Emanuele Berry

Go listen.

What you're hearing right now is Paul Robeson singing a song he himself wrote to the tune of the battle hymn of the Republic.

It was kind of lost to history until a sound designer and editor, John Delore, found it last year at a thrift store and gave it to Nicole.

Act II, Sincerely, Absolutely Not.

Okay, so you're emancipated from slavery.

You resettle in Ohio.

Then you get a letter from the man who used to enslave you asking you to come back and work for him again.

That is exactly what happened to a man named Jordan Anderson.

Anderson wrote a letter in response.

It was published in a newspaper in 1865 and is read here at a live event by Lawrence Fishburne.

Lawrence Fishburne, reading Jordan Anderson's Letter to My Former Master.

What you just heard is a slightly shortened version of the original response.

You can find the whole thing and countless other amazing letters on the Letters Live YouTube channel or at their website, letterslive.com.

Letters Live is actually coming back to New York City on the 14th.

Tickets are on sale now.

One last little thing to end our show.

Recently, I went to the Blacksonian.

That is not what it is called.

It is called the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but Blacksonian is more fun.

Anyway, it was a winter morning, busy, full of school children and teachers, parents and chaperones.