It was a cold case the likes of which few police have encountered. The investigators moved in on the university, setting up shop in the heart of campus. Students, preparing for May exams, looked up and librarians paused. All eyes followed the team as the four men and a woman moved down the aisle and set up their desk in a secluded warren in Wahlstrom Library. Their investigation started weeks before and had taken them from New York and Philadelphia to The Strip in Las Vegas and then back east to New Bedford, Cuttyhunk Island, Nantucket and Boston. They had clues but no answers and were hoping they were near the end of the trail. You could hear their sighs of relief when an academic Clint Eastwood-type walked in with a determined look in his eye and presented himself as the witness they knew they had to have to crack this case.
UB’s Clint is Lamont Thomas, a historian and senior lecturer on the faculty. He is just what this cold case mystery needs. He is a scholar and authority on Paul Cuffee, a free black on Cape Cod at the time of the American Revolution. And there is a Cuffee in this case that PBS’ “History Detectives” is out to crack.
Tukufu Zuberi, a tall, muscular man with a build that could pass him as a guard for the Philadelphia Eagles though he’s a former Penn sociologist and host of the show, greets Thomas and gets him to settle in comfortably as the questioning begins. The case goes back to a muster role at the time of the Revolution. It lists those who were part of the Massachusetts militia that went to war against England. There is a name that looks like Paul Cuffee’s on the role, and if it is real, it will be a significant historical piece, for Cuffee is a distinguished black American.
Here was a man who started out on Cuttyhunk Island on Buzzards Bay, the son of parents who were caretakers for the island’s owners, the Slocum family. Cuffee’s father was African-American and his mother, an American Indian. As a youth he learned to love the sea and as a teen started sailing to Nantucket, developing a trading business, bringing vegetables over to that island and returning with other provisions he purchased there to sell on the mainland. In the war, the British blockaded the island, so Cuffee’s business ventures, involving a 5-6 hour sail, were daring and dangerous. But he prospered. Soon one little boat gave way to a bigger one, and bigger and then several. With his wife, Alice Pequit, a member of the Pequot tribe, Cuffee purchased a farm on which they built the first integrated school in Massachusetts. He and his brother, John, also sued Massachusetts for the right to vote. Their lawsuit failed but the legislature several years later corrected the injustice. Cuffee, all the while, developed a prosperous maritime trading and shipping business with a fleet of ships. When he died in 1817, he left an estate of more than $20,000, an enormous sum at the time. He was among the wealthiest of free blacks in the world.
Thomas’ book, “Paul Cuffee: Black Entrepreneur and Pan African,” originally published by the University of Illinois under the title, “Rise to be a People,” grew out of his master’s thesis at Trinity College. He spent years doing his research and now he is telling the facts of Cuffee’s life calmly, prodded by Zuberi’s questions. All ears listen up. At stake is a muster roll that may be precious. And at the heart of this cold case that has been dormant for 200 years lies Lamont Thomas’ answer to the question, “Is this the Paul Cuffee?”
You’ll be in on that answer soon. “History Detectives,” produced by Lion Television and on a schedule right after “Antique Road Show” on Monday night, opens its second season on PBS on June 21.