaved women. Instead, it offers a deeper understanding of the resilience and creativity Black women employed in envisioning, surviving, and giving meaning to liberty in nineteenth-century America.

The Importance of Remembering Lethe

As a first-generation Washingtonian, I was deeply moved to learn about Lethe’s remarkable history. It was surprising — and somewhat disheartening — that her story had remained so unfamiliar to me, and I assume to many others. Lethe’s contributions are pivotal not only to the history of Washington DC but also speak to the resilience and ingenuity of marginalised individuals whose voices have been overlooked in traditional archives and grander historical narratives — particularly in women’s history, where their values are often dismissed since they are rarely articulated according to their own terms. Uncovering and honouring Lethe’s life demonstrates the value of ‘anecdotal’ history in amplifying the experiences of those too often excluded from conventional historiography. Personal stories like hers are deeply impactful and vital for understanding the complexity of the past. By piecing together her legacy, we can better appreciate her profound influence and ensure her story takes its rightful place in the broader tapestry of American history.

Cook’s recollections, alongside public commemorations, serve as a bridge between Lethe’s life and her enduring influence. Alessandro Portelli’s insights on oral history are particularly valuable in this instance, as they highlight how memories, even when factually inaccurate, can capture the emotional truths of historical events. Lethe’s legacy is preserved through public commemorations and contemporary accounts from descendants like Cook, reflecting how these spaces become a continuum of her contributions, enshrining her legacy for future generations. Events and spaces such as Alethia Tanner Day and Alethia Tanner Park continue to honour her memory, hosting activities centred on the same values of community building she championed back in the early nineteenth century.

As Cook describes, “it’s a full-time job” to uncover Lethe’s story — research continuously emerges, reshaping our interpretations of her. Though her story has often been overlooked, its resonance with people is undeniable. “The heroes we seek aren’t always those in power,” as Cook says, “knowing these stories of people who toiled without the fanfare or the accolades from the powers that be,” reminds us of the strength and determination of ordinary individuals. These untold stories need to be celebrated. The individual nature of her story is deeply impactful, helping us understand that these were real people with names, and that their lives truly mattered.

To fully understand her story, one must consider the turbulent environment in which she lived: Washington DC was in its early stages of development, with the capital city still under construction. The conflicts and challenges of that time resonate with the struggles and complexities of today, making her story all the more relevant. Lethe’s legacy reflects not only her resilience but also the countless untold stories of others like her. Her story endures not only in the historical record but also in the collective memory of those who honour and preserve it, as Cook reflects, “she was a linchpin to the successes that my family was able to have after that,” underscoring how Lethe’s influence shaped the course of the lives of her family and likely many others. There is still much to uncover about Lethe and other “self-makers” of her time. Lethe’s memory, therefore, transcends her individual achievements, highlighting the transformative power of collective agency in formulating new identities and strategies for liberation — defying the racial and gendered boundaries of their time and leaving legacies that influenced subsequent generations.

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