African American News and Genealogy

Growing Number of Museums Preserving Black History and Culture

2007-02-18T04:35:00.000-05:00

Tourists drawn to exhibits on slavery, civil rights movement, achievements Museums that focus on the critical role of African Americans in U.S. history and culture are more popular than ever, and several cities are planning new or expanded facilities to attract tourists and scholars. "There's a new generation of [African-American culture] museums that are competitive in size and budget with most mainstream museums - and that's a very new phenomenon," said John Fleming, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. "The black community is interested in preserving [its] history and culture on a scale that our patrimony deserves," he said. The African-American experience largely was ignored or misrepresented until recent decades, and even now, most students have a poor understanding of important people and events, Fleming told USINFO. "They know who Martin Luther King is, but they don't really understand his significance in American history." African-American museums attract many visitors, he added. "Cities and states are interested in cultural tourism. You see where they put the Baltimore Afro-American museum [Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture], right on the waterfront, right in the tourist area? And the Birmingham [Alabama] Civil Rights Institute [BCRI] has been a major tourism draw for the city." BCRI Executive Director Lawrence Pijeaux agreed. "We are one of the major destination points for tourism in the state of Alabama," he said. A recent economic impact study found that BCRI visitors spent about $5.7 million in the Birmingham metropolitan area between July 2002 and July 2003, and that 4 percent of the visitors were from foreign countries. Full Story: http://newsblaze.com/story/20070215062309tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html

Recording history of black churches tells nation's story

2006-09-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

They may not have ornate stained-glass windows and seating for a thousand people, yet these small, rural churches that dot the landscape of Rutherford County and America are often the foundation of the black community. Singing, shouting and soul-saving emanate from them on Sundays and some weeknights when church congregations gather to share their problems and accomplishments and lift their spirits together toward heaven. Yet because many of these churches aren't considered architecturally significant, they are often overlooked in historic preservation circles in documenting and maintaining them. Carroll Van West, director of the MTSU Center for Historic Preservation, hopes to change that with the African-American Rural Church Project, a chronicling of churches such as Stones River United Methodist on Old Nashville Highway in Rutherford County. Leonora Washington, a Smyrna Primary School teacher, can attest to the impact the church has had on her life. "There's a closeness there. We share our problems together, and we share our faith. It's something that your earn." Full Story: http://dnj.midsouthnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/OPINION01/609200317/1014

Chapel Added To State Registry

2006-09-23T14:51:00.000-04:00

Society Hopes Chapel Will Serve As Living History By Jenny Jones KEEZELTOWN — Al Jenkins propped a small ladder against the crumbling stone columns that hold up Longs Chapel, stepped carefully up the rungs and climbed into the old wooden structure. Inside, Jenkins’ voice echoed off the stark walls and barren space that once served as a church and a schoolhouse for Zenda, a former community in northern Rockingham County that was established by newly freed slaves in the mid to late 1800s. He pointed out markings on the walls where the original pews once stood, and he explained the dignity of the building and the people who constructed it. "They went from being property to owning property," said Jenkins, talking about the freed slaves who, with the help of the United Brethren Church and a contractor named Jacob Long, built Longs Chapel between 1869 and 1871. "And as soon as they were able to, they built their own church. That was a major accomplishment." Full Story:http://www.dnronline.com/news_details.php?AID=6437&CHID=2

Cheaney, respected KSU professor dies

2006-07-30T22:33:00.000-04:00

By Jennifer Hewlett HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER Henry Ellis Cheaney, a respected retired Kentucky State University history professor, died Tuesday at Frankfort Regional Medical Center after an illness. He was 94. Mr. Cheaney wore many other hats, including those of debate team coach, boxing coach, publicity director and chaplain, during his 46-year tenure at KSU. But perhaps it was in the classroom that he made the greatest impact. He was known as a hard-driving, but highly entertaining professor, who expected his students to go beyond attending classes and reading textbooks. William Wilson, former chairman of the KSU board of regents and a former student of Mr. Cheaney, recalled how Mr. Cheaney would assign each student a topic to research and then grill them on it for an entire class period. Wilson's topic for his "day in court" was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wilson made sure to find out what those missiles looked like and what television program President John F. Kennedy interrupted to tell the public about the crisis, he said. "When you went to Dr. Cheaney's class you'd better be prepared," Wilson said. Not only were students required to know their history, they were required to know how to do historical research and how to talk and write about history, too, he said. "He would flunk you on your grammar. If you did not, in fact, write well, you were in serious trouble," Wilson said. "Our exams for Dr. Cheaney would take hours." Wilson recalled one history lesson that Mr. Cheaney began by writing a long chemical formula on the chalkboard. A student walked in the classroom, then quickly left because he thought he was in a chemistry class. "What Dr. Cheaney frequently lectured on was not always in your textbook, which is why it was always so important to take notes," Wilson said. Sometimes students got so engrossed in Mr. Cheaney's lectures -- his "cowboy lecture" about the westward movement in the United States came complete with sound effects -- that they forgot they were in a classroom. "People have flunked his course because they got so engrossed in his telling of stories that they forgot to take notes," Wilson said. Mr. Cheaney was a "phenomenal teacher" and an "intellectual giant," Wilson said. "Dr. Henry Cheaney is revered as a legend in the history of Kentucky State University," KSU Provost Juanita Fleming said. "Professor Cheaney was the epitome of what one would assume a professor represented. He was articulate. He was kind. He was intellectually superior, and he left a lasting mark on anyone he touched," said Betty Griffin, former chairwoman of the KSU Division of Education and Human Services. Full Story: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/15085872.htm

Series will retell explorer Sheppard's life

2006-07-23T21:18:00.000-04:00

Larry Muhammad - lmuhammad@courier-journal.com The Courier-Journal Who was the swashbuckling explorer, big-game hunter, missionary in Africa and human rights activist that the Smoketown housing project Sheppard Square was named for? That would be Dr. William H. Sheppard, the self-styled "Black Livingstone." Professor Blaine Hudson, dean of the University of Louisville's College of Arts and Sciences, will tell the story of the Louisville leader in a public presentation Saturday. "Sheppard is a very unusual case," Hudson said, "when you think about a black man being a missionary, an explorer in central Africa in the 1890s and early 1900s, helping expose atrocities in Belgian colonization and then ending up in Smoketown." The son of freed slaves, Sheppard became a celebrated missionary adventurer in Africa for 20 years. He grew up in a well-to-do black Presbyterian household in Virginia and, after his travels, settled in Louisville, becoming a leader of the African-American community in the early 1900s. Sheppard pastored Grace Hope Presbyterian Church from 1912 to 1927, when he died at age 62. "Pioneers in the Congo," his 1917 autobiography, recorded his exploits 230 miles into the African continent, where he administered mission services, learned native tongues and built a rapport with leaders through his hunting skills. Full Story: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060720/FEATURES/607200323

BCC course explores slavery in Monmouth

2006-07-23T21:12:00.000-04:00

Many escaped and fought with the British army in the Battle of Monmouth BY KAREN E. BOWES, Staff Writer MIDDLETOWN - Slavery in Monmouth County was once the norm, especially in the township, Freehold, Tinton Falls and Shrewsbury, where they worked as iron miners, farmers and domestics up until 1865. An expert on the subject, visiting Professor Graham Russell Hodges of Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y., arrived at Brookdale Community College this week, leading students on historic tours of the area and speaking about slavery's impact on the local economy. The author of the book "Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, N.J., 1665-1865," Hodges appeared in the 2005 PBS series "Slavery and the Making of America." During the television series, Hodges spoke about an escaped slave from Shrewsbury who fought for the British at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778. Named Titus by his master, the slave renamed himself Tye after escaping. The British army bestowed the honorary title of Col. Tye for his gallantry in battle, and for becoming "one of the war's most feared Loyalists, white or black," Hodges wrote. A local newspaper ran an ad for the runaway slave on Nov. 8, 1775. The owner offered a 3-pound reward for "Titus," described as "about 21 years of age. Not very black, near 6 feet high, had on a gray homespun coat, brown breeches, blue and white stockings." According to Hodges, many other black men from the county fought at the Battle of Monmouth, including some from Middletown. All fought for the British during the battle. Students in Professor Jess Levine's "History of New Jersey" class at Brookdale are also learning about the role religion played in the institution of slavery, as local Christian denominations differed on the topic of slavery's morality. Interestingly, Quakers, historically abolitionists, were divided on the subject in Monmouth County. Col. Tye's former master, John Corlis, was a Quaker and was said to be quite cruel. Both slavery and indentured servitude were legal in New Jersey prior to 1865, when the Emancipation Proclamation ended both forms of human ownership. And while a few slaves were purchased at an auction in Perth Amboy, the vast majority of slaves were born into servitude or traded between friends, Hodges said in an interview on Thursday. "Between 1718 and 1764, 480 slaves from the West Indies were imported into Perth Amboy, located in Middlesex County a few miles from Monmouth," wrote Hodges. "This total averages about 10 per year, and not all went to Monmouth." In 1790, there were 1,596 slaves in Monmouth County. By 1820, about 1,000 slaves lived in the county. Ten years later in 1830, there were 224 slaves, according to census reports. Gradual Emancipation, an 1804 state law that guaranteed slaves their freedom between the ages of 24 and 39, played a large part in the changing numbers. Still, many slave owners found new ways to exploit the recently freed slaves. They waited until the slave's 39th birthday or paid extremely low wages to those former slaves still living in cottages on the slaveholder's property. And by utilizing the recently legalized "cottagers system," a landowner could effectively keep his labor force at a rock bottom price. Hodges has written several books on the topic of slavery, as well as other historical topics, including an account of New York City's very first taxicab drivers.

Discovering The Underground Railroad

2006-07-23T21:09:00.000-04:00

As the first state to abolish slavery in 1780, Pennsylvania was a key part of the Underground Railroad. The abolitionists and free blacks within the state’s borders acted boldly and inspired others. Today, Pennsylvania is creating new and different ways for visitors to learn more about the risks and sacrifices that helped change society through a series of attractions and special events. One of the main routes of the Underground Railroad was through central Pennsylvania and much of the escape route ran along Route 30, which is also known as the Old Lincoln Highway. Towns along Route 30, like Gettysburg, York, Columbia, Lancaster and Philadelphia, were home to hundreds of abolitionists. Many of them were the first contact that freedom seekers encountered after they left the South. In an effort to revive the legacy of this route, historical societies in central and eastern Pennsylvania have formed Quest for Freedom to tell the story of what was once a major network of flight and survival. Visit www.questforfreedom.org for information on attractions, tours and special events and packages throughout the summer. York native William C. Goodridge, one of the most active conductors in the Underground Railroad who helped save thousands of slaves, was also a participant in the Christiana Riots of 1851. Goodridge defied laws and risked imprisonment to house and transport Africans. His home now serves as a museum where tours and a first-hand perspective on people involved in the Underground Railroad can be explored. Visit the Quest for Freedom Web site, or contact the York Convention and Visitors Bureau at 717-852-9675, ext. 110, for hours. Although Route 30 was a hotbed for Underground Railroad activity, significant events took place throughout the state. Stories of rebellion and triumph abound in Cumberland County, where half of all enslaved Africans in Pennsylvania lived. The McClintock riot of 1847, led by Dickinson University professor John McClintock who, with the help of free black men, rushed a carriage returning escaped slaves to Maryland, took place in Cumberland County. Cumberland County was so rebellious that Confederate soldiers attempted to capture civilians in addition to slaves. Richard Woods was one of those civilians and one of the most effective conductors of the Underground Railroad. Looking to share these lesser known stories, the region offers tours of historical Underground Railroad sites. Visit the Educational Programs section of www.historicalsociety.com for information on how to book a tour. Fleeing and resisting the confederate south were just part of the struggle to obtain freedom. Newly-freed slaves often struggled to settle and purchase homes. In the northeastern coal region of Lackawanna County, however, Pennsylvanians were viewed as progressive. Participating in notable anti-slavery activities, many of its residents, churches, and institutions worked for the advancement of freed slaves and helped African Americans establish themselves in the community. In A Place I Call Home: Explorations of the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Pennsylvania special tours July 29-30 and Aug. 19-20 will bring these efforts to life. Visit www.antislaverystudies.org for more information. Other special events planned throughout the summer include: · Davis-Bailey Family: Our Town Our Stories – An ongoing exhibit at the house museum of a former colored troop soldier. Contact the Pike County Historical Society, or visit www.pikehistory.org · Tribute to Freedom’s Crossing Presents African American Heritage in Columbia – An interactive tour highlighting colored troops and abolitionists, running July 15-Aug. 26. Visit www.padutchcountry.com/columbiatour for more information. · Passport to Freedom – Tours and ceremonies will highlight the town of Blairsville’s fight to resist slavery, Aug. 18-19. For more information go to www.visitindianacountypa.org · Taking a Stand for Freedom: The Underground Railroad in Philadelphia – Reenactments will take place at Mother Bethel AME Church, the Civil War & Underground Railroad Museum and the Johnson House in Germantown. Meet Harriet Tubman, William Still and other “conductors” Aug. 19, Sept. 16 and Oct. 21. For details visit www.gophila.com The Pennsylvania Tourism Office, under the state Department of Community and Economic Development, is dedicated to fulfilling the needs and aspirations of travelers by presenting them with the information and resources they need to plan and enjoy the activities, attractions and destinations that are uniquely Pennsylvania. For more information about Pennsylvania’s tourism industry, go to www.visitpa.com or call (800) VISIT PA POSTED 060720_1400 ET

Ex-slaves' land heirs feel island shift

2006-07-17T19:57:00.000-04:00

Coastal S. Carolina's Gullah-Geechees find ancestral plots are vulnerable to grabsBy Dahleen GlantonTribune national correspondentPublished July 11, 2006 WARSAW ISLAND, S.C. -- No one in Sargent Parker's family ever gave much thought to the 26 acres of marshland he bought in 1869, six years after becoming a free man. But everyone knew it was there, sheltered behind rows of palmetto trees, as a reminder of the family's rich heritage.The story of how Parker, who died in 1915 at age 85, purchased the land has been passed down through generations. It was four years after Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15, ordering every freed slave to be given 40 acres. But after the directive was rescinded, blacks were forced to return the land. Emancipated slaves such as Parker then worked hard as sharecroppers to raise the $1.25 an acre needed to buy soggy marshland deemed undesirable by whites. By 1869, former slaves whose descendants are known as Gullah-Geechees owned half of Beaufort County.So everyone was shocked last October when Richardean Aiken, the widow of Parker's great-great-grandson, was browsing the newspaper and saw a legal notice that a portion of the land had been sold and that the new owner was attempting to acquire clear title. No one in the family had agreed to sell it, and all insisted they never would.`This can't be happening'"I said, `Oh hell no, this can't be happening,'" Aiken said before getting on the phone and calling her relatives. "When I saw Sargent Parker's name, I knew something was wrong."Throughout coastal South Carolina, Gullah-Geechee people have been fighting for decades to hold onto property left to them by their ancestors. But often there is no will, making it difficult to prove ownership, even when taxes have been paid on the land for generations. Many of the problems are due to infighting among family members. It takes only one heir to agree to sell the property for a dispute to be settled by a judge and the land to end up being auctioned. Full Story: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0607110145jul11,1,7098536.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

A Land of Racial Harmony?

2006-07-16T22:12:00.000-04:00

New Philadelphia, Ill., settled by a freed slave, was seen as a colorblind utopia. Amid doubts, town descendants want the truth unearthed. By P.J. Huffstutter, Times Staff WriterJuly 14, 2006

HADLEY TOWNSHIP, Ill. — Sandra McWorter knelt on the soil and gingerly swept through the dirt with a tiny brush to find hints of her heritage.The clues hidden beneath the wild grasses and rolling hills could give McWorter insight into what life was like for her pioneer ancestors in the Land of Lincoln. "Free Frank" McWorter bought his freedom from slavery and came here in 1831 to build New Philadelphia — the first town in the U.S. legally settled, platted and surveyed by an African American.

Regional lore hails the town as a haven of racial harmony: a place where whites and blacks lived side by side, farmed the land, sold their goods, married one another and worshiped together — more than two decades before the Civil War. But there's no evidence — no recorded memories, no journals, no newspaper accounts — that proves or dismisses such camaraderie.Today, New Philadelphia is a lily-covered pasture, and its Main Street a gravel path to a farmhouse. What remains is a puzzle that has teased scholars, history buffs and New Philadelphia descendants for years: Was this actually an island of racial tranquillity in west-central Illinois, when abolitionists were shot on their doorsteps and bounty hunters roamed the countryside kidnapping freed slaves?Or is this a case of historical revisionism?It's a question that has provoked a debate among the McWorter clan and other descendants of the 120 families that settled in New Philadelphia between the 1830s (when Free Frank bought the land and sold off the first parcel) and the 1860s (when the town population reached its peak).Now, with a grant from the National Science Foundation, archeologists, anthropologists and students from more than a dozen universities are working to settle the matter and preserve the area as a national historic landmark. Full Story: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-newphiladelphia14jul14,1,6149288.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo

Long Memories in Land of the Freed

2006-07-16T22:09:00.000-04:00

Begun by Ex-Slaves, a Prince George's Community Values Its Past By Tony Glaros -- Special to The Washington Post, Saturday, July 15, 2006; Page G01

Squeezed by the thickening sweep of suburbia, Muirkirk remains a slower spot. Residents of the northeastern Prince George's County community still find time to spin stories, keep the nearby graveyard tidy and set the table at church suppers. Old Muirkirk Road remains the neighborhood's focal point, a slice of relative calm between Beltsville and Laurel. The 15 houses on the shady, winding street vary in age and style, from 100 years old to a contemporary rancher.

Growing up, Marsha Brown referred to the neighborhood as Rossville, a name that dates back to when it was settled by freed slaves. She still does. But Rossville, she explained, was always considered a subdivision of Muirkirk. "It was never something that was official. I guess you could say Old Muirkirk Road has become the central area of the community. The church is there. The schools used to be there." The American Legion hall is around the corner on Muirkirk Road, she pointed out. At one time, she said, Muirkirk even had its own post office down by the railroad tracks. The signs of the older community are still there in the form of the historic graveyard and the church across the street, Queen's Chapel United Methodist. The congregation traces its roots to 1870, when the first structure went up where the cemetery is today, said Brown, who wrote a book about the history of the church. Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071400691.html

Black scholar joins Sons of the American Revolution

2006-07-16T22:01:00.000-04:00

10:40 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 By JEROME WEEKS / The Dallas Morning News ADDISON – Groucho Marx would have approved.

On Monday, Henry Louis Gates Jr. – noted black scholar (The Signifying Monkey), Harvard professor and TV host (America Beyond the Color Line) – joined an organization that wouldn't have had him as a member not too long ago. Dr. Gates was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution at the lineage society's 116th annual convention, which is being held through Wednesday at Addison's Hotel Intercontinental. He joins only a few dozen black Americans among the 26,000 members. The event was taped for the second season of African-American Lives, Dr. Gates' PBS series on black genealogy. "You could have knocked me over with a feather," Dr. Gates recalled Monday of the moment he learned he had an ancestor who served in the Continental Army. It happened in February during a taping for African-American Lives. Dr. Gates was shown evidence of an ancestor, seven generations in the past, but not the white slaveholder he'd expected. Rather, it was a free mulatto, John Redman, who enlisted in a Virginia regiment in 1778. About 5,000 black Americans served during the Revolutionary War, but that is only a guess, said Joseph Dooley, head of the membership committee. "Perhaps as much as 10 percent of the Continental Army was black." Dr. Gates' fascination with family history inspired his PBS series as well as his hiring genealogist Jane Ailes to research his family. Although white, Ms. Ailes, it turns out, is also a distant relative. The Sons of the American Revolution and its sibling organization, the Daughters of the American Revolution, have had a history of segregation, Dr. Gates pointed out to the several hundred assembled members. He cited the DAR's infamous 1939 ban on the black contralto Marian Anderson from singing at Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall as well as black educator W.E.B. DuBois' rejected attempt to join the SAR in 1908. There have been black members for decades now, however, and last year, current SAR president general Roland Downing reported, the DuBois decision was overturned. Black or white, not many new members get to address the annual meeting. "Oh, they do this for everybody," Dr. Gates joked. "Everybody who comes with a PBS film crew." But Dr. Gates also spoke to the SAR to announce a project with Mr. Dooley that may lead to many more black Americans joining. Supported by Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute, Ms. Ailes will compare 80,000 pension requests from Revolutionary veterans with census records to determine which vets were black. She's already found six. "Just think," Dr. Gates said looking out over the hotel ballroom. "Pretty soon, this place gonna look like Harlem." E-mail jweeks@dallasnews.com

Black astronaut helps to erase myth of race limitations

2006-07-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

I am really ashamed to admit it, but shuttle launches have become so routine I seldom pay them close attention. After the loss of seven astronauts aboard the shuttle Columbia in 2003, I've been forcing myself to read a little background on the astronauts who risk their lives to explore space, those who have "slipped the surly bonds of Earth." I'm always glad I did, but especially this time. On board right now, serving as a mission specialist, is Stephanie D. Wilson, the second black woman to fly in space. I was determined to bring this to your attention because all kids, but especially black kids, should know that African-Americans are smart enough to do whatever they set their minds to. We tend to hear the opposite, tend to limit our own potential, severely cramping any possibility of living up to the greatness of our ancestors. When we turn deaf ears to the talk and open our own minds to new things, our children, black or white, rich or poor, can be like Wilson. Wilson said her growing up in a small town with few distractions allowed the stars to catch her imagination. She became interested in astronomy first and later gravitated to engineering. In a preflight interview with NASA, Wilson said she thought "that aerospace engineering would be a good combination of my interest in space and my interest in engineering." That's a mind that has not given any credence to those who might say being smart is "acting white." After high school, she majored in engineering science at Harvard University and earned her masters in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked for two companies, specializing in robotic spacecraft and launch vehicles, before being accepted by NASA into its two-year astronaut program in April 1996. If you have a dream, achieving it takes more than rolling over and waking up. Full Story: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/columnists/14984064.htm

Slavery reparations effort continues to gain ground

2006-07-16T21:23:00.000-04:00

By Erin Texeira Associated Press Originally published July 10, 2006 Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum. Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has evolved in recent years from a fringe group's rallying cry into sophisticated mainstream movement. Most recently, a pair of churches apologized for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members. The overall issue is hardly settled, even among black Americans: Some say that focusing on slavery shouldn't be a top priority or that it doesn't make sense to compensate people generations after a historical wrong. Yet reparations efforts have led many cities and states to approve measures that force businesses to publicize their historical ties to slavery. Several reparations court cases are in progress, and international human rights officials are increasingly spotlighting the issue. "This matter is growing in significance rather than declining," said Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and a leading reparations activist. "It has more vigor and vitality in the 21st century than it's had in the history of the reparations movement." The most recent victories for reparations advocates came last month, when the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church apologized for owning slaves and promised to battle racism. The Episcopalians also launched a national probe into the church's slavery links and into whether the church should compensate black members. A white church member, Katrina Browne, also screened a documentary focusing on white culpability at the denomination's national assembly. The Episcopalians debated slavery and reparations for years before reaching an agreement, said Jayne Oasin, social justice officer for the denomination, who will oversee its work on the issue. Historically, slavery was an uncomfortable topic for the church. Some Episcopal bishops owned slaves - and the Bible was used to justify the practice, Oasin said. Also last month, a North Carolina commission urged the state to repay the descendants of victims of a violent 1898 campaign by white supremacists to strip blacks of power in Wilmington, N.C. The commission also recommended state-funded programs to support local black businesses and home ownership. The report came weeks after the Organization of American States requested information from the U.S. government about a 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Okla., in which 1,200 homes were burned and as many as 300 blacks killed. An OAS official said the group might pursue the issue as a violation of international human rights. Full Story: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.slavery10jul10,0,6627506.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

Students unearth history, inspiration

2006-07-12T00:22:00.000-04:00

July 11, 2006 BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Staff Reporter Twenty miles east of Kankakee, on the side of a dusty one-lane gravel road, lay the abandoned scraps of one family's story, gutted years ago by a fire. There, in Hopkins Park, the cinder block skeleton of a garage and the outer walls of what was once a small home still stand. Those remnants are breathing new life as 22 students and two Field Museum archeologists sift through its weedy terrain hoping to unearth clues about the people who once lived there, and that of the Native Americans who had settled there before them. The Field Museum has brought the Budding Archeologist Field School to the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students of Lorenzo R. Smith Elementary School in Hopkins Park as part of an educational outreach program designed so kids can investigate the lives of early settlers through hands-on mapping, surveying and excavating an African-American settlement dating back to the Reconstruction era. Full Story: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-dig11.html

Unifying Culture: Black History Museum’s new exhibit examines Alexandria’s roots in Africa.

2006-06-17T17:26:00.000-04:00

When Louis Hicks became director of the Alexandria Black History Museum, he found an impressive, but fragmented, array of items and exhibits. “We didn’t have a complete document assembled about African-American culture,” he explained. The museum’s efforts to create this document quickly became broader and deeper than had been imagined, and not so unified after all. At the urging of Jean Federico, the director of the Office of Historic Alexandria at the time, the museum decided to make slavery the focal point of its exploration of black culture. This created a need to portray the life in Africa that slavery destroyed. The ambition to document black history over 250 years produced a plethora of material “that was way beyond our space capacity,” said Hicks. So planners of the exhibit, titled “Securing the Blessings of Liberty,” decided to break it into three phases. The first phase begins with life in Africa and covers a time span up to 1820. It will open June 23 and run for about two years. Audrey Davis, the museum’s assistant director and exhibit curator, said it was important to trace black culture to its roots in Africa. “When people talk about slavery, they … don’t talk about the full lives of the people that were taken, like they lived in this vacuum before they were enslaved,” said Davis. “But they had what people had in this country: their own societies, their own culture. They had a life in Africa that was disrupted by the slave trade. They were taken away from that and brought here and had this new life enforced on them.”Davis said “Securing the Blessings of Liberty” will focus on what life was like for black people in Alexandria. “Alexandria was a very bustling town,” Davis said. It exported tobacco and received exports from all over the world. “Part of that cargo was human cargo.” Davis said research indicates Market Square was the site of slave sales. But there was also a burgeoning free black population that developed at the turn of the century. “You would have these people who were enslaved living next door to people who were free,” Davis said. “I’m sure there were relationships that developed where people fell in love.” She said she had seen documentation of freed slaves trying to buy the freedom of a family member, or a man trying to buy the freedom of a woman he wanted to marry.DAVIS SAID she thought the most fascinating aspect of the exhibit was “learning the survival strategies that slaves would have to use to get by or that free blacks had to use. Even though you’re free and had your manumission papers, you didn’t know that people would always honor those … you never knew what action you could take one day that could result in your death the next day.” But finding these stories of survival “with that kind of fear,” as Davis put it, was a difficult task. The nature of slavery meant that few artifacts of its existence survived, and much fewer were purposefully preserved. Planning and research for the exhibition began in 2001. It was an effort that involved every department and every museum in the Office of Historic Alexandria. Jackie Cohan, Alexandria’s archivist, said she played only a small role in the collaboration, compiling lists of research for other researchers. “It was very, very difficult to find items,” she said. Most of the records that exist on slavery were compiled by slave-owners. But the efforts of the Historical Office paid off. Full Story: http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=67188&paper=69&cat=115

June 19th Marks a Joyous, Yet Solemn, Occasion

2006-06-17T17:25:00.000-04:00

Today, June 19th, is America's second Independence Day. There's the biggie -- the July 4th celebration of the nation's founding. But five states and 205 U.S. cities have also proclaimed June 19th an independence holiday. "," as it is called, commemorates the official and final end of slavery for about four million African Americans 141 years ago. Two years into the U.S. Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in the southern Confederacy free. But it had little practical effect, since the war was raging, and the Union was in no position to enforce it. Even ten weeks after the southern army surrendered in April 1865, defiant slaveholders still held human chattel in Texas, the most remote of the Confederate states. But on June 19th, 1865, Union general Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, then the biggest city in Texas, and announced that the last southern slaves were henceforth free. For years thereafter, many southern blacks took off work on June 19th to gather for home-cooked meals, prayer, storytelling, re-enactments of General Granger's proclamation, and lots of singing. Full Story: http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-06-15-voa41.cfm

Staying slavery museum's course

2006-06-04T21:40:00.000-04:00

After 13 years, Wilder still raising money; weekend gala to help BY KIRAN KRISHNAMURTHY TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER FREDERICKSBURG -- L. Douglas Wilder can remember as a boy asking about his grandparents, who were slaves. "He would not talk about it," Wilder recalled of his father during a speech this year in Washington. "My mother would encourage him and said, 'Robert, tell him, please!' And he would bite down on his pipe, clench it and almost snap it in two. And he would tell a little, and a little, and I would ask for more." Wilder, who rose to become the nation's first elected black governor, is pressing to build a museum in Fredericksburg that will tell the story of his grandparents and millions of others who suffered under the yoke of slavery in the United States. It is a mission he first conceived during a trip to West Africa as governor of Virginia in the early 1990s. Tomorrow night, the journey takes him to the Warner Theatre in Washington for a black-tie gala fundraiser, featuring entertainers Bill Cosby and Ben Vereen, to benefit the United States National Slavery Museum. Full Story: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149188187564&path=!news&s=1045855934842

A tribute for the pioneers

2006-06-04T21:37:00.000-04:00

Negro League players honored in ceremony By DON WALKERdwalker@journalsentinel.com Posted: June 2, 2006 Rickie Weeks, Prince Fielder and Bill Hall represent the future of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Buck O'Neil, James Jake Sanders and Dennis Biddle represent baseball's past. So it was both symbolic and poignant that, in pregame ceremonies before Milwaukee's game Friday night, the young Brewers expressed their appreciation of the three Negro League veterans with hugs and handshakes behind home plate. Friday night was the Brewers' first Negro Leagues Tribute, an event they plan to stage each season. This year, the Brewers brought in Buck O'Neil, still active at 94; James Jake Sanders, 73; and Dennis Biddle, 70, of Milwaukee as the first honorees. The names of all three were placed on the Miller Park Wall of Honor. On the field, the Brewers sported reproductions of uniforms worn by the Milwaukee Bears, a team that played in the Negro National League in 1923, while the Washington Nationals wore uniforms of the Negro National League's Homestead Grays. That team played in Washington from 1937-'48. The three Negro Leaguers all have résumés from the Negro Leagues era, especially O'Neil, who had a long and prosperous career with the old Kansas City Monarchs. In 1962, he became the first African-American coach in the major leagues when he was with the Chicago Cubs. Sanders played in 1956 for the Detroit / New Orleans Stars, played briefly in the Dodgers farm system in 1957 and later returned to the Kansas City Monarchs through the 1958 season.

Full Story: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=431280

A soldier's true color

2006-05-29T10:57:00.000-04:00

A soldier's true color Iowa cemetery honors discovery that Revolutionary War fighter was black Gerome Crayton of Keokuk is taking to heart his portrayal of Cato Mead, a black Revolutionary War soldier buried near Montrose."This guy was a neat guy. He was looking for a peace in his life, and he settled here in Iowa,'' Crayton said. "I'm glad that after his story has been hidden in the dark for many years, he is finally getting recognized.''On Memorial Day weekend, when the graves of so many soldiers, sailors and Marines are decorated, a monument to Mead will be among the seven featured in a cemetery tour today.One of 41 Revolutionary War soldiers who died or were buried in Iowa, Mead "may very well be" the only black Revolutionary War soldier buried west of the Mississippi River, said Maurice Barboza, founder of a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to erecting a monument to the more than 5,000 blacks who fought in the War for Independence.Residents of Montrose have known for years that the area was the final resting place for a Revolutionary War soldier. But there was an important nugget of information about Mead that slipped from common knowledge as the story passed from generation to generation, local historians say.The fact that Mead was black resurfaced last fall as researchers prepared for Memorial Day 2006 weekend observances in this Lee County community of about 900 people.Barbara MacLeish of Minneapolis, whose father lives in Montrose, discovered in census records that Mead was a "freed man of color," a black man who served in the Revolutionary War."It was just unbelievable at first," said Mary Sue Chatfield, a member of Montrose Riverfront Inc., which recently opened the Hunold Heritage Center museum. "We were just amazed. It was known that he was a Revolutionary War soldier, but no one paid that close attention. ... There aren't many living descendants of people buried in the old part of the cemetery."Even in small communities, names of many settlers have long been forgotten. Full Story: http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060528/NEWS08/605280356/1001/NEWS

Ghana to Offer Lifetime Visas to U.S. Slave Descendants

2006-05-27T16:03:00.000-04:00

BY LAURIE GOERING Chicago Tribune ACCRA, Ghana - Ever since Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, invited his classmates from Pennsylvania's Lincoln University to come home with him to help build Africa, African-Americans have been coming to Ghana to visit, work, volunteer, invest or live in what has become the quintessential African homeland. W.E.B. Du Bois lived here. So did Maya Angelou. Today the country, once at the heart of Africa's slave-trading routes, has the largest community of African-Americans in West Africa, most of whom have come looking for their roots and a sense of purpose. Now Ghana, a poor country eager for more American tourists, donors and investors, is about to make life even easier for its far-flung black diaspora: It plans to soon offer slave descendants lifetime visas or even dual Ghanaian-U.S. citizenship. "Who we most want as tourists and investors are our own people who left 200 or 300 years ago," said Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the country's tourism chief, whose department last month was renamed the Ministry for Tourism and Diasporan Relations. "It's not just about blood ties. It's good economic sense." Lifetime visas should be easy for regular visitors to get. But the new passports - still awaiting approval in Parliament - won't be handed to just anyone, Obetsebi-Lamptey said. African-Americans eager for formal Ghanaian identity will have to commit to invest, help develop or live in Ghana because "citizenship carries some responsibility," he said. Ghana does not offer any particular tax breaks for investors from the diaspora. But it is eager for help from its relations abroad, be it regular visits from American tourists, donations to development projects or investment in job-creating enterprises it desperately needs, officials said. Full Story: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/14573293.htm

Tend the graves, but also preserve the stories of those lying in them

2006-05-27T13:35:00.000-04:00

I remember Memorial Day 1977. It was hot, and my mother's people piled into their cars and headed out to pull weeds and clean off the graves at the old Mt. Olive Hills Cemetery. It was still customary then for families to take turns cleaning up their ancestral graveyards. Today Mt. Olive Cemetery is dwarfed by new development. But 30 years ago that ancient burial ground off Maryland Rte. 31, between New Windsor and Libertytown, was in the woods, and with my citified self I recall being terrified that I'd be bitten by a snake. Needless to say, I didn't do much grave-cleaning, but I walked the grounds reading tombstones and taking pictures, including the one to the right of my great Uncle Howard Brown, my grandfather's younger brother. My mother's sister, Aunt Eloise, is buried in Mt. Olive Hills. Her son, Charles Hollingsworth, lives nearby, and recently shared with me some of his recollections of the cemetery and the long-since disappeared Mt. Olive Hills United Methodist Church that our family attended for years. Full Story: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060525/COLUMNISTS09/605250351

County to buy ex-slave town

2006-05-27T13:12:00.000-04:00

Officials say deal keeps Mitchelville from builders BY GINNY SKALSKI, The Island Packet Published Tuesday, May 23, 2006 BEAUFORT -- Portions of historical land on Hilton Head Island that once served as the country's first town for freed slaves would be saved from development under a purchase approved Monday by the Beaufort County Council. The council voted to spend $225,000 toward buying 2.31 acres that once made up the town of Mitchelville, the first community established on Hilton Head after the Civil War. The purchase eventually could pave the way for the expansion of Fish Haul Creek Park -- a large chunk of the Mitchelville site already under the town's control -- to near Dillon Road. The deal is contingent upon the Hilton Head Town Council agreeing to contribute $225,000. The approval is expected to come at its next meeting, according to Russ Marane, project manager for The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit organization hired by the county and town to manage land acquisition programs. The land fronts Dillon Road near its intersection with Beach City Road. The Trust for Public Land is working to help the governments acquire six parcels totaling eight acres of the historic Mitchelville property, Marane said. "These properties are the only ones where we have the potential for willing sellers," Marane said. "The owners of other properties intend to develop their property." In all, he estimates it would cost about $3 million to buy the eight acres, with Beaufort County's share being up to $1 million. The town, state and federal government could contribute the rest, Marane said. The land's location near the shores of Port Royal Sound is desirable to developers, but Marane said there are a lot of groups interested in preserving it. Although no other land owners have agreed to sell, a replica of a Civil War general's house sits on some of the land under consideration, Marane said. Full Story: http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/5760022p-5151535c.html

Those who love Fairview plan for next incarnation

2006-05-21T18:57:00.000-04:00

Sunday, May 21, 2006 By Caitlin Cleary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Barbara Calloway still remembers, as a little girl, the way her heart would start beating faster whenever the family car pulled onto the country road leading to Fairview Park. A hundred acres of lush, green countryside set in the middle of Westmoreland County's rolling hills, Fairview Park was far from the city and all of its racial land mines, the whites-only lunch counters at the five-and-ten, the off-limits department store dressing rooms, the Kennywood swimming pool that officials reportedly opted to close in the early 1950s rather than integrate. Out here, there were no restrictions, said Mrs. Calloway, a retired teacher from Point Breeze. "You could just run and run, and not worry." During the 1940s, a group of African-American churches from Pittsburgh and the Monongahela Valley had come together to find an alternative to local amusement parks such as Kennywood and West View, which excluded blacks. In 1945, they bought 100 acres in Westmoreland County, envisioning a place for Sunday school picnics, family reunions, weddings, where African-American families could have fun and a sense of belonging. During the height of its popularity, Fairview Park had a roller coaster, a merry-go-round, a skating rink, a swimming pool, softball fields, swings, see-saws, a sandbox, a petting zoo, even hot-air balloon rides on Fairview Park Day. And its well water "was the best-tasting water in the world," said Mrs. Calloway, 63. Full Story: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06141/691918-85.stm

Rachel Eubanks, 83; Music Teacher Set High Standards for Her Students for 50-Plus Years

2006-05-17T19:28:00.000-04:00

By Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Times Staff Writer May 13, 2006 Among the first students to study piano under Rachel Eubanks were her two younger brothers, who learned in the living room of the family home during the Great Depression.The boys soon discovered that their teacher was aiming high. She expected her students to focus, use proper hand position, appreciate the work of the masters — never mind that they were only 6 and 9 or that she was just 12. She wanted to direct us to a high standard," recalled Jonathan Eubanks, who was 6 when he began studying with his sister. "She was a disciplinarian. In other words, don't waste her time. We couldn't sit there and decide to play boogie-woogie if she was teaching us Beethoven."For more than 50 years, Eubanks taught music in Los Angeles in much the same manner. Many of those years were spent on Crenshaw Boulevard near 48th Street, where two converted houses served as the campus for the Eubanks Conservatory of Music and Arts.At its height, the nonprofit institution was accredited by the state and each year offered hundreds of students classical training, pushing generation after generation to strive for musical greatness. Full Story: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-eubanks13may13,1,7232316.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

40-acre order pledged ex-slaves land on St. Johns

2006-05-07T21:58:00.000-04:00

Jim Robison Special to the Sentinel Posted May 7, 2006 Got plans for the summer? I do. Books, books and more books.I just took my final exam for a UCF history class on the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, one of several classes I'm taking to get a better perspective on what was going on in this nation and the world during Florida's frontier years. That exam covered six books, including W.E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, the African-American scholar's 1903 collection of essays considered by many historians as essential reading. I read it some three decades ago, but that was long before I started writing Seminole's Past.I don't recall if this sentence jumped out at me then, but it sure did on re-reading. In his chapter "Of the Dawn of Freedom" on the Freedmen's Bureau created in the post-Civil War federal government's efforts to provide education and jobs for former slaves, Du Bois writes, "The islands from Charleston south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by act of war."Du Bois is quoting from Union Gen. William T. Sherman's famed "Forty Acres and a Mule" provisions of his Field Order Number Fifteen. After the reference to the war, the actual document reads "and the proclamation of the President of the United States."Just consider what that order meant for the St. Johns River valley, which starts its northern flow just west of Vero Beach and meanders through the interior to become the east boundary of Seminole County before rolling on an eastern loop back to the Atlantic at Jacksonville. Seminole County's lakes Monroe, Jesup and Harney are really just wide spots along the St. Johns.All that land on both sides of the river and stretching inland for no specific distance was included in Sherman's order.Sherman, whose scorched-earth March to the Sea after burning Atlanta made him one of the most hated Union generals among Confederates, issued his order because so many freed slaves were following his army. Besides reserving a huge territory of abandoned lands in farms of up to 40 acres, Sherman later added mules from the Army's surplus herd. Full Story: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/seminole/orl-sjimr0706may07,0,4614205.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-seminole

A look at one of the historic African-American communities in Baltimore County ?

2006-05-06T17:37:00.000-04:00

by Louis S. DiggsBaltimore TimesOriginally posted 5/5/2006 East TowsonThis article will provide you with a brief look at another one of the historic African American communities in Baltimore County. The community is called East Towson, located in the town of the County Seat of Government, Towson, Maryland. Some say that East Towson has been in existence since the slavery era; some say that this unique historic African-American community has been the home for freed slaves as early as 1802; however, it is a known fact that it was a freed slave from the Hampton Mansion in Towson by the name of Daniel Harris, who on September 14, 1853 purchased an acre and a quarter of land from Benjamin Payne for $187.50 on which he eventually built his home. His land was near the roadway and is now known as Hillen Road.Towson had its beginning in 1750, and it was in the 1700s when Charles Ridgley built the Hampton Mansion, with his slaves clearing the land and building the mansion, and it is no doubt that other white families who owned large estates in the Towson area had slaves as well. It is known that Charles Ridgley freed some of his slaves in the late 1820s. His slaves held numerous occupation titles, which is probably why some remained in the Towson area to work rather than migrate to Baltimore. East Towson, like just about all of the historic African-American communities in Baltimore County, began with a Methodist Church as its focal point. East Towson's first African-American church, St. James A.U.M.P. (African Union Methodist Protestant) Church had its beginning in 1861, and is believed to be the second oldest church in Towson. Actually, East Towson has been blessed with three African-American churches: St. James A.U.M.P. Church, Mt. Olive Baptist Church and Mt. Calvary AME Church, that served the community.There have been two African- American schools in East Towson, the first being a one-room schoolhouse near Mt. Calvary AME Church, and the other on Lennox and Jefferson Avenues. The later school eventually became Carver High School when in 1939, secondary education became a part of the curriculum in three schools in the county. It is so wonderful that Carver High School still stands today, serving as a community center. Full Story: http://www.btimes.com/News/article/article.asp?NewsID=69095&sID=4

COMMUNITY PREPARES FOR JUNETEENTH FESTIVAL, APRIL 27-MAY 3, 2006

2006-05-03T22:10:00.000-04:00

by JOHANNA THATCH-BRIGGS The Wilmington Journal Originally posted 5/1/2006 A celebration is in the making as the Juneteenth Committee of Wilmington and the Tauheed Islamic Center is gearing up for the local annual Juneteenth Festival. Members of the community are encouraged to mark the calendar for Friday, June 16 and Saturday, June 17 for a weekend filled with various activities.Across the nation, African American communities will honor former slaves from Galveston, Texas who had no idea they had been liberated through the Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863. In fact over two years had passed when Major General Gordon Granger traveled through Galveston spreading the word on June 19, 1865. When they heard of the news, the freed slaves celebrated for days.Today the tradition is being carried out by the descendents of African slaves, and it has been deemed as a time for assessment and self-improvement.This year, Friday’s activities will include a talent show for children ages 12 and under and teenager ages 13 and older. Prizes will be awarded.On Saturday, a parade will line up at 10 a.m. at Fifth and Castle streets. Full Story: http://wilmingtonjournal.blackpressusa.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=68949&sID=84

Ex-slave ruled the horse world

2006-04-30T15:40:00.000-04:00

'BROWN DICK' ENTHRALLS, EVEN AFTER 100 YEARS By Merlene Davis HERALD-LEADER COLUMNIST Although he died in 1906, a former slave's accomplishments continue to tantalize historians and the curious alike who are amazed at his success despite daunting odds. Edward Dudley Brown, also known as Brown Dick, was a winning thoroughbred jockey, a standardbred rider, trainer of a Kentucky Derby winner, and trainer and owner of two Kentucky Oaks winners. "He was the Michael Jordan of his time," said Lucien Royse, a volunteer at the Georgetown & Scott County History Museum. "He has been neglected, and what he did was phenomenal." Researchers at that museum discovered Brown after hosting a 2003 exhibit of paintings by Edward Troye, an equine artist who lived in Scott County and who painted all the famous horses of the mid-1800s. One painting featured Brown as the jockey of undefeated Asteroid. Woodford County, however, has laid claim to Brown. Jonelle Fisher, who has written five books about Woodford County and the Bluegrass, discovered Brown while researching a book about Woodburn Farm in the late 1990s. Fisher requested a historical marker for downtown Midway, the city where Brown is thought to be buried. Brown was born a slave in Fayette County in 1850. Around 1858, according to Danna Estridge, curator of the Woodford County Historical Society, he was bought in a slave sale at the Fayette County Courthouse by Robert A. Alexander, who owned Woodburn Farm. Brown began as a stable boy, but soon became the best jockey at Woodburn. "I think he was just a very athletic, bright kid, who could handle these high-strung thoroughbreds," said Ron Vance, who had researched Brown for the museum in Georgetown. Brown also won the Belmont Stakes in 1870 aboard Kingfisher, owned by Daniel Swigert of Elmendorf Farm. Full Story: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/14463973.htm

Historic Madison: Freed slaves made mark

2006-04-29T07:41:00.000-04:00

Historic Madison Inc. The July 7, 1903, the Wisconsin State Journal noted that there were a number of former slaves living in Madison. "Of Madison's estimated 20,000 population, probably 100 of that number are colored folk, several of whom have been slaves. Mr. Turner, although somewhat reluctant to talk about himself, can relate many heart-rending tales. His stories of the selling and buying of slaves in the public market is most pathetic, and includes numerous details never elaborated upon by history. He said that often slaves had left their wives and children in the morning to go into the fields to work and before nightfall would be sold and not even allowed to return and say goodbye to their little ones. In speaking of these slave auctions he said young girls in the bud of womanhood and boys in the same stage of life would be brought upon these auction stands, and stripped of their garments to be examined by coarse men in much the same manner as do the farmers size up horses on the local market." Several former slaves are buried at Forest Hill Cemetery: • William Anderson (1836-1919) was raised on a plantation near St. Louis. Though he said his master and mistress were kind, when their children took over the estate, William's life became harsh. At 15 he was sold to a planter at Humbolt, Tenn. He joined the 13th Wisconsin during the Civil War, serving as cook for quartermaster Andrew Sexton of Madison. He returned to Madison with the major commanding his unit. He farmed while attending school at night, was a coachman for Tim Brown, and then served on the house staff of J.C. Gregory. • Elisha Williams (1844-81) was a slave in Georgia. During Sherman's attack on Atlanta he sought refuge in the Union lines and was liberated by the 12th Wisconsin Regiment. He came to Madison after the war, where he worked for W.H. Fitch, W. Liddel, C.L. Williams and Gov. W.H. Smith. • Dennis Hughes (1850-1928) was born a slave near Tuscaloosa, Ala. At age 6 he was sold to a planter in southern Mississippi. He ran away at age 13 and was hostler for a northern general. Then he joined the Illinois Colored Infantry and was present at Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender. He was a janitor in Madison. Full Story: http://www.madison.com/tct/features/index.php?ntid=81269&ntpid=1

Moravians issue apology for church's role in slavery

2006-04-29T07:27:00.000-04:00

Synod's resolution also signals start of reconciliation program By Mary Giunca JOURNAL REPORTER After much soul-searching about its tangled record on race relations, the Synod of the Moravian Church, Southern Province, has passed a resolution apologizing for the Moravian Church's participation in slavery. In addition to apologizing for slavery, the resolution announced the establishment of a racial-reconciliation program between black and white Moravian congregations and endorsed a mandate for the Provincial Elders' Conference to expand its efforts to eliminate institutional racism. "What it means to me is, it suggests our church's determination to live up to its creed," said the Rev. Wayne Burkette, the new president of the Provincial Elders' Conference of the Moravian Church, Southern Province. Burkette said that the resolution was passed unanimously on Friday with about 240 votes. Racial harmony has often been discussed at the synod, Burkette said, but he didn't know if a resolution had ever been discussed. Members of the social-concerns ministry group brought the resolution forward. Roma Combs, a member of the group that introduced the resolution, said that the resolution was the result of discussions among local Moravians who had participated in training at the Institute for Dismantling Racism. "I do think there's a gulf between the African-American and Caucasian folks in town," he said, "and we've got to move forward." Full Story: http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1137835595898&path=!localnews&s=1037645509099

An American Faith’s 100th Birthday

2006-04-25T20:38:00.000-04:00

With many religious sects, it’s hard to identify exactly when, where, and by whom they were founded. With the Pentecostal Church, the fastest-growing denomination in the United States, it’s not a problem. Pentecostalism was born in a simple church in Los Angeles exactly a hundred years ago this month. There an unusual man began preaching a revolutionary theology. Before his arrival in Los Angeles, William Joseph Seymour traveled throughout the American South and West. Born in Louisiana to freed slaves, he was a wandering preacher. In Texas he met a man who would change his life. Charles Parham, a Methodist evangelical, was a traveling minister not unlike Seymour himself, and was stirring up controversy in the Christian community. In 1901, preaching in Topeka, Kansas, Parham proclaimed that the true sign of salvation, the sign of what some would call “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” was the experience of speaking in tongues. Parham laid hands on a member of the congregation, a woman named Agnes Ozman, and she immediately burst out in incoherent, ecstatic speech. Parham’s assertion was unconventional and far from winning wide acceptance among American Christians. But when Seymour met Parham he was drawn to his radical idea. Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, was not new at the turn of the twentieth century. It had a long tradition. However, Parham and Seymour advanced a new hypothesis about its importance to salvation. Passages in the New Testament served as evidence, especially one describing the Pentecost (the seventh Sunday after Easter, when the spirit of Jesus descended on his disciples), in which a group of listeners speaking various languages could miraculously all understand the words pronounced by the disciples. Other passages, too, could be read as describing the existence of a mystical, universal language, for instance a section in Paul’s letters in which he mentions “speaking in a tongue.” The theology of Pentecostalism’s founders met with fierce resistance from certain Christian quarters, but it was not without scriptural grounding. Leaving Houston, Seymour took his new idea west to Los Angeles. Los Angeles was then the fastest-growing city in America—and a good place for an enterprising young minister to find converts. There he began preaching in the storefront church of a woman he had met in Texas named Neely Terry. But he soon found the congregation turning against him and his radical theology, and eventually they literally locked him out of their church. In a strange city with no obvious place to go, he started showing up at private working-class prayer meetings. Many of the people at the meetings were African-American, like Seymour himself. As he met more and more people, he began to gather a following. With his ideas winning gradual acceptance and his meetings growing in size, Seymour decided to seek a hospitable space for his congregants. He chose a building on Azusa Street that had previously housed an African Methodist Episcopal Church, and moved his daily meetings there on April 14, 1906. In their new home he and his followers held lively prayer sessions in which a racially diverse group of Californians joined together in speaking in tongues. It was partly because of demonstrably superhuman forces, too, that Seymour’s budding Pentecostal church began to rapidly expand. On April 18, 1906, only days after the foundation of the Azusa Street congregation, San Francisco was devastated by its massive earthquake. The country at large and Californians in particular began to search for new ways to make sense of the tragedy. Growing numbers of them turned to Seymour’s iconoclastic, millenarian theology. Full Story: http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20060425-pentecost-william-joseph-seymour-charles-parham-evangelicals-pentecostalism-speaking-tongues-glossolalia-azusa-oral-roberts-christianity.shtml

Slaves of N.Y.C. exhibit at library

2006-04-23T20:06:00.000-04:00

History lesson in Jamaica BY HUGH SONDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER The Cliffs Notes version of a blockbuster exhibit about the history of slavery in New York City opened to instant acclaim yesterday at Queens Library's central branch in Jamaica. The first stop of the traveling installation - a condensed version of the New-York Historical Society's extremely popular "Slavery in New York" exhibit - was celebrated by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and State Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-St. Albans). "Queens County, America's most diverse borough, is a fitting and appropriate venue for this exhibition," Marshall said yesterday. "I encourage everyone to stop and see it." The exhibit - on display through June 17 in the lobby of the Merrick Blvd. library - will eventually move on to the Brooklyn Public Library system. "This is critical to understanding the history of New York, and we wanted to make sure as many people saw it as possible," said Louise Mirrer, president of the New-York Historical Society. "Queens is a really interesting case, because a lot of Queens and Brooklyn was farmland," Mirrer said. "If you look at census data, there were large numbers of slaves working those farms." According to some estimates, at its 1790 peak there were 2,309 slaves in Queens, as well as 1,036 freed blacks. The exhibit depicts, in nine illustrated panels, the path of slavery in New York from a 1659 letter from Dutch officials to colony governor Peter Stuyvesant encouraging the use of forced labor through the American Revolution and the end of slavery in New York in 1827. Full Story: http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/409933p-346905c.html

Councilor’s legislation would keep Freedmen from citizenship

2006-04-23T19:33:00.000-04:00

By Donna Hales Phoenix Staff Writer Cherokee Nation Tribal Councilor Jackie Bob Martin is proposing legislation to amend the constitution that would keep Freedmen from being Cherokee citizens. The proposal calls for limiting citizenship in the Cherokee Nation to individuals:• Who appear on the Dawes Commission Rolls or their descendants, including the Delaware Cherokees of Article II of the Delaware Agreement of May 1967 and the Shawnee Cherokees as of Article III of the Shawnee Agreement of June 1869 and their descendants who can prove a certified degree of Indian blood.That would exclude the Freedmen, confirmed Todd Hembree, council attorney who authored the legislation at Martin’s request. Cherokee Freedmen are descendants of freed slaves who joined the Cherokees in the 1800s.Marilyn Vann, president of the Descendants of Freedmen, said it would be a travesty of justice for the council to approve any proposed constitutional amendments in which very few of the Freedmen would be able to vote on.Tribal Communications Director Mike Miller said Freedmen would have every opportunity to vote in any special election, should one be called.The Freedmen have not voted in any tribal election since 1983, Vann said.The tribe’s highest court recently ruled under the prevailing constitution that Freedmen are eligible for tribal citizenship and allowed to vote in tribal elections.But even Freedmen who hold their tribal membership cards have been forced to reapply as tribal members and new voters since March 7, Vann said.“A backlog to process tribal membership cards is now seven months,” Vann said.There are reportedly as many as 25,000 Freedmen eligible to request tribal membership, according to David Cornsilk, Cherokee historian.Miller said Freedmen would be allowed to vote in any special election.Martin also is proposing legislation that would eliminate “by blood” as a requirement to hold elective office within the Cherokee Nation.As the constitution stands, Cherokee citizens who are Delaware, Shawnee or Freedmen may not be elected tribal officials because they are not Cherokee by blood, Hembree confirmed.“I find it appalling that at the very time that the Shawnee and Delaware tribal members will be restored to full citizenship rights, including the rights of holding office (if both proposed amendments pass), even the limited rights that the Cherokee Freedmen people have fought for so hard to be restored since 1983 are in danger of being taken away — again with little or no input from them, the affected people.” Full Story: http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060422/NEWS01/60421050/1002

In a Pocket of Prince William

2006-04-18T07:47:00.000-04:00

In a Pocket of Prince William Black Residents Find Comfort and Company in New Neighborhoods By Nikita StewartWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A01 When Toni and Ronald Moore were relocating from Georgia to the Washington area five years ago, they looked for a place similar to suburban DeKalb County, a popular, affluent, predominantly black community outside of Atlanta. Instead of choosing Prince George's County, the nation's wealthiest black-majority county, the Moores ended up in mostly white Prince William County. Yet they say they do not feel like outsiders. They are surrounded by other middle- and upper-middle-class blacks who have bought homes costing as much as $600,000 in new subdivisions dotting southeastern Prince William. "We have our own little back yard here," Toni Moore, a 37-year-old hospice nurse, said of the black residents of her neighborhood, called Southbridge. The Moores are part of a wave of African Americans moving to an area just off Interstate 95, south of the Potomac Mills shopping center and north of the Quantico Marine Corps Base. How this area turned into a black community almost overnight is partly a story of how hundreds of people from near and far discovered Prince William, transforming some of the county's schools, churches, stores, demographics and even its politics. The creation of majority minority communities such as Southbridge also shows how the diversity of Washington suburbs sometimes turns up in unexpected places. There are large numbers of Koreans in Annandale, Filipinos in Manassas, Salvadorans in Langley Park, Indians in Gaithersburg and Ethiopians in South Arlington. Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101895.html

'Slave driver' of a businessman helped send blacks to Africa

2006-04-18T07:42:00.000-04:00

You mentioned Montgomery Bell. I know there is a private school as well as a state park named for him. Could you tell who he was and what he meant to Nashville/Middle Tennessee? — Brian Gentry, Nashville. Montgomery Bell remains something of a "man of mystery," as Nashville Banner writer Ed Huddleston characterized him in a 10-part newspaper profile published in 1955, a century after his April 1, 1855, death at age 86. Arriving here in 1802 from Lexington, Ky., the Pennsylvania native became one of Middle Tennessee's largest slaveholders. He bought Nashville founder James Robertson's interest in the Cumberland Iron Works. His various iron production facilities in Dickson, Cheatham and Montgomery counties, worked by many of his 300-400 slaves in addition to hired white immigrants, made him successful and wealthy. The grandest home of his three was in Brentwood. Some of his production went into cannonballs sold to the U.S. Army and reportedly used by Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. He didn't hesitate to "get the greatest amount of labor from the slave even if the whip was necessary" at his forges and furnaces, historian Robert E. Corlew wrote in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly. But in his later life, after his iron manufacturing declined in the 1840s, he began to favor emancipation. Bell was among Tennessee's most prominent supporters of a national movement to send slaves to Africa to start a colony where they might prosper in freedom. He was willing to pay their transportation and give them six months of provisions to help establish what he hoped could be their own ironworks in Liberia, on the western coast. Nashville tradition has it that his freed slaves who agreed to the plan assembled on the steps of the still-standing Downtown Presbyterian Church (then First Presbyterian, dedicated Easter Sunday 1851) on Church Street to leave by riverboat on the first leg of their journey, Huddleston wrote. The church pastor was a friend of Bell. An agent for the colonization effort had spoken during a meeting at the church in 1831, Nashville historian Bobby L. Lovett wrote. Among the two groups Bell sent, 38 in December 1853 and 50 more in May 1854, was a slave named Worley. Worley, named Elijah or James in varying accounts, was so talented in iron production and so trusted by Bell that his owner named a Dickson County furnace and mine for him and relied heavily on his business advice. Full Story: http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060412/COLUMNIST0102/604120389/1093/NEWS

Razing a Trail

2006-04-09T18:30:00.000-04:00

Groundbreaking for historic Lumpkin's Jail survey took place Monday Annie McCallumRichmond.comWednesday, April 05, 2006It's not about vengeance. It's about redemption. It's not about division. It's about the past and the future. That's how officials involved in the Lumpkin's Jail archeological survey see the project. On April 3 the Richmond Slave Trail Commission kicked off the survey with a groundbreaking ceremony held behind the old Seaboard Building, on the corner of 15th and Franklin streets. The site was once a major slave-trading block, which later became a school for newly freed blacks. It is where Virginia Union University held its first classes."It's mixed emotions, you know, because its one of the things with these types of events there's a certain presence and there's certain spirit there," said Delores L. McQuinn, chairwoman of the Richmond Slave Trail Commission and Richmond City Councilwoman for the Seventh District. "And you feel that it's almost an opportunity to redeem some of the atrocities of the past."The survey is the work of several area Richmond groups. The Richmond Slave Trail Commission, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the Alliance to Conserve Old Richmond Neighborhoods (A.C.O.R.N.) have partnered with the City of Richmond to conduct the archeological project. "It's really about bringing history to the forefront and then moving forward and using that as a tool to reconcile some of the differences and the division, things that have kept us so divided, particularly in the City of Richmond," McQuinn said. Jennie Dotts, A.C.O.R.N. executive director, said securing the project has been a long process. And throughout that process the project has grown and expanded, becoming an educational project, she added. "Now we realize how much it has to tell us about how the City of Richmond was and has become," said Dotts, calling the project hugely significant because of the slave trade's impact on Richmond. "It was the cornerstone of the Richmond economy for decades and as a result it helped shape the City," Dotts said. "So much of what we think of when we think of Richmond was built through slave labor."Dotts also noted the effort that has gone into getting the survey started. She said it has not been easy, noting A.C.O.R.N.'s ballpark battle. The discussion of the Richmond Braves relocating to the Bottom would have would have negatively impacted efforts to investigate and memorialize the slave trade including the Lumpkin's site, she said. "The footprint of the stadium was going to be right in the middle of the slave trail," Dotts said. The effort to memorialize the slave trade has not been easy for the commission either. The 12-year-old organization has worked to mark areas of the city to memorialize the slave trade and at the survey groundbreaking McQuinn was elated. Full Story: http://www.richmond.com/news/output.aspx?Article_ID=4196310&Vertical_ID=23&tier=2&position=1

Parking lot giving up clues to Richmond's slave-era history

2006-04-09T18:29:00.000-04:00

It's believed people were held captive at the site before being sold to toil in the Deep South. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS April 5, 2006 RICHMOND -- Archaeologists are digging up a parking lot believed to have been the site of a slave holding pen whose artifacts could expose new facets of Richmond's slave past.Researchers with the James River Institute for Archaeology will spend this week digging into a 90-by-90-foot patch of land behind the restored Main Street train station in Shockoe Bottom, one of the oldest sections of this former capital of the Confederacy.The dig beneath an elevated section of Interstate 95 is seeking remnants of Lumpkin's Jail, named after a slave trader. The building later became a school for freed blacks.Tuesday, Ziploc bags full of iron pieces, broken bottles and pottery jags lined the sides of the pits. Below, workers tussled with gravel, sewage pipes and old bricks.The dig, if successful, could lead to a full-scale excavation of the area, said senior researcher Matt Laird. Success, he explained, is measured by the discovery of either the 19th-century jail's building foundation or a layer of soil from that era - both likely rich in the type of pottery, animal bones and household goods archaeologists treasure.Such items would be turned over to the city for possible inclusion in a museum, he said.The initial dig is funded by the city and grants orchestrated by the Richmond Slave Trail Commission, said its chairwoman Delores McQuinn."This is the capital of the Confederacy," she said. "(But) it's more sides to the history of the city."We want this story to be told."That story starts in 1844, with Robert Lumpkin, a businessman who trafficked in slaves, and during an agricultural shift in Virginia to crops that required few field hands but the beginning of the cotton boom in the Deep South."Many people (in Virginia) found themselves with more slaves than they had a need for," Laird said. "In the deep South, the opposite was happening."Men like Lumpkin bought excess Virginia slaves and held them in "jails" until they could be sold down South. Full Story: http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-99229sy0apr05,0,5572666.story?coll=dp-news-local-final

When the push for black vote got violent

2006-04-09T18:28:00.000-04:00

By Merlene Davis HERALD-LEADER COLUMNIST There are many questions about the accomplishments and travels of Robert Charles O'Hara Benjamin, but his death is well-documented. Benjamin was shot in the back at what was then the corner of Spring and Water streets in Lexington on October 2, 1900, by Michael Moynahan. Moynahan, a white Democrat and precinct worker, was challenging black voters who were trying to register. Benjamin, a black Republican lawyer, newspaper editor, poet, minister, and traveler, was determined to help blacks cast a ballot. Benjamin spoke out when Moynahan asked questions of the black people trying to register at a local precinct. On a second visit to the precinct, the two men argued and Moynahan followed Benjamin outside and shot him. "There was an inquest," said Lexington native George Wright, president of Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas. "Benjamin's death was ruled justifiable homicide even though he was shot in the back. ... Black life had very little value back in that time when whites made certain allegations. "It (Benjamin's death) just had no meaning," Wright continued. "They were lynched for any reason or no reason. Benjamin's death reflects that." Wright has been researching Benjamin's life for a book, although his responsibilities as president of a university have slowed that research a lot. Full Story: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/columnists/14300168.htm

The indigo dye of slavery

2006-04-09T18:24:00.000-04:00

SILVER DONALD CAMERON ON A CHILLY, windy day, Magnus turned off the Intracoastal Waterway into the Fort George River, not far north of Jacksonville. Her destination was the Kingsley Plantation, the oldest plantation house in Florida, now part of a large National Park. Like the adjoining sections of Georgia and South Carolina, this part of Florida is a maze of shallow, twisting creeks, mudbanks and islets. We found the plantation standing on a bluff overlooking the narrow river, with an extensive view across the endless grassy brown marshes to other wooded bluffs and islands. The plantation gets its name from Zephaniah Kingsley, who owned it from 1814 to 1837, when Florida was a royal Spanish colony. The commercial crops raised here included cotton, sugar cane and indigo, which yielded a prized blue dye. To produce it, slaves crushed and fermented the indigo plant in wooden vats, then added catalysts like limewater and urine. Once the water evaporated from this nasty brew, the caked dye remained. The same is true of slavery. Zephaniah Kingsley, for instance, was an unusually benevolent slave owner. In 1806, in Cuba, he had purchased a 13-year-old Senegalese slave girl named Anta Madgigine Jai, known as "Anna," with whom he eventually had four children. After Anna turned 18, he freed her and their children, and married her. His plantation was worked on the "task" system; after each day’s assigned tasks were done, the slaves were free to hunt, fish, sew or tend the kitchen gardens in which they grew African foods like yams, okra and eggplant. He ultimately freed all his slaves. Full Story: http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/495886.html

Freedom trail sites recognized

2006-04-09T18:22:00.000-04:00

Sunday, April 09, 2006 By MARY ELLEN LOWNEYmlowney@repub.com SPRINGFIELD - One hundred fifty years ago, Springfield was a small city with a population of just under 14,000. Franklin Pierce was president, the Civil War was five years away, and slavery was legal in the South. At the same time, Springfield had become well-established as a critical link along the Underground Railroad, with key local citizens helping runaway slaves make their way, traveling by night along woodsy paths, to freedom in Canada. The city will soon have trail markers at 13 of those downtown spots where escaped slaves were able to stop, rest and get nourishment and support from supporters, both black and white, who were committed to the cause. "Black people played an important role in the history of this country, and this city. For so many years, there's been this veil of silence," said Cecelia Gross, chairwoman of the history and political science department at Springfield Technical Community College. "It's very important that people remember this," she said. During the past two decades, Gross and her students past and present have been researching the city's role in the movement, and their work will be the cornerstone of the sidewalk history project. The African-American Heritage Trail will be on the streets next year, in time to celebrate STCC's 40th anniversary. Full Story: http://www.masslive.com/chicopeeholyoke/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-3/114448316787450.xml&coll=1

Cherokees accept black freedmen

2006-04-09T17:32:00.000-04:00

The descendants of freed slaves who joined the Cherokees in the 1800s must be recognized as citizens of the tribe, the Cherokee Nation's highest court has ruled. The decision by the Judicial Appeals Tribunal sets aside a previous opinion against the so-called freedmen and strikes down a 1992 Cherokee Nation Council law limiting citizensip to those who are "Cherokee by blood."Black freedmen included free blacks and former slaves who settled in the lands of the Five Civilized Tribes after the Trail of Tears. Those freedmen were listed with the Cherokees in an 1866 treaty with the U. S. government.

Richmond dig could reveal more on slave trade in Virginia

2006-04-05T05:45:00.000-04:00

By DIONNE WALKER Associated Press Writer April 4, 2006 RICHMOND, Va. -- Archaeologists are digging up a parking lot believed to be the former site of a slave holding pen whose artifacts could expose new facets of Richmond's slave past. Researchers with the James River Institute for Archaeology will spend this week digging into a 90-by-90-foot patch of land behind the restored Main Street train station in Shockoe Bottom, one of the oldest sections of this former capital of the Confederacy. The dig beneath an elevated section of Interstate 95 is seeking remnants of Lumpkin's Jail, named after a slave trader. The jail later became a school for freed blacks. Tuesday, Ziploc bags full of iron pieces, broken bottles and pottery jags lined the sides of the pits. Below, workers tussled with gravel, sewage pipes and old bricks. The dig, if successful, could lead to a full-scale excavation of the area, said senior researcher Matt Laird. Success, he explained, is measured by the discovery of either the 19th century jail's building foundation or a layer of soil from that era--both likely rich in the type of pottery, animal bones and household goods archaeologists treasure. Such items would be turned over to the city for possible inclusion in a museum, he said. The initial dig is funded by the city and grants orchestrated by the Richmond Slave Trail Commission, said its chairwoman Delores McQuinn. "This is the capital of the Confederacy," she said. "(But) it's more sides to the history of the city. "We want this story to be told." Full Story: http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-sou--slavejail0404apr04,0,5276441.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia

Our towns

2006-04-02T19:37:00.000-04:00

Princeville before and after the flood, and Nuestro Barrio wraps its first season

BY DAVID FELLERATH

Those attending next week's Full Frame Festival will have an opportunity to see the first documentaries to emerge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. However, there is a locally produced documentary that, although not in Full Frame, is shedding important light on a disastrous hurricane much closer to home. This film is called This Side of the River, and it concerns the historically black town of Princeville, N.C. Princeville, you may recall, entered the news in 1999 in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd. While the news was dominated by images of spilled hog waste and dead livestock, we also learned that the Edgecombe County town was essentially wiped off the map. Eventually the town's residents would resist the buyout inducements of FEMA, opting instead to rebuild on their low-lying land, which had suffered severe floods previously in 1919 and 1958. Located across the Tar River from Tarboro, Princeville was first settled by newly freed slaves who had flocked to the Union Army camp located in Tarboro. Initially, the settlement was called Freedom Hill, which was somewhat of a misnomer given the town's later recurrent misfortunes. In 1885, Princeville became the first town in America to be incorporated by African Americans. This film from Ryan Rowe and Drew Grimes, produced under the aegis of NCSU's North Carolina Life and Language Project, is heartfelt, exhaustively researched and ably executed. It began circulating on Feb. 28, when it premiered before a capacity crowd at Durham's Hayti Heritage Center. Several dozen Princeville residents attended the screening, which was preceded by a performance by Eastern N.C. bluesman George Higgs and followed by a panel discussion. Full Story: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A29666

Borough to say sorry for slavery

2006-03-01T21:04:00.000-05:00

Published on 28/02/2006 THERE will be a formal apology for slavery, made on behalf of the people of Copeland, to mark the Wilberforce bi-centenary next year.The 2007 event will mark 200 years since the historic Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, introduced into parliament by William Wilberforce. The gesture has been prompted by the introduction of Copeland Council’s own equality and diversity policy which requires the authority to commit itself to certain actions to help promote this.Coun Geoff Blackwell, portfolio holder, told Tuesday’s Executive meeting that the port of Whitehaven had been used for slavery. “Now with our enlightened age we can say sorry to all those families and people who were involved, transported to other countries to act as slaves.’’Sugar was the driving force in the slave trade, as was the rum distilled from it. It was the need for labour to service this business that led Whitehaven to join with London, Bristol and Liverpool merchants in the triangular trade taking tools and fancy goods to bribe slave traders in West Africa. These traders supplied slaves to be shipped to the Caribbean. The same ships then loaded up with sugar and rum before returning to Britain. Full Story: http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=334551

Gillespie Street — once home to city’s black professionals

2006-03-01T21:02:00.000-05:00

By Chick Jacobs Staff writer The trees are gone — stout, long-armed oaks that seemed on summer days to embrace Gillespie Street and shield its homes from the fierce heat. Those homes, nearly all of them, are gone as well. Some felled in the name of progress, others taken by time and termites, alive only in the memories of those who saw them in their glory. Soon, those people will be gone as well — and they’ll take the memory of what once was the premiere home to the black professional class of Fayetteville with them. It’s Black History Month, and the story of this once-thriving black neighborhood along Gillespie Street is important because soon there may not be anybody left who remembers it. A quick drive down Gillespie, from Russell Street south, is a cruise through the gap-toothed grin of what becomes of a community lost. The few homes that remain standing loom like outposts between empty lots cluttered with the inevitable debris of a throwaway society. But a century earlier, Gillespie Street was the cradle of a thriving black community. The two-story, well kept homes and neighbor markets rested in summer shade. Instead of the disinterested hum of traffic, you might have heard the plunking of piano lessons and the impromptu preaching of a pastor rehearsing Sunday’s sermon. “I don’t even like going down there now,” said Ernestine W. Smith. Now 90 years old, she prefers to see her old neighborhood in the past. “It’s hit the skids. The community that was there is gone Full Story: http://www.fayettevillenc.com/article?id=227314

Taking time to sit with voice from past

2006-02-26T12:02:00.000-05:00

By Dan Hurley Post columnist Visiting certain spots in Greater Cincinnati helps me think in fresh ways. One of those spots is the park bench partially occupied by a statue of James Bradley along Riverside Drive in Covington. Once or twice a year I find myself sitting with Brad-ley contemplating whether or not I am willing to risk looking at the world through someone else's eyes. The bronze statue of Bradley sits on a bench with an open Bible in his hands and the Ohio River stretching out before him. Born in Africa, James Bradley was enslaved and brought to America. As a young adult, he earned enough money to purchase his freedom, and found his way to Cincinnati, where he enrolled at Lane Seminary in Walnut Hills. Here, Bradley found himself in the center of a debate that would soon engulf the North and frighten the South. For 18 nights in February 1834, the students debated the question, "Ought the people of the Slaveholding States to abolish Slavery immediately?" On the one side stood those who supported the traditional "colonization" position that slavery could only be ended gradually, and that all freed slaves had to be colonized back to Africa. The gradualism inherent in their stance guaranteed that slavery would never end. Full Story: http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060224/LIFE/602240379/1005

Reflections of Black Austin

2006-02-22T20:52:00.000-05:00

African Americans helped in molding cityWednesday, February 22, 2006 An earlier version of this story contained an error. Go to our Corrections page for a full explanation. The first black man to lay eyes on the rocky steppes that eventually became Austin might have been Estevanico — known as "the Moor" in history books — who traveled through Texas with Cabeza de Vaca in 1528. But three more centuries passed before the first documented arrival of black people here, with a work crew that began laying out the new capital of the Republic of Texas in 1839. There had been legal impediments to slavery under Spanish and Mexican rule, and Texas was a place where some African Americans could grab and hold for themselves a measure of freedom. All that changed after Texas won its independence, and welcomed an influx of slave-holding settlers. Emancipation came notoriously late in Texas, and it was entrepreneurial former slaves who became many of Austin's most prominent black citizens: land developers, newspaper publishers, religious and political leaders, business owners, educators, physicians. In recent times, concern has been raised for the future of the community they built. That concern last year led the City Council to adopt a plan for improving the quality of life of African Americans in Austin. Meanwhile, here are just a few of the people, places and events taken from the album of black history in Austin. Full Story: http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/other/02/20AAcutlines.html

Women preserve history of Toledo's African-Americans

2006-02-22T20:47:00.000-05:00

Lillian Ashcraft-Eason and Edrene Cole work on oral history project By RHONDA B. SEWELLBLADE STAFF WRITER Marilyn J. Anderson recalled her grandmother Alice Gray Shoecraft as a tall, stately woman who shared stories of interactions with Native Americans, and who helped found Warren AME, considered Toledo's oldest African-American church. Marcellus McFarland and Morris Esmond, now both in their 80s and friends since their youth, reminisced of their days playing in locally sponsored "all-Negro" traveling baseball leagues. Pay was minimal - about $3 a day - and racism was alive and well as the teams traveled through other towns. Stephanie Poindexter noticed her grandmother, Vanilla Cook, in a black-and-white photograph taken in the early 1920s. The Cook family, early black settlers in the Toledo area, later owned several businesses, including a tourists' home and cleaning service. These memories, observances, and stories have been carefully collected and compiled into the African-American "Toledo Oral History Project II," by Edrene Cole, a retired Toledo Public Schools principal, and Lillian Ashcraft-Eason, director of Africana Studies at Bowling Green State University. The project includes a written document of essays and photographs, and oral history interviews saved on more than a dozen DVDs. The women's almost-two-year project is a continuation of the vast amount of information first documented in Mrs. Cole's 1972 University of Toledo master's thesis, "Blacks in Toledo," which chronicled early African-American life here. "My primary concern in my thesis was black life here prior to the turn of the century, but I also wanted to do a Part Two on what life was like from the 1950s on," said Mrs. Cole, who also worked extensively on the current oral history project with Mrs. Ashcraft-Eason's husband, Louis Djisovi Ikukomi Eason, who died last fall. He was a historian in culture studies and a coordinator of an ethnic cultural arts program at BGSU. Full Story: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060219/ART16/602180312

Chef Drew on Family's History in Reviving Southern Cuisine

2006-02-14T20:26:00.000-05:00

By Mary Rourke, Times Staff Writer Edna Lewis, who helped launch a revival of Southern regional cooking with her four books, particularly "The Taste of Country Cooking," died Monday. She was 89.Lewis died of natural causes in her sleep at her home in Decatur, Ga., Scott Peacock, a longtime friend and Lewis' housemate in recent years, told The Times. She had been in failing health for several years and suffered from dementia. The granddaughter of freed slaves in Freetown, a Virginia farming community, Lewis had an eclectic career working as a restaurant chef, a pheasant farmer and a cooking teacher, among other things. But her cookbooks brought her national recognition. Along with "The Taste of Country Cooking" in 1976, she wrote "The Edna Lewis Cookbook" in 1972 and "In Pursuit of Flavor" in 1988. She and Peacock wrote "The Gift of Southern Cooking" in 2003."Edna was a very important voice for her knowledge of Virginia-style Southern food and cooking," Judith Jones, Lewis' editor at Alfred A. Knopf publishers, told The Times in 2003. "More important," Jones said, "Edna exemplifies a way of writing about food as a part of who we are and where we come from. It is food writing as memoir."Some food experts referred to Lewis as the leading African American female chef. Others placed her as the dean of all Southern cooking. Full Story: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-lewis14feb14,0,5352436.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

Ex-slaves' story told in movie

2006-02-12T21:34:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press HILTON HEAD ISLAND - James Henderson stumbled across the state's first village for freed slaves while looking for the beach one day. But the story of Mitchelville grabbed him so that he felt he had to tell it on film. His short documentary "Remnants of Mitchelville" will be shown this week as part of the Native Islander Gullah Celebration. The film started out as a 15-minute documentary, but Henderson added five more minutes as he discovered new material since first releasing the film. The project began when Henderson was a graduate student at the University of South Carolina. He spotted a historical marker while looking for the beach in Hilton Head Island. "The marker itself doesn't say much," said Henderson, who is now the media services director in the university's art department. "The story just wouldn't let me go. The story itself seemed suited for a movie." Mitchelville was established in the 1860s by Union troops who occupied Hilton Head, but it was built and run by former slaves. Located on the shores of Port Royal Sound, the village had as many as 1,500 residents at its peak. Very little history is written on the site. Henderson had to rely on old newspaper articles, written accounts from visiting ministers and personal stories. Full Story: http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/13818417.htm

Africans in Mexico: A blunt history

2006-02-12T21:32:00.000-05:00

Pilsen museum opens ambitious exhibition, asking tough questions about racial identity south of the borderBy Oscar AvilaTribune staff reporterPublished February 8, 2006 Unknown even to many Mexicans, Africans helped build their country--toiling in silver mines, fighting alongside Zapata's guerrillas during the 1910 revolution and shaping cultural traditions such as Carnaval, which sprang from African roots.Africans in Mexico also have suffered some of the same brutality and bias as their kinsmen north of the border.Now, as Mexicans migrate to Chicago, some find themselves competing with African-Americans for aldermanic seats, factory jobs, even gang turf.That shared heritage and intertwined future are at the heart of a new exhibition at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, "The African Presence in Mexico," the most ambitious and potentially controversial project ever for the Pilsen institution.The exhibition asks tough questions about racial identity and politics, starting with the paintings, photographs, sculptures and videos, some of them jarring.The centerpiece of one hall is a huge tableau showing two lynchings--one an African-American being lynched by white southerners, the other an African in Mexico being hung by a Spaniard. Between them is a panel of racial caricatures of Spaniards, Africans and indigenous Mexicans.Organizers plan to convene panels of scholars to discuss antidotes to the modern-day divide. Later projects include an exchange between Mexican and African-American church members in Chicago. Full Story: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0602080253feb08,1,5740635.story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Breaking down the wall of geneology

2006-02-12T21:31:00.000-05:00

Dubbed the ‘1870 Wall’, there is a common misconception that AfricanAmericans can not trace their ancestry beyond the year 1870. That was the first year newly freed slaves were listed by name on the federal census. But, with tools like the Slave Narratives, DNA testing and the Internet, that wall can begin to come down. On Saturday, Feb.11, the Tyrrell Historical Library will hold an AfricanAmerican genealogy seminar at the Elmo Willard Library from 2 till 4 p.m. “This is an incredibly exciting time for African-American genealogy,”said Penny Clark, archivist at the Tyrrell Historical Library. In 1861, ten percent of all AfricanAmericans were not slaves but free people whose lives could be readily documented. Today, lives of blacks held as slaves can be traced through a wide array of genealogical sources. Through the Slave Narratives, African Americans can get a firsthand look at the life of their ancestors. The Slave Narratives are oral narratives transcribed in the 1930s, of more than 3,500 former slaves. They are searchable by name and subject and “can provide a wealth of genealogy,” said Clark. “The Slave Narratives are available on a website called Ancestry.com.” Clark suggests researchers save about $200 a year by using Ancestry.com through the public library system where the services, including the Salve Narratives, are free to the public Full Story: http://www.beaumontjournal.com/news/2006/0208/Front_Page/004.html

Grounds For Serious Reflection

2006-02-04T23:12:00.000-05:00

As African American Museum Site Is Weighed, The Mall Looms Large By Jacqueline Trescott, Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, January 30, 2006; Page C01 In 1863, Philip Reid, a slave, finished supervising the bronze casting of the statue "Freedom" for the U.S. Capitol. When it was hoisted atop the dome, a 35-gun salute rattled across Capitol Hill. A hundred years later on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared that black citizens should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Hundreds of thousands cheered. The vast ribbon of grass between the majestic Lincoln and the marble Capitol has been a public stage for all Americans, but African American history especially has played out on and around the Mall in scenes that are symbolic, salutary and shameful. Everywhere on the Mall are echoes of marching feet, slaves' cries, market peddlers' calls, children's laughter and the singing of black men at the Million Man March. But there never has been a place there to commemorate the African American story. Today, more than 42 years after King's triumphant moment, that history is expected to find a home. The Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution is scheduled to meet this morning to select a site for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Of the four spots under consideration, two are on the Mall and two are nearby. Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012901053.html

Farmers Insurance Group(R) Announces a National Black History Educational Initiative for Educators

2006-02-04T23:09:00.000-05:00

Monday January 30, 11:00 am ET LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 2006--Farmers Insurance Group® has partnered with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) to bring African-American history to life in classrooms around the country through a new and exciting documentary film -- "Freedom's Song: 100 years of African-American struggle and triumph." The "Freedom's Song" program will officially launch in Houston, Texas, on February 16, 2006, but other cities are on the horizon, including Colorado Springs on February 17, Los Angeles on February 21 and Washington, D.C., on February 24. Full Story: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060130/20060130005038.html?.v=1

African American Lives on PBS

2006-01-31T22:59:00.000-05:00

An unprecedented four-part series, AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES uncovers a new level personal discovery. Using genealogy, oral history, family stories, and DNA analysis to trace lineages through American history and back to Africa, the series provides life-changing journeys for a diverse group of highly accomplished African Americans including Dr. Ben Carson, Whoopi Goldberg, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Dr. Mae Jemison, Quincy Jones, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Chris Tucker and Oprah Winfrey. Hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois professor of the Humanities and chair of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES, an unprecedented four-part PBS series, takes Alex Haley's Roots saga to a whole new level through moving stories of personal discovery. Using genealogy, oral history, family stories and DNA analysis to trace lineage through American history and back to Africa, the series provides a life-changing journey for a diverse group of highly accomplished African Americans. The series works to restore the participants' lineages in reverse chronological order. Starting with the oral histories of the individuals' families, and drawing on photographs, film clips, music and early personal records, Professor Gates begins to trace their family trees back through the 20th century. Noted historians and expert genealogists around America help fill in missing branches, in the process explaining how such major events as Jim Crow segregation and the post-World War I "Great Migration" from the South to the North helped shape African-American families.Professor Gates' genealogical research becomes increasingly difficult as he works back through the Reconstruction, Civil War, Colonial and early slave trade periods in American history. When the genealogical road comes to an end, he turns to some of the country's leading scientists who are involved in cutting-edge work using DNA samples to trace ancestral roots to Africa. Finally, Professor Gates joins one series participant in the last leg of the journey, across the Atlantic to the western coast of Africa. There, they visit an area where genetic, historical and anthropological evidence suggests the participant's ancestors lived.For some Americans, the essential question -- "Where do I come from?" -- cannot be answered; their history has been lost or stolen. But through genealogical research and groundbreaking DNA analysis, AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES not only provides a transformational discovery for several prominent African Americans, but also serves as an example for all Americans of the empowerment derived from knowing their heritage.

A Full Partner in The Dream

2006-01-31T22:54:00.000-05:00

Widow Quickly Found Own Voice for Change By Yvonne Shinhoster LambWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, February 1, 2006; Page A01 Coretta Scott King, who with grace and determination kept her husband's legacy alive and emerged as one of America's most influential voices for social change and human rights, died yesterday at an alternative medical clinic in Mexico. She was 78. Mrs. King, who suffered a debilitating stroke and heart attack in August, went to Hospital Santa Monica in Rosarito Beach, a few miles south of San Diego in Baja California, Mexico, within the past two weeks for observation and treatment of ovarian cancer. Widowed by an assassin's bullet on April 4, 1968, Mrs. King did not grieve publicly. Instead, she immediately filled the void of leadership and continued to preach the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of nonviolence, making it her own. To ensure that his dream of racial equality and justice remained etched in the collective consciousness of the nation and the world, Mrs. King founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in his home town of Atlanta. She also overcame persistent opposition to secure the establishment of a national federal holiday to honor her late husband, the only such holiday honoring an African American. Mrs. King did not simply inherit her husband's legacy; instead, she was a full partner in marriage and in the struggle for equality, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said yesterday. Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/31/AR2006013101598.html

'Uncle Tom's Cabin' may become Maryland historic site

2006-01-29T15:26:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, January 17, 2006By Derrill Holly, The Associated Press BETHESDA, Md. -- State officials yesterday accepted the deed to the Maryland home of the former slave who inspired author Harriett Beecher Stowe when she wrote the abolitionist novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The home, located about 12 miles north of Washington, D.C., became available last year, following the death of Hildegarde Mallet-Prevost, 100, who owned the property. The state's purchase of the three-bedroom, wood-frame house for $1 million could lead to the home being established as an interpretive historical site. Full Story: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06017/639211.stm

A city faces the slavery in its past

2006-01-29T14:57:00.000-05:00

Portsmouth, N.H., plans a memorial and services By Michael Levenson, Globe Correspondent January 23, 2006 PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- All Portsmouth set out to do was dig a manhole on a two-lane street of clapboard homes. Then a city backhoe hit a slat of white pine in the russet mud. It was a coffin, soft, brown, and six-sided, the first remnant of a buried chapter in New England history.

About 200 coffins lay under the street near Choozy Shooz and the other shops that lend downtown Portsmouth a cosmopolitan air. No one knew much about this burial ground because the coffins held slaves, their unmarked graves paved over and mostly forgotten to make way for homes. Captured on West Africa's coast 300 years ago, slaves were used as rope-makers, shipwrights, potters, and cooks. Some were owned by the city's founders: William Whipple, a Revolutionary War commander who had a street and school named for him, kept a slave. Now, as the remains of eight slaves are stored in a locked public works building, this city that prides itself on progressivism is confronting its past. Several black residents have submitted DNA to determine if the remains are their ancestors, the city has voted to build a memorial, and officials are planning a proper funeral for the eight.

Full Story: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/01/23/a_city_faces_the_slavery_in_its_past/

Post-Civil War archives on ex-slaves open to all

2006-01-15T17:24:00.000-05:00

Sunday, January 15, 2006

By Jacqueline Trescott, The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- In the late 1860s James Kelley, a man living in Chicot County, Ark., wrote to the Freedmen's Bureau asking for help in finding his children. Like thousands of black families, they had been separated during the Civil War. The bureau found them on a plantation near Waco, Texas. The record of the Kelley family reunion and those of thousands of others can now be examined by scholars, amateur historians and descendants in the records of the Freedmen's Bureau at the National Archives and Records Administration. Those papers -- which had not been available for widespread study -- can be seen on microfilm by the public thanks to a five-year effort to preserve the bureau's original records, the National Archives announced Friday. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen's Bureau, was established by the federal government in March 1865 as the Civil War was coming to a close, to help the almost 4 million former slaves begin their new lives. Its mandate was sprawling, including providing food, clothing and health care to former slaves, negotiating employment contracts and establishing schools. The agency was formally disbanded in June 1872. Its successes and failures have been debated ever since. Some saw it as a noble effort to help newly freed blacks. Others saw it as corrupt and flawed. The records are "a unique opportunity to gain insight into the black experience before and after the Civil War" and the federal government's role in that transition, said Reginald Washington, an African American genealogy specialist at the Archives. The project was undertaken by a multidisciplinary team within the Archives. Congress provided $3 million. Interest in all aspects of the Civil War continues, but the bureau's records have been accessible only to scholars and a few others since the Archives received them in the 1940s. The papers, gathered from dozens of local offices of the bureau, were disorganized. And some were just too fragile to handle.

Doors open to treasure of a hotel in Memphis

2006-01-15T17:22:00.000-05:00

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- One of the grand discoveries of the upcoming travel season is the Inn at Hunt Phelan, tucked away on 6 acres on historic Beale Street. Though when I told friends I was staying on Beale Street during a recent stopover in Memphis, they were concerned. They figured I was crashing among the voodoo candles at A. Schwab's Dry Goods Store (established 1876) or catching some z's in the kitchen after a catfish dinner at Blues City Cafe. After all, years ago I fell into a Rebel Yell-induced dreamland at Elvis Presley Campgrounds, across the street from Graceland. But the Inn at Hunt Phelan is the only antebellum home in Memphis open to the public. Built in 1828, it opened last month as a five-bedroom luxury inn with two restaurants. (A new replica condo building adjacent to the house opened in May with seven hotel rooms. Here, more than 600,000 handmade clay bricks were used from an 1840s South Carolina textile mill that was being torn down.) Robert Mills -- best known for designing the U.S. Treasury Building, the Washington Monument and part of the White House -- was architect for the original Hunt Phelan. The 20-room mansion is an all-masonry structure with wood only in the ceiling joists. The house originally was built by Eli Moore Driver. His daughter married Col. William Richardson Hunt, who was a Memphis attorney. Their daughter married Col. George Richardson Phelan, who was in the Union army, then changed his mind and joined the Confederates. In his memoirs he wrote he wanted to return to Tennessee and the best method was to arrive with his fellow troops. There are many more stories in this old house, which is, of course, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For instance, during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant took over the property as his headquarters. The hosts will tell you that four presidents have stayed in the home and a fifth is on his way. (Hint: It's not Gerald Ford.) Other Hunt Phelan presidential guests were Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson and Confederate president Jefferson Davis. During my visit, I had to pretend Davis was a real president. You know how they are in the South. Upon Gen. Grant's departure, the home served as a hospital and lodge for Union soldiers. After the war, the house became the First Freedman's Bureau School to educate newly freed slaves. Beale Street itself was a harbor of freedom for blacks in the early 1900s.

Thomson Gale Offers Free Resources to Celebrate Black History Month

2006-01-08T22:36:00.000-05:00

Thursday January 5, 10:40 am ET Access to Biographies, Quizzes and Teaching Tools Available at www.gale.com FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In recognition of Black History Month, Thomson Gale, part of the Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC - News; TSX: TOC - News), is launching a free Web site full of historical facts and figures, biographies, relevant Web links and teaching tools. This site, accessible at http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/, is designed to help students, teachers and families celebrate the month. Quizzes and Weekly Prizes Each week throughout February, Thomson Gale will post a new quiz to test knowledge of significant people and events in history as they relate to Black History Month. Weekly winners will receive Thomson Gale books for their library. Visit http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/quiz/ for questions similar to: President Reagan signed the bill that established January 20 a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. on November 2 of what year? See below for the answer!

Doctor helped break racial barriers at hospitals

2006-01-05T23:27:00.000-05:00

DETROIT -- Dr. Delford G. Williams Jr., who blazed medical trails for other blacks, including two sons, died of lung cancer Dec. 21, 2005, in Sinai-Grace Hospital. He was 85. The Wilmington, N.C., native, who was valedictorian of his high school and graduated cum laude from college, was an intern at a St. Louis hospital in 1946 -- a time when few minorities were training at majority institutions. He came to Detroit four years later to serve a surgical residency at Trinity Hospital and never left. He practiced medicine until 1997, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology. His two sons, David and Delford III, also became doctors and followed their father into his private practice. "He was proud to tell you that he practiced medicine for 52 years," said David Williams. Dr. Williams, who served on the staff of six hospitals, was chief of staff at two of them: Boulevard General Hospital from 1969 to 1975 and Southwest Detroit Hospital from 1976 to 1991. He was a trustee at Southwest Detroit Hospital for more than a decade. Dr. Williams is survived by his wife, Eresteen; son David; daughter, Donna; and four grandchildren. Services were held. Arrangements were by the Fritz Funeral Home in Detroit. Memorial tributes may be sent to the Howard University College of Medicine, 520 W Street N.W., Washington, DC 20059. You can reach Frances X. Donnelly at (313) 223-4186 or fdonnelly@detnews.com

Maxwell, 100, exemplified achievement, graciousness

2006-01-05T22:25:00.000-05:00

Posted: Dec. 7, 2005 For all her firsts - including serving as the first black president of both the Milwaukee Public Library Board and the YWCA - Hazel Maxwell did not find that cause for celebration. "You know, while I am very proud of all these things, I don't like being first for two reasons," she once explained in her soft-spoken way. "One, to which I object the most, is that by being the first woman and black it is like saying up to now there hasn't been one of us competent for the job. And that's wrong. "The other reason is that if it's taken this long for someone to reach it, it's taken too long," Maxwell firmly declared. "It's a double-edged thing and it's negative more than positive. I take pride in that there was some confidence in me. If I was the 10th, I wouldn't be any less proud, though." Maxwell died of natural causes Sunday at the Milwaukee Jewish Home. She celebrated her 100th birthday on Oct. 30. "She was a very unusual and very lovely person," said her daughter, Anna Diggs Taylor, a federal judge with the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit. "She amazed me forever." "She booked all the parties and danced until midnight, just like Mattiebelle Woods - they were friends," said grandson Tony Rhodes, speaking of journalist Woods, who died early this year at the age of 102. "My grandmother kept dancing until 98, when she broke her hip." The former Hazel Bramlette was born and raised in Chicago. "She was from a large family, and her mother had three sets of twins," Maxwell's daughter said. Hazel and her sister Helen were one set. Maxwell earned a teaching certificate before marrying her first husband, Virginius D. Johnston, in 1929. He became treasurer at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and that was where they raised two children. She also earned a bachelor's degree in education from Howard University, teaching business and math courses for 13 years at a junior high school in Washington, D.C. "I had 52 girls in my first class," she recalled, speaking in a 1977 interview. "The schools for blacks were so crowded then. The school I taught in was built for 1,200 kids, but we had 1,800. The school for whites - which was just three blocks away - was built for 1,500 and had 800 children in it." The Johnstons decided to send their own children away to better schools. Their son, Lowell Johnston, also became a lawyer and now works in New York. After the death of her husband in 1955, friends decided that she needed a new husband, beginning a nationwide search for the right man. The result was that John W. Maxwell, a doctor who was recently widowed in Milwaukee, came to Washington to meet her. It was a good match.

Family asserts right to profit from their land

2006-01-05T21:39:00.000-05:00

Efforts to honor the historic Mitchelville site should focus on land that is already publicly owned to allow other residents in the area to develop property, said a family who owns much of the land. The White family, which owns about 20 acres in the vicinity of Mitchelville, the nation's first town for freed slaves, is looking to develop some of the land into low-density, single-family units, said Andre White, who is coordinating the development. Some preservationists and representatives of the native island community are starting to push for greater involvement in the protection of the Mitchelville site, which is composed of disparate parcels of land along Beach City Road near Port Royal Sound. Some of the properties have houses or trailers, while others are still undeveloped. The advocates fear that, without quick involvement of the town or other interest, the history of the area could be lost to development. "Our land is not in public trust. It's privately owned land," said Perry White, Andre's grandfather, who said his father began buying the land in 1943. "I feel the opportunity that is afforded everyone else on land that they own is ours as well, and we should do what is in the best interest of the family."

Family Tree Of Former Slaves Coming Together In Durham

2005-12-30T10:05:00.000-05:00

POSTED: 2:20 pm EST December 29, 2005 DURHAM, N.C. -- The family ties of nearly 1,000 slaves from a once-sprawling North Carolina plantation are being pieced together with the help of their owners' records and their descendants. Jennifer Farley, director of the Stagville state historic site, a plantation that once spanned about 47.5 square miles across parts of Durham, Orange, Wake and Granville counties, restarted the project two years ago. "We've just scratched the surface, I feel," Farley said. "But if we don't have this, then these people will be forgotten. That is the worst thing you could do." So far, Farley has uncovered the names of 973 slaves who once helped clear the land, harvest the tobacco and design the buildings of Stagville. She has pulled information from tax records, bills of sale and personal letters of Stagville owners Duncan Cameron and Richard Bennehan. She's also had help from several descendants who still live in Durham. The first phase of the work started in the 1980s at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A student who interned at Stagville sifted through all the Cameron-Bennehan papers on campus and documented the name of every enslaved black he came across. The thick binder filled with pages of names such as Orange, Toast, Mittie, Solomon, Moses and Little Lot sat unused until Farley arrived. "I thought it was amazing that nothing was being done about it," she said. The work is difficult, hindered by a lack of birth certificates, which often were not issued for slaves. When a birth record existed, it usually did not include the father's name, said Tony Burroughs, a genealogist whose company specializes in tracing the roots of black Americans. "Plantation owners did not keep records on enslaved blacks for genealogical purposes," Burroughs said. "The records owners kept were for business purposes, either as profits or sale or taxes. Each (slave) had a value on them based on a property value." Farley has had an easier time than other plantation researchers because Cameron and Bennehan -- early trustees at UNC-Chapel Hill -- kept meticulous records of the plantation. Farley also has benefited from the proximity of Stagville's black descendants, many of whom live within 10 miles of the site. Ricky Hart of Durham is one of them. His father and other family members lived on the Stagville plantation as sharecroppers until the 1950s. Hart grew up a few miles away on land that had once been part of Stagville. Hart had heard rumors that his family worked on the plantation, and after his father died in 1986, Hart said he felt drawn to learn more about his family. "One thing that got me is, is it real?" he said. "Is it true what they are talking about that there is a slave plantation in Durham?" During a visit to Stagville later that year, he found the cabin that he later learned his family had lived in from 1812 until the 1950s. His Stagville roots go back to the 1780s with the sale of his great-great-grandfather to the plantation. Hart worked to piece together his family tree. When he got stuck, he approached Farley hoping to trade information. Other ancestors now come to Farley with photographs, names to add to the links, oral histories and information about other people who may help fill in blanks. She shares with them what she knows. But there are hundreds of names in the binder that she has not yet connected to the web of family members and there are probably others she will never know about. Farley hopes her work will personalize the plight of slaves, as is evident when she picks up a black and white photograph of a somber woman. Her name was Amy Shaw and she was born into slavery at Stagville. "If this were my grandmother and I knew someone treated her that way, I would ache," Farley said. "I want people to understand the sheer number of people who were owned by these two families. I want it to hit them in the face." Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Slaveholder's farm unearthed

2005-12-27T11:36:00.000-05:00

PRE-CIVIL WAR SITE ON NEW U.S. 68 ROUTE By Greg Kocher, CENTRAL KENTUCKY BUREAU

NICHOLASVILLE - Preparations for a new four-lane road in Jessamine County led to an archaeological dig that is shedding new light on a pre-Civil War slaveholder. AMEC Earth and Environmental, a contractor with offices in Louisville and Lexington, hopes to finish work this week at the site off U.S. 68. Since August, a crew for the firm has dug up the remains of a small plantation house, two slave houses, and two brick-making kilns that probably date back to the late 1830s and early 1840s. The dig is west of Nicholasville on the Henry Knight farm about a mile south of the Ky. 169 intersection with U.S. 68. A new four-lane U.S. 68 is scheduled to be built through the site between 2007 and 2009. The site in a large cow pasture is significant because it has been relatively undisturbed, said Wayna Roach, an archaeologist with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. "It's one in a million, really," Roach said. "We don't get this type of history often. Most of Kentucky has been plowed, and a plow would take this kind of stuff right out, and so the preservation is beautiful. "I actually hate to see it go. I wish we could pick it up and put it somewhere else and let folks come see it." Instead, AMEC Earth and Environmental has a $250,000 contract to dig up the site, collect whatever artifacts it can find, and photograph and record data for future use. Those actions serve as the mitigation allowed by the federal law for historic properties. The two-room house was owned by Mason Barkley, a hemp farmer who owned about 25 slaves, said Susan Andrews, project manager for AMEC Earth and Environmental. The dig has peeled back earth to find evidence of a stone hearth where there was once a chimney. Bigger stones are pier stones where wood members were laid. Another structure revealed by the dig is a detached kitchen and slave house from the 1840s. There is evidence of a stone cellar, and you can still see the stone steps that went down into the cellar. Around the time of the Civil War, the shed was demolished and the cellar was filled, and a kitchen with a chimney was built onto the main house, Andrews said. The site also has the remains of two kilns where clay bricks were made. Bricks were found in straight, neat rows. Clay and water would be mixed and then the bricks would be formed by hand, Andrews said. They were thoroughly dried, stacked and then covered by a clay chamber. Then they would be burned for three days, and after the fire died down, the bricks were allowed to cool. "A lot of big farms would make their own bricks," Andrews said. She is aware of only two similar kilns being dug up in the state. Household artifacts have been found at the Jessamine site as well. "We've found beads and jewelry, some of the things that have fallen through the floor," Andrews said. "We found pierced brass disks, which is something found a lot near houses occupied by slaves. We found hand-formed pipes, smoking pipes, lots of smoking pipes, actually. "We've found broken dishes and glasses and bottles and buttons. In that cellar we found a huge part of a bone that might have been an ox. They must have had oxen up here and slaughtered one." The site might add more information about slaves in Kentucky, Andrews said. "There's not much known about how slaves actually lived, especially in the Upland south of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, because they lived differently than down South, where they had hundreds of slaves living on a plantation. Slaves didn't write, and most of the history was written by well-to-do white men, and you get a certain bias with well-to-do white men." The Jessamine site had been known since the 1990s, but state officials didn't know what it would reveal until an environmental evaluation this past summer. "We sent crews out here to survey it," said Phil Logsdon, environmental coordinator for the state Department of Highway's District 7 Office in Lexington. "They do shovel tests every 20 meters, and when they did that, they started finding these historic artifacts, so they knew something was here. We realized it had a lot of intact deposits, ... and that it had a enough integrity to tell a story about the past." Despite the artifacts gleaned from the site, the new road will still come through the property, state officials said. A new $20 million four-lane road will be built from just south of Southland Christian Church to just north of the Y intersection of U.S. 68 and Ky. 29 near Wilmore. Project Manager Keith Caudill said the District 7 Office is in the process of getting an appraiser to evaluate properties along the intended route for the new four-lane road. "We're hoping by the spring of 2006 to start the right-of-way acquisition process," Caudill said. The appraiser will meet with each affected property owner. Later the district will send out buyers to make offers on the properties. Plans also are being made for relocation of utilities. Bids will be let in May 2007 and completion is anticipated for 2009, weather permitting. Parts of the existing two-lane U.S. 68 will remain as a service road and a bike path. The artifacts collected from the site will probably be kept by the University of Kentucky, Andrews said, and some artifacts might even go on display in the future.

Reach Greg Kocher in the Nicholasville bureau at (859) 885-5775 or gkocher1@herald-leader.com.

Recalling the record of black education

2005-12-27T11:29:00.000-05:00

Some stories have to be written, even cry out to be written, and are best told by those with up-close, first-hand experiences with the subject. "Recalling the Record: A Documentary History of the African-American Experience Within the Louisville Public School System of Kentucky (1870-1975)" is one of those stories. Author Ruby Wilkins Doyle, a product of Louisville schools and a retired high school English teacher, tells the story quite well through the compilation of 317 documents pertaining to the struggle for public education for African Americans. Her desire is to make sure the record is correct, and her deep appreciation for those who preceded her in the struggle to make education available to "Negro" children resulted in extensive research to produce "Recalling the Record." Doyle could have taken several approaches in her work from writing about her own journey through the system, to interviewing some of her predecessors, as well as those who followed her. Instead, she chose to let the record speak for itself through the vast assemblage of documents, which, when put together, tells an incredible story of strength. African Americans in Louisville struggled, organized, petitioned local and state government and used their savvy and personal resources to obtain an education for themselves and their children. The author deftly weaves together documents that "are revealing of the occurrences relating to the quest for an equitable public education" for black children before, during and immediately following the Civil War, during the periods of World War I and II … to the Civil Rights Era "and the integration, desegregation, merger, and busing epochs." Doyle writes, "Before and during the Civil War period, some freedmen and even some slaves were getting the rudiments of an education in Louisville." Having a little learning available for the few wasn't enough, and through the efforts of some blacks and with the help of a few influential whites, education efforts grew. Tiny private schools were held in churches, beginning with the Adams School in December 1841. Other schools were held at Fifth Street Baptist Church, Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church and Center Street Church (now Brown Memorial C.M.E. Church). Blacks were taxed, but not a penny of their tax dollars was used to educate their children. Instead, it was used for the care of paupers. Over time, small victories built hope. Doyle pays tribute to many educators and local leaders of the day who had to accept meager doles from the coffers but never gave up their quest to create an education system for blacks eager to learn. The names and efforts of many early educators are noted because it is they who were in the best position to lead the fight for education. Some ring familiar to Louisville's black community even today: Joseph S. Cotter, Charles H. Parrish, A. E. Meyzeek, William H. Perry, Clyde Liggin, Maude Brown Porter, Atwood S. Wilson, Lyman Johnson. From the struggle to obtain elementary and junior high schools, to a protracted campaign for a "colored" high school and a normal school, African Americans persevered until they reached many of their goals. Doyle proudly writes, "neither the black community leaders, educators, nor parents ever wavered in their determination to get a quality education for their children." This well-written reference guide and story of resilience, perseverance and determination is appropriate for homes, public and school libraries and institutions of higher learning. The reviewer is a writer and critic who lives in Louisville; she was a longtime teacher in local schools.

Denver cemetery's data "very valuable" to state

2005-12-24T16:54:00.000-05:00

Genealogists unearth roots of 5,000 blacks By Sheba R. Wheeler , Denver Post Staff WriterDenverPost.com Denver's oldest cemetery has yielded a historical gold mine for genealogists who now have access to important information about the early history of African-Americans in Colorado. More than 5,000 previously unresearched burial records of blacks who lived and died in the area in the late 1800s have been cataloged by a local genealogy group. Researchers hope the data will paint a more complete picture of the black community at the time, as well as provide clues of lineage for blacks nationwide. The Riverside Cemetery burial cards might be the only vital records widely available for blacks who lived in Colorado at that time, the only recorded proof that a person existed, says Tony Burroughs, an adjunct professor of genealogy at Chicago State University and author of "Black Roots: A Beginner's Guide to Tracing the African-American Family Tree." "You hear too often that no records exist on blacks," Burroughs said. "This is a prime example of a great body of records that does. The fact that they have now been made available is one of the reasons why this is so significant." It took a year for a half-dozen members of the Black Genealogy Search Group of Denver to review more than 86,000 burial cards dating from 1876 and kept in file cabinets in the cemetery's administrative office in Denver. Information from index cards identifying individuals as "Colored, Negro, Black or African-American" - including name, age, residence, employment and next of kin - was converted to a single database. A printed version is available for research in the Denver Public Library's genealogy department. The group also is working with the Fairmount Heritage Foundation to make the information available online. "It's a very valuable record because there really aren't any good overviews of blacks in Colorado, or even of blacks in Denver," says local historian Tom Noel. "There are selected studies of Five Points ... but nothing that spans the breadth of the entire community." Basic identifying documents are kept at cemeteries and funeral homes across the nation. Vital records such as birth, marriage and death certificates are available, too, but such documents are sometimes hard to research because they aren't transcribed, complete or readily accessible. City's oldest cemetery Members of the Denver genealogy search group took it upon themselves to see what clues the city's oldest cemetery had to offer. Constructed on what was then prime property on the east bank of the South Platte River, Riverside was the city's first well-organized cemetery, a picturesque beauty that served the community as a park as well as a resting place for the dead. Previously, residents were buried at Denver City Cemetery, now Cheesman Park, but when the area became an eyesore because of neglect, Riverside was founded. Its landscaped lawns, flowers, trees and curved lanes were patterned after Mount Auburn Cemetery, near Boston. In the 1890s, Riverside was swallowed by developments, including the Burlington Railroad line, which led to the industrial district that sprang up around the cemetery. During the group's research, names of recognized pioneering legends resurfaced, including Barney Ford, an escaped slave who became a wealthy entrepreneur and civil rights leader noted for securing the black man's right to vote in Colorado. Another was Lewis Price, a slave who fought in the Civil War before coming West, and who founded and published the Denver Star, the first black newspaper west of the Missouri River. "Aunt" Clara Brown, a freed slave who grubstaked miners, established the first laundry in Central City and helped relocate newly freed slaves to the state. Elizabeth Piper Ensley, who taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C., with her husband before moving to Colorado about 1890, became Denver's leading African-American suffragist, club leader and political activist. But perhaps the greatest find concerns the attention to detail given to everyday African-Americans whose experiences weren't noted in history books. The railroad workers and bricklayers. The homeless and destitute. The doctors and ministers of an active middle class. Freed blacks, largely migrants from Queens, N.Y., and New Bedford, Mass., sought out fresh starts on the untested Western frontier. It's these little-known ancestors that members of the Denver genealogy group want descendants nationwide to know about. "It's always fun to read about the famous people, but it's the school masters, bricklayers, seamstresses and the like whose stories are more common to all of us," says Diane O'Connor, executive director of the National Genealogical Society, based in Virginia. "It shows how everyone contributes to this great story of American history." "Colorblind Colorado" The information from the cards also sheds lights on Colorado's attitude toward minorities at the turn of the century. "It's amazing how colorblind Colorado was at that time," says genealogical specialist James K. Jeffrey of the Denver Public Library. "That reality is reflected in how people lived and how they were buried." In other regions during the late 1800s, African-Americans were often seen as housekeepers or farmers. But blacks in Colorado were part of a solid, professional middle-class. Cemeteries often segregated the dead. At Fairmount Cemetery, established in 1890, ethnic groups were buried in specified sections, while some Crown Hill cemeteries had racial covenants that did not allow persons of color to be buried there until after passage of the Civil Rights Act. But at Riverside, blacks were buried beside whites, a display of equality that continued until the Ku Klux Klan rose to power during the 1920s. "It's important for the entire community to recognize that something was (experienced) for a few generations that we have been fighting for ever since the 1960s," Jeffrey says. "We are still trying to rekindle that whole community spirit of a colorblind culture." Denver genealogy group member Monyett Ellington, 70, wants others to feel the same pride she felt when she discovered an ancestor had contributed to Denver society. Her family's oral history included the tale of "Uncle Fonz," a bricklayer said to have accompanied a related cousin to and from school. Ellington sifted out kernels of truth from the memories of family members, cemetery staff and burial records to discover that Alphonso Choice, who died in 1938 at age 65, was Ellington's great- aunt's uncle. Choice was a hod carrier who transported loads of bricks and mortar to build Cole Middle School and the Rossonian Hotel. "It is true what one genealogist once told me about ancestral history research. He said you'll find some in-laws and some outlaws. But he also guaranteed me that I would find pride," Ellington says. Looking for more clues In January, the group intends to find more clues about people like Choice when they index names pulled from copies of insurance policies and mortgage documents from the American Woodmen insurance company. The company served turn-of-the-century black communities in Colorado, Kansas and other states west of the Mississippi. "There's an African proverb that says, 'Until the lion learns to write, his story will not be told,"' says Ellington, who came up with the research idea. "I'm afraid that unless we do something, much of our African-American history won't be recorded either." To contact the Western History/ Genealogy Department at the Denver Public Library, call 720-865-1821. To contact the Fairmount Heritage Foundation, call 303-322-3895. Staff writer Sheba R. Wheeler can be reached at 303-820-1283 or swheeler@denverpost.com.

Report Calls 1898 N.C. Riot an Insurrection

2005-12-19T23:13:00.000-05:00

The events of November 10, 1898, in Wilmington constitute a turning point in North Carolina history. By force, a white mob seized the reins of government in the port city and, in so doing, destroyed the local black-owned newspaper office and terrorized the African American community. In the months thereafter, political upheaval resulted across the state and legal restrictions were placed on the right of blacks to vote. The era of "Jim Crow," one of legal segregation not to end until the 1960s, had begun. In 2000, the General Assembly established the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission to develop a historical record of the event and to assess the economic impact of the riot on African Americans locally and across the region and state. Sponsoring the enabling legislation were two Wilmington legislators, Senator Luther H. Jordan, who died in April 2002, and Representative Thomas E. Wright, presently the group's chair. Rep. Wright addressed the work of the commission and its importance: "The events of November 10, 1898, were an important part of North Carolina's and America's history. The significance of this time period needs to be accurately and historically documented. The charge to the commission by the North Carolina General Assembly will accomplish this goal and allow for vital dialogue."

Long Time Evansville Educator Dies

2005-12-18T10:04:00.000-05:00

Newswatch has learned that Dr. Carl C. Lyles Sr., the great-great grandson of Lyles Station founder Joshua Lyles, and a long time educator for the Evansville Vanderburgh County School Corporation, has died. Dr. Lyles' son Harry says his father died at St. Mary's Medical Center on Monday. A wake is scheduled from 4-8pm CST Friday at the Alexander AME church on Walnut Street in Evansville. The funeral is scheduled for 1pm CST Saturday at the church. Information about Lyles Station on indystar.com lists Dr. Lyles as a descendant of the founder of that community of freed slaves. Two brothers, Joshua and Sanford Lyles, started the town around 1840 along the Wabash River in what is now Gibson County. In Evansville, Dr. Lyles taught at the then all-black Lincoln High School beginning in 1949, moving to Reitz in 1962. He became principal of Central Evening School in 1967, and was later named assistant principal of Central High School. He was also an adjunct faculty at both the University of Evansville and the University of Southern Indiana. He was appointed and later elected to the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Board from 1978-1983, and also served on the Human Relations Commision.

Mr. East Akron was local crusader

2005-12-17T09:14:00.000-05:00

Community activist was volunteer, tireless advocate for civil and labor rights By Marilyn Miller Beacon Journal staff writer He was known as Mr. East Akron. Art Minson, a longtime community activist who lived a lifetime of leadership in civil rights, labor and community issues, died Wednesday. He was 90 years old. Always full of energy, Mr. Minson fought injustices from neighborhood streets to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The Akron resident stressed the importance of having structure in a community. ``If you organize your community, you can make a difference,'' he said in a 2002 interview with the Akron Beacon Journal. He believed volunteer work was his way of helping the underdog. ``People in the neighborhood used to also call him `the mayor of the east side,''' said granddaughter Pam Richardson of Michigan. ``He was laid back, he didn't let things worry him. But he didn't bite his tongue either. He learned he could fight verbally to get his point across.'' Mr. Minson had been a volunteer with the East Akron Community House since 1931. Grady Appleton, the agency's assistant executive director, said he was so helpful that he was considered an extra staff member. He was instrumental in starting neighborhood block clubs, addressing social issues and heading a political action committee that raised awareness about issues and candidates. He was also a housing and economic activist who helped lay the foundation for the East Akron Neighborhood Development Corporation to channel money back into the community. He loaned the corporation its first $25 and the corporation now has a net worth of $7 million. Minson Apartments on Talbot Avenue as well as a street, Minson Way, are named for him. City Councilman Jim Shealey, D-5, who represents Mr. Minson's neighborhood, described him as a ``good, gentle person.'' A keeper of records on the history of the East Akron community, he worked for a variety of causes, such as the Millennium Fund for area children. ``He meant a lot to the community,'' said City Council President Marco Sommerville. ``He loved the community and he loved being involved. He made many trips to Washington, D.C., pushing neighborhood concerns.'' Sommerville said Mr. Minson always taught the younger generation to understand the struggles of African-Americans -- ``where we were and where we are going.'' ``I knew him all my life; we were neighbors,'' said Dorothy Jackson, former deputy mayor of Akron. ``He was a man who loved life and loved people.'' Mr. Minson was an active member of St. John Christian Methodist Episcopal Church on South Hawkins Avenue for more than 40 years. ``His strongest message was his social ministry,'' said the Rev. Arthur Green. ``He started the feeding, clothing and food giveaway at the church. That was his passion, helping others.'' A volunteer in the community for more than 50 years, Mr. Minson received many awards, including the Howard M. Metzenbaum Ohio Citizen Award, Cliff Skeen Lifetime Achievement Award and Volunteer of the Year award for Coming Together. He also initiated many programs, such as a credit union for rubber workers at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. to help minorities get loans. But Mr. Minson didn't do it for the recognition. ``When people tried to get him to name his achievements and honors, he said: `It's all a matter of record,' '' said his son, Charles Minson. ``He said he wanted to be remembered most for his church participation and his lifetime membership with the NAACP.'' Mr. Minson was 5 years old when he arrived in Akron in 1920 during the migration of blacks from the rural South to the industrial North. The graduate of East High School married Eula Belle in 1940. Mr. Minson, widowed since 1995, retired from Goodyear after 40 years. At one time, three generations of Minsons worked for Goodyear in the same department: Mr. Minson, his father and his son. Mr. Minson was also a musician -- a trumpet player who tried to make a living with his music. In the 1930s he had his own jazz group, the Art Minson Band. He also did stints with jazz legends Count Basie and Duke Ellington. ``Art Minson was a tremendous and outstanding individual. He was so dedicated to seeing that everyone was treated equally. He had the ability to bring out the best in persons,'' said attorney Edwin Parms. ``I knew him as Mr. East Akron. Although he was known throughout the community, the east side was the side of town that he had a major, major impact.'' Marilyn Miller can be reached at 330-996-3098 or 800-777-7232 or mmiller@thebeaconjournal.com

Former slaves from Kentucky help found historic Kansas town

2005-12-15T18:54:00.000-05:00

An award-winning children's book about black pioneers in Kansas has a Kentucky connection. "Wagon Wheels is the true story of the Muldie family from Kentucky," said Angela Bates, a historian and writer in Nicodemus, Kan. Ex-slaves, a majority of them Kentuckians, settled historic Nicodemus in 1877. The town was named for the anti-slavery ballad "Wake Nicodemus!" Former slaves from the South and from border states like Kentucky founded several communities in Kansas after the Civil War. Fewer than 30 people live in Nicodemus. "But children from all over the country know about us from Wagon Wheels," Bates said. The little book is a story of tragedy and triumph. The mother dies. The father is forced to leave their three young sons in Nicodemus so he can search for better land far away. In the end, the boys, led by 11-year-old Johnny, the oldest, rejoin their father after trekking more than 150 miles across the prairie. "That's exactly the way it happened," Bates said. Nicodemus sprouted on a flat, treeless plain next to the shallow Solomon River. The first pioneers were almost 300 ex-slaves from the Lexington vicinity who arrived in September, 1877, according to the National Park Service, which operates the Nicodemus National Historic Site. The park service says approximately 175 more freed slaves, mainly from Georgetown, came in the spring of 1878. Apparently, the Muldies were among them. In the beginning, the settlers lived in "dugouts," holes they dug in the ground, Bates said. The homesteaders nearly starved one winter. "But like in the book, the Osage Indians brought them wild game," Bates said. In Wagon Wheels, too, the Muldie boys' father leaves Nicodemus seeking "land with trees and hills." Reluctantly, he orders the boys to stay. "You have shelter and friends here," Daddy says in the book. "...I will send for you when I find a place." "That's also how it happened," Bates said. "Johnny took care of his brothers." Willie was 8. The youngest child, age 3, is "Little Brother" in Wagon Wheels. "Sadly, we don't know the names of the father and mother or the smallest child, or what became of any of them," Bates said. "But the mother died in Topeka on the way to Nicodemus." Following a map their father mailed them, the boys walked 22 days to find him near Solomon City, Kan. Years later, Johnny remembered that they braved "several storms" and eluded "wild beasts in the woods." Wagon Wheels, written by Barbara Brenner and illustrated by Don Bolognese, is based on records kept by the late Lulu Sadler Craig, a Nicodemus teacher and the town's first historian. Craig was also Bates' cousin. Founder and executive director of the Nicodemus Historical Society, Bates and others helped get Nicodemus declared a National Historic Landmark and National Historic Site. ___ On the Net: Nicodemus National Historic Site: http://www.nps.gov/nico/ Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

DNA used to trace African lineage

2005-12-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

PROFESSOR FINDS SHE IS AKAN FROM GHANABy Linda B. BlackfordHERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER Lynda Brown-Wright's 50th birthday present to herself lay inside a pale brown folder, sealed with a ribbon of angular African design. She held the package tightly in front of her University of Kentucky graduate students in multicultural psychology. Brown-Wright nervously handed the packet to one of her students, who slipped off the ribbon, opened the flap and solemnly read: "This certifies that Lynda Brown-Wright shares maternal lines with the Akan people in Ghana." "Congratulations!" called one student. "It's so exciting to me," she said, holding a map of Africa with a star over the West African country of Ghana. "It's a country I know something about." Two years ago, her planned trip to Ghana was canceled because of an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which affected world travel. Eight weeks ago, Brown-Wright saw a TV show about African-Americans tracing their DNA back to Africa. Just a few days later, she swabbed the inside of her mouth with cotton and sent the samples off to a Washington, D.C., company called African Ancestry. For about $370, the company compared her DNA signature to a database of DNA samples gathered by researchers in Africa and this country. "I like telling people I'm from Louisiana, that's a part of me and who I am, and this is a piece of the puzzle," she said. Brown-Wright, who chairs the department of education and counseling psychology at UK, was determined to share the news first with her graduate students. "We talk about different issues related to race and ethnicity and history," she said. "So it seemed like the right thing to do." Her daughter, Haley, 24, showed up to hear the news, too. "I think it's great," she said. "I didn't know about it until a few days ago." Student Clarissa Roan agreed. "It's really exciting for African-Americans. A lot of times your history can't be traced," she said. "It's neat to be able to say 'I'm from here.'" More and more African-Americans are looking into the genealogy that was lost when they were brought to this country as slaves. According to African Ancestry president Gina Paige, 4,000 people have traced their DNA since the company opened in 2003, including such celebrities as Spike Lee and LeVar Burton. "This is definitely an area that's growing in interest for people," Paige said. "This is a compliment to traditional tools in genealogy." Women can trace maternal lines with mitochondrial DNA; men can trace both maternal and paternal lines through Y chromosome DNA. The company also tries to link DNA to different tribes or groups in those African countries. The Web site states that some lines trace to native Americans and about 30 percent of paternal traces show European heritage. In February, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will host a PBS documentary on African genealogy using information from the same company, whose database contains more than 20,000 lineages from more than 389 indigenous African populations. Scientific breakthroughs such as DNA testing could change the fabric of U.S. and Southern history, historians say, just as Thomas Jefferson's biography has changed since DNA linked him to the children of one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. "This kind of scientific research will cause all of us to deal with our past, whether we want to or not," said UK historian Gerald Smith. Certainly, it's going to enlarge Brown-Wright's family lore. Now, Brown-Wright said, she has to decide whether she'll turn her birthday present into a Christmas gift for the rest of her family in Louisiana or call them with the news soon. "It's a missing link, being shipped here and not having that piece of your history," she said. "I always identified with Africa, but I never knew which country."

Clayton chapel has place in history

2005-12-01T23:23:00.000-05:00

By Elizabeth Redden, Delaware State News CLAYTON — The bell tower has long been torn down and no peal rings through the sky to welcome old parishioners home. Inside, the light blue-green paint used to cover the trim has begun to peel in places, with scrapes of the church’s old wooden gut peeking out from its walls. The wood floor is covered by well-worn, off-white linoleum tile that wasn’t in place when the structure was built in 1896. The original stamped tin ceiling is hidden beneath layers of tile, the central altar is missing and wooden kitchen chairs are lined in rows where pews once sat. But for Phil Voshell of Smyrna, who grew up attending St. Joseph’s Church in Clayton, moving from baptized baby to altar boy to groom before the same altar, the stained-glass windows still sparkle the same way. Moving back to Smyrna last year after 38 years away, his first visit to the church he was married in 49 years ago filled him with memories and the sense that “it’s basically the same.” Mr. Voshell is serving as chair of a project to renovate the former St. Joseph’s Church, a site that holds a special role in the state’s religious and racial history. Formally inducted into the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, the church, now known as St. Katherine’s Chapel, was built by the Josephite Order as part of a boarding school for blacks from Boston to Baltimore who came to Clayton to learn industrial and agricultural trades. Robin Bodo, historian at the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, said Josephite Father John DeRuyter developed the school on 400 acres purchased by the future saint, Katherine M. Drexel. Ms. Bodo said the Josephite Order was founded in the 1870s to evangelize to freed slaves. At the St. Joseph’s Industrial School, which opened in 1896 with 25 students and had a peak enrollment of 117 students in 1937, blacks received education and were first encouraged to enter the priesthood and then the brotherhood when the former goal became too controversial, Ms. Bodo said. Meanwhile, Smyrna’s St. Polycarp parish, formed in 1883, was without a home after it sold its building on Mount Vernon Street in 1916, said the Rev. Thomas A. Flowers, St. Polycarp’s priest. The plan was to build a new church in Clayton, but world wars and the Great Depression delayed those plans and for 52 years the Smyrna-Clayton Catholic community was welcomed to attend church at the school’s chapel. Mr. Voshell said there was not much interaction between the towns and the school’s black students. The students generally attended church services at different times than the 125 parishioners Mr. Voshell estimated comprised the St. Polycarp’s congregation in the middle of the century. Even in an era of segregation the presence of the school promised hints of a better time. The swimming hole on the back of the school’s property was the meeting place for all of the kids from the school and from the town, Mr. Voshell remembered. “Coldest water you’d ever want to swim in,” he said. The St. Polycarp parish, now comprised of 575 households, continued using the St. Joseph’s Church as its worship space until 1968, when the current church in Smyrna was built, Father Flowers said. The school closed in the 1970s and its buildings languished in relative disuse. The Josephites maintained the property through the rest of the century before St. Joseph’s at Providence Creek finalized its purchase of the land in 2003. St. Joseph’s at Providence Creek, a charitable organization that provides a venue for community service, is now leading a fund-raising drive for the church’s renovation, said Marc C. Ostroff, the group’s executive director. He couldn’t estimate how much the project would cost, saying the group is still in the beginning stages and has not gotten expert opinions on what work needs to be done. Mr. Ostroff said the church is structurally sound, with a new roof and boiler. The group, he said, hopes to restore the building to what it looked like during the first part of 20th century. The foundation has not raised any money for the project, but Mr. Ostroff is confident it will find financial backers. He said he’s not sure what the community would use the space for once renovated — perhaps a spot for weddings, certainly a tourist stop, maybe a place for appropriate lectures or musical presentations. One thing he said it wouldn’t be is a fully functional church. Students at Providence Creek Academy, the charter school based on St. Joseph’s land, have occasionally used the chapel. Their crayoned drawings are taped to its walls, brightly lit by the sunshine filtering through the patterns on the stained glass windows. For the rest of the community, the church has stood virtually unused, but not forgotten. Beneath a three-arched stone gateway etched with “St. Joseph’s Industrial School,” the chapel stands as a monument at the end of Clayton Road. Its sophisticated Italianate architecture makes it virtually one-of-a-kind in a state where smaller, more “vernacular” Methodist churches, as Ms. Bodo said, are found on many corners. “It’s a place of serenity,” said Lorraine Goodman, program director of Middletown Main Street Inc. and co-chair of the chapel renovation committee. The school and its church are, Mr. Voshell said, among the three most important things in the small town of Clayton’s history, joining the railroad, which led to the town’s founding, and the former Wheatley’s Cannery. The combined populations of Smyrna and Clayton climbed by 17.2 percent, from 6,952 to 8,147, from 2000 to 2004. As the two towns propel themselves into the future, the significance of the church without a bell takes on even greater meaning for some who have their roots there. “The way that the whole area is expanding and growing, any time that you can keep a little bit of the history and keep some of the sameness of the community, that’s a good thing,” said Joyce Webber, chair of the board of St. Joseph’s at Providence Creek. “I don’t think the people who’ve moved here understand what went on or how important it was to this town,” Mr. Voshell added.

Post comments on this issue at newszapforums.com/forum47 Staff writer Elizabeth Redden can be reached at 741-8247 or eredden@newszap.com

For black visionaries, site still place of promise

2005-12-01T22:38:00.000-05:00

History, hope abound in Nicodemus, Kan. By MALCOLM GARCIA The Kansas City Star NICODEMUS, Kan. — The wind wails through the sage, carries voices from the old cemeteries across the flat brown plains through the rotted timbers of dilapidated buildings. Families from here know well the aged stories of their forebears, former slaves. Their tales, a living history bound by blood memory and handed down through generations, beckon to their descendants to resurrect Nicodemus. “Call me crazy if you want to, but I believe this town can come back,” says Twillia Wilson, 46. A health-care worker, she returned in June to look after her elderly mother. No stores remain. Sagging one-story houses and trailer homes stand out against vacant lots where stores had been, the noisy bustle of past commerce lost in a silent, paralyzed void filled only at a distance by the scratch of fallen leaves and the crunch of gravel beneath a lone car. Nicodemus, named after the hero of the abolitionist work song, “Wake Nicodemus,” was settled by 350 former slaves who moved to this northwest corner of Kansas from Kentucky in 1877, lured by land promoters who called the area “the golden belt of Kansas.” Families lived in dugouts “like prairie dogs,” one early settler complained, adding “the scenery was not at all inviting.” Today, Nicodemus is the oldest surviving town west of the Mississippi established by African-Americans after the Civil War. At its most prosperous, Nicodemus boasted 700 souls, two newspapers, three general stores, at least three churches, several hotels, one school, a literary society, a bank, a livery and scores of homes. To ensure growth and prosperity, the town needed a railroad. Despite efforts by town boosters, the closest a railroad came was south of the Solomon River. Nicodemus lay to the north. Businesses fled to the other side of the river and Nicodemus began a slow decline. Today, only 27 persons live here. The average age is about 80. Twillia was born in Nicodemus and was one of the last children to attend the one-room schoolhouse still standing on Fourth Street. She recalls sitting as a girl with the old people of her youth, grandchildren of former slaves, spellbound by their stories. “My roots are here. Now that the majority of people are gone, my goal is to be part of a rebirth.” Her childhood friends, now teachers, lawyers and doctors far flung across the country, visit from time to time and talk about returning, but it’s mostly talk. They look at the barren land much as their predecessors must have done and think, “What’s out here?” “It was difficult to adjust,” Twillia admits. “I like being more active.” Twillia’s 18-year-old son pleaded with her to stay in their Salina, Kan., home. He won’t remain here, she knows, when he graduates from high school in the nearby town of Bogue. No one he can relate to. He’ll probably move to Lawrence to be near his sister. Twillia, however, will stay. “I believe the wheels are turning and I’ll be part of a trend.” She listens to the sudden clamorous noise of hammers and saws at the nearby First Baptist Church, built in 1907 and long out of use. Twillia nods at the commotion and smiles. “See what I’m saying?” Nicodemus was named a national historic site in 1996, a designation that provides funds to preserve its five remaining historic buildings: the First Baptist Church, the township hall, the St. Francis Hotel, the school and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Roofer Val Williams walks around the First Baptist Church admiring the weathered wood shingles he has uncovered: round ones, pointed ones, square ones. He hasn’t seen anything like it in all his years of construction. Not that combination, anyway. He was born here and came back just a few weeks ago from Kansas City to work on some of these rehabilitation projects. Other federal grants have been awarded to qualifying families for home repair. For Val, 55, that means jobs. He was recently divorced. He looks out at the cracked road of Washington Avenue running past the church, no longer marked by a street sign or lights and strewn with fat tufts of tumbleweed blown in off wide fields from God knows where. A distant rush of traffic rolls off U.S. 24 and merges into the landscape with the honking of Canada geese flying low overhead, and he feels the isolation settle around him, feeding his sense of peace and need to be alone. Ora Switzer, 102, lives in an apartment a few doors down from Twillia and just opposite the First Baptist Church. Banners celebrating recent birthdays — Happy 99th! Happy 100th! Happy 101st! — festoon the walls above faded photographs of her six children and their children. Her grandparents were freed slaves, her parents part of the first generation born in Nicodemus. She spends her days seated comfortably in a chair by the kitchen, back straight, blankets wrapped around her lap. She raises a thin arm, peers out from her one good eye, and points. “Look around you. History,” Miss Ora says in a voice slurred by age. “The younger people left us here to carry on our history elsewhere. History repeats itself. One day we’ll be big again.” She was born in a sod hut behind her apartment long since submerged into grass kept green by a sprinkler. “I can remember when we had two stores, a millinery shop. I can remember seeing the town and people in it. I can remember when we got electricity. That impressed us.” Her 81-year-old son played sports but wasn’t allowed to eat in the high school cafeteria in Bogue because he was black. Miss Ora wrote a letter to the school: If you’re going to run him to death, feed him. “It’s starting to come back,” she says of the town, “A new house on the hill. A new house, it’s a beginning.” “How’s it going, Val?” shouts the town historian, Angela Bates, as she drives slowly past the First Baptist Church. “Just found me a little medicine bottle,” Val says, holding out a gloved hand for her to see. “How’s that feel, holding a bit of history?” “Feels good.” Angela, 53, laughs and continues to her office at the Nicodemus Historical Society, a one-room house across from the schoolhouse, where she serves as executive director. On the other side, construction workers measure the front porch of a new ranch house, bright blue under the afternoon sun, the heedless surge of a clear sky rushing overhead. A San Jose, Calif., family related to the founding settlers moved into the house in September with their 10-year-old daughter. Before the girl, the last child to live in Nicodemus was a boy born in 1978. Angela sits at her desk, blows on her hands and turns on the computer. The house doesn’t have heat. The utilities are to be donated, so she hasn’t complained. She hopes to have a functioning furnace before winter. Her parents were born in Nicodemus, her mother buried in one of the three cemeteries outside town. Angela grew up in Pasadena, Calif., but visited relatives here every summer. She fell in love with horses and the open country. Everyone was related. No one worried about their children because wherever they were some relation was always nearby. If you did something wrong at your auntie’s house, next door would be your grandmother ready to scold you. “I’d go back to Pasadena and tell my friends I spent a summer in an all-black town,” Angela recalls. As she grew older, she left California, attended college in Kansas and earned a teaching degree. She moved to Washington, D.C., and started an interior design business. In 1979 she returned for a visit after a six-year absence. The town had changed. “The general store and the post office were gone. The Masonic Hall, a lot of residences. I thought, ‘We’re losing Nicodemus.’ I felt a panic. ‘My God, Nicodemus is dying.’ ” In 1989, she bought a house in Bogue. She began the drive to have Nicodemus registered as a national historic site. Recently, she purchased 25 acres in town and contemplates using it for a housing development. “I spent six years begging someone to sell,” she says. “A lot of descendants aren’t willing to sell. The land has been in their family and stays in their family even though they don’t live here. I finally convinced a cousin to sell to me. There’d be a lot more descendants here if the housing was here. Their hold on the land prevents commercial development.” She hopes the museum and annual events including Pioneer Day, Emancipation Day and the Christmas Tree Trimming Party can start a trend that would lead to more activities and recharge Nicodemus’ economy with tourism dollars. “We get calls constantly. People want to be here and raise their kids. As that trend unfolds, as family and home becomes more important than acquiring things, then Nicodemus and its history and what that history represents will be a place they’ll want to come.” Outside her office in the former dining room, creased and grainy black-and-white photos of some of the first settlers, her great-great-grandparents John and LeeAnna Samuels among them, stare out across the wood floor along with Charles and Emma Williams, forebears of Twillia Wilson’s family. Constrained in formal dress. Impassive and resilient before the camera and the dry wind-blown land and the losses of time and the darkness that falls as Angela leaves, closing the door behind her. To rise again in the lives of the living. Beholden to no one in the world to come, and not forgotten. Not forgotten. Go to KansasCity.com to read previous installments.

Disappearing Acts: African American magicians seek to tell their story

2005-11-27T21:05:00.000-05:00

by Kate CooperNovember 24, 2005 In the early 20th century, there was a legendary man whose name was synonymous with magic. He was Harry Houdini, who was known internationally for his escape prowess and acts of illusion. But what is little known, is that he learned some of his more famous feats from other magicians who had difficulty practicing the trade because of their race. There have not been many articles, discussions or accounts about these magicians and their history in America. Walter King, an African American magician known as "The Spellbinder" who grew up in Chicago and currently runs his magic business out of Oak Park, said that even today many people are surprised at meeting a magician of color. "A lot of people say 'we've never seen a Black magician before'," King said. He is a full-time illusionist magician, who performs large-scale stage tricks including levitation. King founded an organization called the Brotherhood of American Minority Magicians (BAMM). He says the group's goal is to bring together magicians of color to share ideas and experiences. Currently, there are eight members, all from Chicago. While there are national brotherhoods of magicians, there are few minority organizations. King said his group has people coming from all over the country to talk to them and learn new tricks. The African American magician presence in Chicago is also small, King said. According to King, he is one of the few African American full-time illusionist magicians in the Midwest. "There was very little documented," said Jim Magus, a Georgia magician whose book "Magical Heroes: The Lives and Legends of Great African American Magicians" is one of the few history books about African American magicians. Magus, who became interested in the topic in college, is currently working on a second book on African American magicians. Historians credit Richard Potter as not only being the first African American magician, but perhaps the first American born magician. Born to a slave mother and her owner in Massachusetts in 1783, Potter was taught the trade by a Scottish magician. He was able to create a large following by strategic advertising and an exciting show. Legend has it that Potter was even able to perform in the South while slavery was still in existence. King, who became familiar with Potter's work, got his start in theater, and has used his background to influence his stage presence, using music and dance to complement the tricks. He has also developed two special shows for schools. He performs an African American magician history show as well as a magic show promoting drug awareness for schools. During his history show, King performs magic tricks from classic African American magicians, and teaches the students about the history of black magicians. The show has become an attraction for many schools, and some even use it as part of their Black history month curriculum. Magus said historically, many Black magicians were accepted by other magicians. In 1926, an African American magician was invited to perform at the International Brotherhood of Magicians yearly convention. Magus said at the time "it didn't seem that controversial." "They've been very open," Magus said. "I've never seen racism in magic." King said he agreed. "I haven't really experienced any prejudice...it's the promoters and the producers," he said. King said he has always been received well by other magicians and by the crowds, but has had promoters and agents who are uncomfortable with his race. He recalled a corporate sponsor booking him for a performance in Chicago after hearing about his act. When he met the promoter, King said the promoter was worried the act wouldn't be well received by a white audience. According to King, the promoter told him "I didn't tell [the sponsor] you were Black." King eventually performed and got a standing ovation from the crowd. The racism he has experienced, he said, only makes him want to work harder. "It just fuels the fire," he said. "We're just going to have to break through ourselves. We know there's a market for it." Five years ago, Ted Lee, a mortician and magician in White Plains, New York, began researching past and current Black magicians for a calendar he later produced. "I reflected back on the many magicians whom I've met, over the years," Lee wrote. "I've always noticed the small percentage of Black magicians." Lee's first calendar was so popular he produced a second one in 2004. The calendars feature stories about the history of African American magicians as well as news about new magicians. After he received an overwhelming response to his first book, Magus said he will continue his research. "It's a history you won't find in any book," Magus said. "A lot of it wasn't written down." Kate Cooper is a reporter for the Medill News Service.

Edward H. Tunstall, Detroit: Tuskegee Airman was charitable at heart

2005-11-27T21:03:00.000-05:00

Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News, November 22, 2005

The war ended before Edward H. Tunstall got a chance to fly the famous red-tailed P-51 Mustangs of the Tuskegee Airmen in combat. He was among the last of the groundbreaking Tuskegee Airmen trained in 1945 to fly the Army Air Corps’ high-performance fighters. They were The unit had been the first African-Americans trained as Air Corps pilots, and many of them served with distinction in the skies over Europe. The war ended before Mr. Tunstall’s class could be shipped overseas. “He could go on and on about it, his experiences in the air. He loved that airplane (the P-51),” said his wife, Marlena Tunstall. “There are very, very, few from that group left and a number of them are ill. Their ranks are dwindling.” Mr. Tunstall died Friday, Nov. 11, 2005, from liver cancer in Sinai GraceHospital. He was 82. had been diagnosed with the disease only three w eeks earlier. He was 82. Born and raised in Detroit, he graduated in 1941 from NorthwesternHigh School. He returned to college in Detroit after leaving the military. He earned a degree in accounting in 1950 from Detroit Institute of Technology and joined the Internal Revenue Service in 1951. He worked for 27 years as a revenue officer and in the criminal investigations division. After a brief retirement, he was talked into a second career as an investigator for the Federal Defender’s Office. He retired again in 1997. “He was known for his compassion. He got the job done, but he didn’t scare people to death,” his wife said. “There were a lot of people who remembered him for that. He could have slammed the book on them, but found ways for them to do the right things for the government and themselves too.” Mr. Tunstall served 14 years as treasurer of the Detroit Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and a life member of the NAACP. He was an avid golfer, too, often using the sport to raise money for charity. He and his golf partners, former Tuskegee Airmen Richard Macon, Lou Johnson and Richard Jennings, raised thousands of dollars for charity every year playing in various tournaments. They last played together in May at the annual Multiple Sclerosis Longest Day tournament. “I think he only did 17 holes and everybody could see that something was wrong,” his wife said. “His death came so quickly that we were caught off guard,” she said. “He’d been a fighter all his life and he just didn’t have the chance to fight this.” Survivors include his wife of 41 years, Marlena; two daughters, Michele Tunstall and Nichol Smiley; three grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a sister. Services were held Friday Nov. 18, 2005in OakGroveAMEChurch, Detroit, with burial in WoodlawnCemetery, Detroit.

William B. Bryant, 1911-2005: Pioneering D.C. Judge Beat Racial Odds With Wisdom

2005-11-18T10:18:00.000-05:00

By Yvonne Shinhoster LambWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, November 15, 2005; Page A01 Senior U.S. District Judge William B. Bryant, whose love for the law and the Constitution became hallmarks of his long career as a groundbreaking lawyer, the first black federal prosecutor and later the first black chief judge of Washington's federal court, died Sunday night at his home in Washington. He was 94 and frail, said his daughter, who gave no exact cause of death. Bryant achieved a remarkable legacy, overcoming years of segregation in the legal profession with a steady focus on the facts and the law. To him, the law and the court system offered the best hope for people to be treated fairly. He held to his belief, grounded in his work as a lawyer during the racially torn 1950s and 1960s, that the court system could administer justice. In one case early in his career as a lawyer, he won a landmark decision before the U.S. Supreme Court on defendants' rights, arguing that a person must be brought promptly before a judicial officer for a hearing of the charges. He also oversaw one of the longest-running cases in the court's history, involving overcrowded and inhumane conditions at the D.C. jail. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) said District residents admired Bryant as a Washingtonian who spent his life overcoming racial odds to represent residents with such excellence that the bar and the legal establishment itself had to admit him. "In Judge Bryant's closed, segregated Washington, a black lawyer could not achieve what he did by the protests we are used to today," she said. "He was left on his own with only his excellent, disciplined mind, his understanding of the meaning of justice, his determination to succeed and his zeal for public service." He was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 12, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as chief judge from 1977 to 1981, and was believed to be the first black chief judge of any federal District Court. He assumed senior status in 1982 and continued to hear cases until a few days before his death. Thomas F. Hogan, the current chief judge of the District Court, called Bryant "the soul of the court." He "sought to achieve equal justice, always careful to preserve the dignity of those who appeared before him," Hogan said. In a legal career that stretched nearly 60 years, Bryant handled numerous prominent cases as both a lawyer and a judge. As a defense attorney, he was considered one of the city's best and often was assigned to represent indigent defendants in important cases. One of these was in the 1950s. Andrew Roosevelt Mallory, 19, had confessed to rape after 7 1/2 hours of interrogation in a police station. After Mallory was convicted and sent to death row, Bryant pursued the case to the Supreme Court. In 1957, the court overturned Mallory's conviction, ruling that any confession obtained by police during an unnecessary delay between arrest and arraignment could not be admitted as evidence. On the bench, Bryant had a notable impact on the affairs of the District while overseeing the 25-year-old case brought on behalf of inmates of the D.C. jail, who said its conditions were overcrowded, inhumane and filthy. At one point, so frustrated with officials' repeated delays in meeting deadlines for improvements and with their inaccurate assertions, Bryant took the unusual step of requiring them to make reports under oath. In chastising the officials, he once said he had listened to their promises to make changes "since the Big Dipper was a thimble." Lawyer William Schultz, who clerked for Bryant in the 1970s, when the D.C. jail case occurred, recalled a surprise visit that the judge made to the jail to see the conditions for himself. As Bryant walked through the jail, "you could sense the respect from the prisoners," Schultz said. William Benson Bryant was born Sept. 18, 1911, in rural Wetumpka, Ala., the only child of a railroad porter and a housewife. Just after his first birthday, his grandfather was forced to flee a lynch mob, and the family found safety on Benning Road in Northeast Washington. Bryant had lived in the District ever since. He came of age in the segregated D.C. school system, graduating from Dunbar High School. He worked as a night elevator operator while attending Howard University and studying political science under Ralph Bunche, then head of the department. He graduated from Howard in 1932 and from its law school, first in his class, in 1939. During law school, he became fascinated with law professor Charles Houston's teachings that astute lawyers fortified with the Constitution could bring an end to school segregation and unjust convictions of innocent black men. In 1939 and 1940, he was Bunche's chief research assistant for a study of the black person in America, which became part of Gunnar Myrdal's treatise, "An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy." Bunche was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his landmark study on U.S. race relations. Bryant served in the Army from 1943 until 1947, entering as a first lieutenant and serving in Europe. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. When he left the military and entered private practice in 1948, the doors of most law firms -- and the District of Columbia Bar Association -- remained closed to blacks. He once said he had no special desire to pursue civil rights work in his law practice. "I guess I just got frustrated by the slow process of chipping away at discrimination," he said. "Besides, a lot of other lawyers were already on their way in that field. Maybe I came along 10 years too late or 10 years too early." His reputation as a criminal defense attorney took him to the U.S. attorney's office in 1951, making him the first black prosecutor in federal court here. But even there, he was not allowed to use the D.C. Bar Association's law library. So he researched his cases with the help of a black court employee who opened the library to him after closing time. He returned to private practice in 1954 as a partner in the powerhouse black law firm of Houston, Bryant & Gardner. He was also an adjunct professor at Howard and taught trial advocacy on Saturday mornings for more than 20 years. He was a member of the DePriest 15 Club and played golf with the Pro Duffers in Washington. His wife of 60 years, Astaire Bryant, died in 1997. Survivors include two children, William "Chip" Bryant and Astaire A. Bryant, both of Washington; a niece, Beatrice Jones, who was like a daughter to him; two grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. Two years ago, his fellow judges unanimously requested that the new annex to the District's federal courthouse be named for him. On Friday, President Bush signed the bill to do that.

Stop on black history trail is razed

2005-11-10T12:33:00.000-05:00

Preservationists outraged; city says owner lacked permit By Cristina Silva, Globe Staff November 10, 2005 Hidden off a small alley on Beacon Hill, the red brick, Federal-style home was once owned by John P. Coburn, a prominent black businessman, an outspoken abolitionist, and the founder of the nation's first all-black military company. It was believed to have been a way station on the Underground Railroad for slaves seeking freedom, and today it's on the Black Heritage Trail for tourists in search of Boston's early African-American history. But the new owner has knocked most of it down, and historic preservation groups are outraged. City officials said yesterday that the owner, a local real estate agent, did not obtain the proper permits before demolishing most of the two-story house in mid-October and they have stopped construction at the Phillips Street site until further notice. Preservationists said that it's too late, that the house, built in the early 1800s, can never be restored. ''We fear it's pretty much lost to us," said James Igoe, president of Preservation MASS, which recently included the house on its list of the 10 most endangered historic sites in the state. ''We were just very surprised that in a neighborhood like Beacon Hill, where you matter-of-factly think everything is protected, it just isn't. If nothing else, there has to be a lesson learned that things like this shouldn't be happening." Eric Stevens said yesterday that when he bought the house last year for about $500,000, it was beyond repair, with an unsteady foundation and crumbling walls. ''A 4-year-old could have pushed it over," Stevens said. ''The building was an eyesore and unsafe, and I'm putting a million dollars into it to make it beautiful." Stevens applied for a permit to renovate the house in early 2004. According to city documents, he received permission to ''construct new partitioning, stairway, kitchen, bathrooms, and roof deck." James W. Hunt III -- head of Boston's Environment Department, which oversees the Boston Landmarks Commission -- said Stevens never told officials he intended to tear the house down. ''The initial project that was permitted would have at least retained most of the original structure," Hunt said. ''He was just building up initially. That's what he sought approval for, not to take down." Yesterday, the remains of the house consisted of a thin outline of bricks and a green door of rotting wood. Stevens said he had intended to restore the house based on its original architecture before the city ordered him to stop construction. ''I'm willing to do whatever the neighborhood wants," he said. ''But we can't rebuild it until we take it down." The Coburn house is one of 14 structures in the nearly 2-mile walk through downtown Boston that makes up the heritage trail. The house, however, is not an official historic landmark and does not fall under the protection of the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission, because it is not on a main street. According to a 1955 state law, the city can protect only projects visible from a public road. Coburn, who was born about 1811 in Massachusetts and died in 1873, worked with abolitionist groups such as the Boston Vigilance Committee and cofounded the Massasoit Guards, an all-black military company, said Beth Bower, university archivist at Suffolk University and a scholar of African-American history. ''This is a great loss for Boston," Bower said. ''There are not that many homes left in Boston from that era, especially if you are talking about homes that represent how the African-American community lived." Beverly Morgan-Welch -- executive director of the Museum of Afro-American History, which oversees the Black Heritage Trail -- said it will continue to recognize the Coburn house, even though it is no longer intact. ''It is so significant to be able to walk on the Black Heritage Trail and point out real places, not just what was once there," she said. ''I can't even tell you how deeply saddened we are by all of this." © Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company

140-plus years of history remembered

2005-11-09T19:13:00.000-05:00

Published Wednesday November 9 2005 By SANDRA WALSHThe Beaufort Gazette Penn School was the first school in the South for freed slaves, and more than 140 years later Penn Center is still going strong as a site where people can learn and grow. Thousands of people are expected to come together at the 23rd annual Penn Center Heritage Days Celebration set to start Thursday and last throughout the weekend on St. Helena Island. "We are celebrating ... our history of coming to America -- our culture," said Gardenia Simmons-White, a Penn School alumnus and commander of the Penn Center's York W. Bailey Museum. "In our culture we have basket weavers, indigo dye makers, artists, sculptors -- all unique to the Gullah culture. We want to keep that alive." In addition to ongoing demonstrations featuring Gullah traditions at the Gullah Roots Village on Penn Center grounds -- where people can witness basketry, storytelling, net making, hair braiding and more -- celebration highlights also include a traditional fish fry from 6 p.m. to midnight Friday on Penn Center grounds; a parade from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.; and a live performance from Beaufort's Ron Daise at 4:30 p.m. Friday at Darrah Hall at Penn Center. There also will be a variety of live music and dancing presentations throughout the festival as well as vendors selling food and arts and crafts. Ervena Faulkner, co-manager of the Bailey Museum, said the celebration is a true experience of a culture that has its roots on St. Helena Island. "Jacksonville, N.C., to Jacksonville, Fla., has been designated as the Gullah-Geechee corridor," Faulkner said. And, she said, the corridor includes St. Helena Island, where a lot of history took place. The 400-year-old Gullah-Geechee tradition first landed on the Sea Islands when West African slaves were brought to the area to work on plantations. Today, the culture is a mixture of West African, American Indian and European backgrounds. Emory Campbell, former executive director of Penn Center, said interest in the Heritage Days Celebration has grown tremendously over the years from a few hundred attendees to more than 10,000. Campbell said this year's celebration will mark the public launch of the newly completed Gullah translation of the New Testament. The public launching will take place at noon Saturday at the center stage on Penn Center grounds. "It's an exciting thing to see years and years of work come to fruition," Campbell said. Copyright 2005 The Beaufort Gazette • May not be republished in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Former tax preparer faces prison, fine for slavery scam

2005-11-04T19:55:00.000-05:00

By Kate Brennan, Florida Today A former Brevard County tax preparer facing 26 counts of federal fraud for bilking the IRS out of $624,000 in a slave restitution refund scam has agreed to pay it all back, along with $250,000 in fines, in a plea bargain that could put her behind bars for five years. It's up to a judge to accept or reject the agreement. Marguerite Young Smith, a former Rockledge High School teacher who owned Quick Tax on Merritt Island, admitted Monday in a plea agreement that she claimed a fraudulent slavery deduction for several of her black clients -- as much as $86,000 in one case -- and inflated the refund amounts for many others. By admitting guilt, the government dropped all but one of the charges, sparing Smith a possible 125 more years in prison. Her trial was set to begin Tuesday. The settlement saved Smith and the federal government time and money, said Norm Meadows, a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation. "I don't believe she's getting away with a whole lot," he said. "She's being prosecuted criminally. She's going to pay her debt back to society. And she's still going to spend a significant amount of time in prison." A date has not been set for Smith's sentencing hearing. If the judge accepts the plea agreement, Smith will be responsible for paying back the government any of the fraudulently claimed refund money, approximately $624,000. Most of Smith's clients had no idea she was inflating their returns or that the slavery restitution credit was illegal, according to court documents. But if Smith had not been prosecuted, it would have been their responsibility to pay back the government. Smith's case should be a warning to all tax preparers and taxpayers alike, Meadows said. "It's a community service message on the government's part to be careful on who you get to do your tax returns and a message to fraudulent prepares that the government is going to pursue you if you do something wrong," he said. The slavery restitution scam has been around for more than a decade, according to the IRS. Its origins trace back to Gen. William T. Sherman's Special Field Order 15 at the end of the Civil War. The order, which gave rise to the famous "40 acres and a mule" phrase, was to have granted land between South Carolina and Florida to freed slaves but was invalidated months later by President Andrew Jackson. In 2001, the IRS received more than 80,000 such claims, mostly in the South, totaling more than $2.7 billion in false slavery reparation refunds. Smith was indicted in February by a federal grand jury in Orlando for claims filed between 1998 and 2002. The IRS gathered some of its evidence using audio recorders during several undercover visits to Smith's Merritt Island business, according to court records. Smith's attorney Robert Berry said his client agreed to the settlement because it was "reasonable" and it "could have been worse." Still, it's not easy on Smith, who he said suffers from some health issues. "She's depressed about the situation she finds herself in. It's tough on her," he said. "She's in her mid-60s and she's going to prison." Smith already served time in prison in 1993 after a jury found her guilty of fraud. Berry said Smith does "not presently" have the money to pay back the government on behalf of her former clients. But, for other reasons, he hopes the judge accepts the plea agreement. "She's got a good family supporting her through this," Berry said. "We're just grateful to the government for making a reasonable offer that gives her the time to get out (of prison) and have time left with her family." Contact Brennan at 242-3722 or kbrennan@flatoday.net

UNC details past slavery ties

2005-11-04T19:47:00.000-05:00

By Natalie Gott, Associated Press Writer November 2, 2005 CHAPEL HILL, N.C. --In the early decades of the University of North Carolina, servants kindled fires in students' rooms and cut wood to fuel stoves. The 216-year-old school, which takes pride in being the nation's oldest public university, is now airing a shameful side of its past -- those servants were slaves. The university is using records and photographs that archivists have uncovered to present a fuller story of the school's beginnings. "This university was built by slaves and free blacks," said Chancellor James Moeser. "We need to be candid about that, acknowledge their contributions." The University of North Carolina, chartered in 1789, is among several universities, banks and financial firms that have tried to set the record straight on their historical ties to the slave trade. North Carolina archivists were researching the university's first 100 years when they found records that confirmed slaves helped construct campus buildings. Other records showed that both faculty and university board members owned slaves. Some of that research is on display in "Slavery and the Making of the University: Celebrating Our Unsung Heroes, Bond and Free." The on-campus exhibit includes photographs, letters and documents such as bills of sale for slaves. In one letter, the wife of the school's first law professor wrote her husband that university President David Lowry Swain wanted to hire "Harry" for work. She pledged she would "hire Harry out whenever I can." The exhibit is among several recent efforts by the university to acknowledge its past links to slavery. It offers a class on the history of blacks at the school, and a monument honoring the slaves and free blacks who helped build the school was installed in May. Other universities that have shed light on their historical ties to slavery include the University of Alabama, where the faculty senate last year apologized to the descendants of slaves who were owned by faculty members or who worked on campus in the years before the Civil War. The school also erected a marker near the graves of two slaves on campus. A committee at Brown University in Rhode Island is examining the school's past ties to the slave trade and recommending whether and how the college should take responsibility. A report on the findings is due by the end of the fall semester. "We clearly do live in a society that has a persistent pattern of racial disparity and I think most people would agree that that has something to do with our history," said James Campbell, a history professor at Brown and the chairman of the committee. "If you care about that pattern of disparity, then it seems to me one of the things that is incumbent on you is to try to find out how we got here," Campbell said Just how many schools have ties to the slave trade remains unknown, since so much information has been concealed, said Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree. But he believes those found to have had links to slavery should pay reparations. Some banks and financial services firms have made donations after conducting investigations into their own past ties to slavery. Often the research in those case was prompted by local governments demanding an accounting. Charlotte-based Wachovia Corp. committed an undisclosed sum to support black history education in June, a few days after announcing that two of its predecessor banks owned slaves. Also this year, New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. gave $5 million to support college scholarships for black students in Louisiana, where two of its predecessor banks received thousands of slaves as collateral. The researchers examining the University of North Carolina's past say they hope the new exhibit in just the beginning of a renewed effort to create a more complete understanding of the school's early years. "I think it is important that we do this since we are the oldest university," said Susan Ballinger, assistant university archivist. "The chancellor has said over and over again that it's critical for the university to be honest about its past. He wants our history told fully, warts and all." ------ On the Net: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: http://www.unc.edu © Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

St. Louis Library posts Slave Compensation Claims

2005-11-04T09:26:00.000-05:00

What was a Slave Compensation Claim? During the Civil War, two acts of Congress—one passed in 1864 (13 Stat. 11) and one in 1866 (14 Stat. 321)—allowed loyal slave owners whose slaves enlisted or were drafted into the U.S. military to file a claim against the Federal government for loss of the slave’s services. The law allowed for up to $300 compensation for slaves who enlisted, and up $100 for slaves who were drafted. Although a third act of Congress passed in 1867 (15 Stat. 29) suspended the claims process, paperwork created by this claims process has survived. Filing a Claim The slave owner filing a slave compensation claim had to prove his or her loyalty to the federal government legal ownership of the slave Importance of Enlistment for Border-State Slaves The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed the slaves in the states which were in rebellion, but in border-states which were loyal to the Union—slavery continued to be legal. The law authorizing the formation of the USCT stated that no man was to fight as a slave, so for slaves in the border-states, enlistment meant freedom. If owners would not give permission to enlist, then slaves had to run away in order to join the army. In some cases, flight from slavery led to enlistment in the state where the slave resided, but other times it led to enlistment in a neighboring state. If a slave’s former owner found out where and when he joined—and the owner was loyal to the Union—then he or she could file a slave compensation claim. Information IncludedA slave compensation claim provides information about the soldier/former slave as well as his former owner. The quantity and quality of information varies based on the amount of information submitted by the former slave owner.

Runaway Slave Records Presented To Balch

2005-11-04T09:22:00.000-05:00

Nov 03, 2005 -- For years, Bronwen Souders has been passionately intrigued by the history of Waterford, the 1733 village near where she and her husband, John Souders, live. Together, they have written several books on the history of the town’s Quaker settlers and its Civil War-era inhabitants. A dual path for Bronwen Souders has been exploring the history of the town’s black population, which, on the eve of the Civil War, was among the most populous free black settlements in the commonwealth. Recently, the Souders presented the Thomas Balch Library for Genealogy and History in Leesburg a valuable gift: a bound collection of all the records of runaway slaves found in the pages of the 19th century publication, The Genius of Liberty, published by S.B.T. Caldwell for the years 1817 to 1843. The Souders presented the results of their research to the library on behalf of the Black History Committee of The Friends of the Thomas Balch Library. An anonymous donor funded the research. This week, Bronwen Souders said the value of the gift reflects, in part, the fact that the published set of advertisements is apparently one of only a few complete collections in the country. During a two-year period, the researchers located the almost 200 advertisements placed in the newspaper by irate slave owners or jailers, scanning each individually, indexing them by date and compiling them into one document. The collection also contains a summary of information on each individual, including where the slave originated, the date of the advertisement, where and when jailed and notes on the owners. The Souders became involved in the project when they were taking notes from issues of The Genius of Liberty, to find information on Waterford they couldn’t find elsewhere. They were given access to the bound books of the publication by a private owner. The Balch Library, the county’s most comprehensive repository of genealogical and historical records, only has about the first six years or so of that publication, according to Bronwen Souders. They used a portable scanner to copy particularly interesting articles and advertisements. Then Bronwen came upon the slave advertisements. First, she started to copy just the Waterford-area runaways, but soon realized she had to do it for the entire county because of the significance of the information for slave descendants and researchers alike. “The records indicate there was an underground railroad funneling from the south through Loudoun,” Souders said. Of the almost 200 slaves recorded, more than a quarter were recaptured. Some went south to join up with other family members. Souders also has access to a privately owned jailer's notebook of the period, which has given her a great deal of information about slaves who ran away, but who presumably were not considered valuable enough by their owners to go to the expense of placing an advertisement. For example, Souders noted there were 5,000 slaves in Loudoun and, over the 25-year period researched, only 200 ads were placed. The sheriff received a 10 cents-per-mile remuneration for capturing a runaway, and rewards in differing amounts, anywhere from $20 to $50 or more, were offered. The out-of-state reward was much higher than for those recaptured in Virginia—$10 in county, $20 in state and more if taken out of state. One advertisement offered $150 for three runaways. The ads included the names of a fair number of women and children. One notice, “A Crop of Runaways,” related to the entire slave population of a Mr. Marshall, ranging in age from infant to 60. Marshall offered a reward of $400. The entire group of 24 slaves was recaptured. The idea of humans chasing down another human being and individuals being considered as “commodities” are chilling reminders of the period, although the ads are fascinating from a historical point of view. Ozburn Rustin, who was cited in a May 30, 1829, advertisement, escaped from Washington, DC. He was described as a servant boy who escaped on May 24, being “About 17 years old, a dark mulatto, tall and slender, a little knock-kneed with a fullness in the middle of the upper lip. I think some of his upper teeth have been separated with a file and some of his back teeth plugged with gold.” A childhood scald on his hand was also noted as were his long arms and “swinging, awkward walk.” Given that excruciating detail of description, it’s a wonder he managed to escape. The ad for William Lee, published Aug. 31, 1819, goes into a lengthy description of him, where he had been before—in at least three counties—and the names of several Loudoun owners for whom Lee had worked. Ironically, they included George D. Smith, who owned the Souders’ present farm. The ad also gave a likely escape route that Lee would use. Information as to where the runaways might be headed was also provided in some ads. In September 1822, brothers “Len and George” were described as having probably procured free papers and to be heading for Philadelphia or Pennsylvania to trade with Quakers and to be using “their plain language and dress.” “They were very specific,” Souders said, adding descriptions also included the clothes the slaves were wearing or had taken with them and their profession. “Knowing the type of work they were in, that’s where they would look,” she said. Slaves working on neighboring plantations, such as present-day Rockland, Raspberry Plain and Selma on Rt. 15 north of Leesburg, had the advantage of being able to plan their escapes together. All three estates were near the Potomac River, which in September 1822 would have had low enough water at certain spots to permit crossing into Maryland and passage into Pennsylvania. Souders said the records show the slaves had “dreadful injuries,” noting burns, scars, scabs, even pieces of missing anatomy. Souders said she and her husband were moved by the “persistence and courage” of the slaves. Recapture could mean instant death, being severely punished or sold south. “But they kept running away,” she said. Three quarters of the slaves mentioned were from Loudoun, although a sizable amount were born in Louisiana. Wrenching as some of the material is, it gives a modern-day researcher an “eyewitness account of the living conditions of many of these men, women and children, and thus a belated opportunity to honor their courage in seeking freedom many years later,” Souders said. Once escaped, slaves might be connected with family members who had already escaped. Some, after the end of the Civil War, resettled in their old locations. A future step in the research, according to Souders, will be to research what happened to Loudoun slaves in their new lives and to link their histories with those of family members who stayed behind. Thomas Balch Librarian Alexandra Gressett said she was delighted with the gift. “It documents a period of time in African-American history that’s hard [to document] in terms of people’s family,” she said. The committee was excited to be able to do the project because it gives a point of reference and automatic access for comparative research. “It’s a tremendous research tool,” Gressett said. For more information on the collection, go to www.balchfriends.org and link to black history, then to runaway slave history.

Bluegrass had its own Rosa Parks

2005-10-30T22:01:00.000-05:00

By Merlene DavisHERALD-LEADER COLUMNIST Today, Rosa Parks, the small woman who stood tall against oppression by keeping her seat, will be the first woman and second black American to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. It was that simple act of defiance, her refusal to allow segregation to continue unchallenged, that led to the continued shattering of long-held demeaning beliefs. And although her refusal to give up her seat is the most well-known act of defiance, it definitely was not the first. Bill Stephens, a volunteer for the Hopewell Museum in Paris and a Kentucky history buff, called to invite me over for a history lesson. Sure enough, more than 70 years before Parks, we in Kentucky had our own rebel of sorts who set off quite a firestorm as well. On June 8, 1883, the Rev. Elisha W. Green, a former slave who had founded Baptist churches in small communities throughout the Bluegrass, declined to give up his seat on a train to Paris from Millersburg, and was roughed up by a couple of white men, including The Rev. George T. Gould. Gould was the president of the Millersburg Female College, and he had boarded the train with several young women from the school. Gould claimed his sense of chivalry was challenged when Green refused to give his seat to one of the young women in Gould's party. Fortunately for those of us who came along much later, much of the ensuing exchanges played out in area newspapers and were later quoted in Green's memoir, Life of the Rev. Elisha Green. See, Green was no ordinary black man. Born in Bourbon County in 1816, Green was one of the first African-American ministers in Kentucky. Around 1848, he founded the First African Baptist Church in Maysville, which is now Bethel Baptist Church, and in 1855, he founded First African Baptist Church in Paris, which is now First Baptist Church. "As far as I know, he commuted between the two churches," said Sam Scott, a deacon at First Baptist Church. "I think he was the pastor of both churches." In 1860, Green, with help from his church in Maysville, paid $850 for his wife and four children, who were still in slavery. But by then they had lost track of one son, who had been sold to an owner in Memphis and maybe later sent to Cuba. Green, like Rosa Parks, was no one to mess with. In a deposition to the courts, Gould said he didn't know Green before the train ride, but he had to defend the honor of a woman forced to stand while Green sat. "Having never been accustomed to see such an indignity as that put upon a lady, that she must stand through a ride of eight miles while a negro man lolls at his ease, I could not bring myself tamely to submit to it. "I do not believe that there is a gentleman in Kentucky who would stand idly by and see his wife and daughters thus insulted. ... If any man has fallen so low as to think white women should stand while negro men keep their seats then him I have insulted, and really I do not care if I have." In his book, Green said all that was hogwash. "I take the liberty to say that there is not an ounce of truth in the thing," Green wrote. Green filed assault and battery charges against Gould, an unheard-of move in those days. One witness wrote, "The Reverend President, G.T. Gould, of Millersburg, who struck the old black preacher, Elisha Green, has in the public estimation so proclaimed himself a bad citizen that any college or church that carries him will have to do it as Sinbad did the old man of the sea. "That institution cannot flourish until that man and the other two associated with him are dismissed from its employ." And even the Lexington paper, The Lexington Transcript, on June 19, 1883, said, "Rev. Elisha Green is sixty-five years of age and has been a minister of the gospel for thirty-nine years, all of that time pastor of the Maysville Colored Baptist Church, and since 1855 has also had charge of the church at Paris. He is a quiet and unobtrusive man and is esteemed and respected not only by his own race, but also by the white population of Maysville. He was injured several years ago in a railroad accident and has since been a cripple." The matter went to court in March 1884 in Paris. Green wrote that the cost of the suit was "$300 and the court allowed me $24 damages." He had won, at least in principle. Gould later was found guilty of immoral conduct and was forced out of his church and church conference. Green died at his home in Maysville in 1892. A copy of his memoir can be found on the Internet at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/ greenew/greenew.html. While everything came together when Rosa Parks sat unmoving on Dec. 1, 1955, history lists others who did the same well before her. It's good to know one of those brave souls lived right here in the Bluegrass and lived to talk about it. Reach Merlene Davis at (859) 231-3218 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3218, or mdavis1@herald-leader.com.

Exhibit reveals lost history of slavery in New York

2005-10-30T22:00:00.000-05:00

Museum shows slavery wasn't just a Southern institution. By David Ho NEW YORK CITY BUREAU Sunday, October 30, 2005 NEW YORK -- In a city known for fighting to abolish slavery, there is another story: the tale of the slaves who built the road that became Broadway and the wall that named Wall Street. "When most Americans think about slavery they think about 'Gone with the Wind' and cotton plantations in the South," said Richard Rabinowitz, curator of the "Slavery in New York" exhibit that opened this month at the New-York Historical Society. "This exhibit breaks new ground because it focuses on slavery in the North," he said. "Most people really don't know that story." The exhibition, set to run through March 5, is the largest for the 201-year-old historical society and one of the biggest ever devoted to slavery. The 9,000-square-foot project includes about 400 historical objects, documents and re-creations, along with multimedia and interactive displays. Across nine galleries, the exhibit spans the period from the early European settlements of the 1600s to 1827, when New York abolished slavery. In between are British colonial times when one in five New Yorkers was an enslaved African and the city's slave population was second only to Charleston, S.C. The society's 18-month slavery project also includes lectures, tours and programs for children. A second exhibit set to open by early 2007 will explore New York's central role in both fighting and funding slavery in the decades leading up to the Civil War. "The investment in slave labor and slave trading built many of the fortunes of the city," said James Horton, the exhibition's chief historian. A surge of scholarly interest in New York slavery began in 1991 after construction workers in Lower Manhattan unearthed an African burial ground dating from the 1700s. About 400 sets of remains were removed for study and were re-interred in 2003. A memorial is planned for the burial ground, now designated a historic landmark. The historical society began work on its exhibit a year ago, using its large collection, which includes paintings, abolitionist documents, ads seeking runaway slaves and coroner reports stemming from a 1712 slave revolt. The exhibit also includes wire sculptures of slaves that the society describes as evoking "the toil of the faceless, voiceless peoples whose histories were (nearly) erased." Among the first displays are materials from when New York was still the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. One document describes the colonial governor granting "half-freedom" to 11 slaves, who later created the first free black community in North America in the areas of Manhattan now called Greenwich Village and SoHo. Under British control, the slave population grew, and ultimately about 41 percent of New York households owned slaves. Typically, one or two slaves lived in a home, staying in basements, attics or backyard kitchens. The small groupings often broke up families, separating mothers from children. While the treatment of New York slaves varied, overall living conditions were terrible and the labor extreme, Rabinowitz said. He said slave food, including sour milk, bread and lard, was likely worse than on Southern plantations and often led to malnutrition. Among the objects displayed is a "commode" chair, an 18th-century toilet with a removable seat and space for a chamber pot. The exhibit contrasts the elegantly carved furniture with a video description of the slaves who carried such pots daily to New York rivers to dispose of their owners' human waste. "The finest, most beautiful objects always have another story underneath them," Rabinowitz said. One gallery focuses on the American Revolution and the years after the British captured New York in August 1776. When the British left, more than 3,000 slaves went with them, including Deborah Squash, who in British documents is listed as a former slave of George Washington. New York began a gradual emancipation with restrictions in 1799, but the shift to abolition was much slower than in other northern states with smaller slave populations. Legal and cultural racism also worsened as the free black population grew. The exhibit shows the role of black New Yorkers in the abolitionist movement and how freed slaves became entwined in public life, building homes and forming churches and schools. It also shows how black culture -- theater, art, music and literature -- became part of the city despite the adversity of slavery. "Slavery was not a side show in American history. It was the main event," Horton said. "That's the story we want to tell." dho@coxnews.com

ROSA LOUISE PARKS | 1913-2005: Good-bye, Mrs. Parks

2005-10-25T13:01:00.000-04:00

BY CASSANDRA SPRATLING FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER October 25, 2005 When Rosa Parks refused to get up, an entire race of people began to stand up for their rights as human beings. Her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man was a simple act that took extraordinary courage in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. It was a place where black people had no rights that white people had to respect. It was a time when racial discrimination was so common, many blacks never questioned it. At least not out loud. But then came Rosa Louise Parks. Jim Crow had met his match. Parks, the mother of the civil rights movement, died about 7:20 p.m. Monday at her home in the Riverfront Apartments in Detroit. "She went away peacefully," said her longtime friend and spokesperson, Elaine Eason Steele. Steele and Parks' physician, Dr. Sharon Oliver, were with Parks when she died, Steele said. Steele said she, federal Appeals Court Damon Keith and former Detroit Judge Adam Shakoor would make the funeral arrangements with the family. She said they would release a joint statement today. The Swanson Funeral Home in Detroit is handling the arrangements Parks' arrest for refusing to relinquish her seat infused 50,000 black people in Montgomery with the will to walk rather than risk daily humiliation on the city's buses. At that time, Jim Crow laws required separation of the races in restaurants, on buses and in other public places. The gentle giant, whose quietness belied her toughness, became the catalyst for a movement that broke the back of legalized segregation in the United States, gave rise to the astounding leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and inspired fighters for freedom and justice throughout the world. Keith called Parks' death "a tremendous, tremendous loss for the world. "We knew she was in poor health. We wanted to be optimistic, but we knew the day was not far." Her spirit lives in hundreds of thousands of people inspired by her unwavering commitment to work for a better world -- a commitment that continued even after age and failing health slowed her in the 1990s. Former South African President Nelson Mandela said he was inspired by her courage during the years he was imprisoned before he took office. "We rejoice in her legacy, which will never die," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a statement Monday night. "In many ways, history is marked as before, and after, Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down. Paradoxically, her imprisonment opened the doors to our long journey to freedom ... She wove glory with grace." Parks' health had been declining since the late 1990s. She had stopped giving interviews and rarely appeared in public. When she did, she only smiled or spoke short, barely audible responses. Carolyn Green, a cousin who helped care for Parks, said the family was devastated. "Auntie Rosie meant the world to us," said Green, who spent much of the day Monday with Parks. "I'm happy she went peacefully." In one of her last lengthy interviews, with the Detroit Free Press in 1995, she spoke of what she would like people to say about her after she passed away. "I'd like people to say I'm a person who always wanted to be free and wanted it not only for myself; freedom is for all human beings," she said during an interview from the pastor's study of St. Matthew African Methodist Episcopal Church, a small congregation she joined upon moving to Detroit in 1957. Parks has said one of her biggest regrets is that numerous news stories reported that she refused to give up her seat because she was tired after a day of work. She was not. She was tired of the mistreatment of black people. "I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day," she said in her autobiography. "I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old the. I was 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in." While it's known worldwide that her refusal to give up her bus seat sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, it's less well known that Parks had a long history of trying to make life better for black people. It was a desire embedded in her from childhood by her grandfather -- her mother's father with whom she lived when she was growing up. He taught his children and grandchildren not to put up with mistreatment. "It was passed down almost in our genes," Parks wrote in her 1992 autobiography, "My Story." Of her grandfather, Sylvester Edwards, she wrote: "I remember that sometimes he would call white men by their first names, or their whole names, and not say, 'Mister.' How he survived doing all those kinds of things, and being so outspoken, talking that big talk, I don't know, unless it was because he was so white and so close to being one of them." Her grandfather's father was a white plantation owner; his mother a slave housekeeper and seamstress. In recent years, Parks has relied heavily on a wheelchair and, according to court documents, suffered from dementia. The dementia was revealed as a result of two lawsuits filed on her behalf against the record company for the hip-hop duo Outkast. The 1999 lawsuit claims the record label BMG Entertainment violated her publicity and trademark rights for the 1998 song "Rosa Parks," by using her name without her permission for commercial purposes. But some of her family members claim Parks was incapable of filing such a suit of her own accord. They say it was an attempt by one of her attorneys, Gregory Reed and her longtime friend, Elaine Steele, to get money. Meanwhile, in October of this year a federal judge appointed former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer as her guardian ad litem--a temporary, court-appointed attorney to assure her interests in the lawsuits are fairly represented. Steele has had durable power of attorney over Parks and serves as her patient advocate, meaning she will make medical decisions upon incapacitating illness since 1998, according to documents obtained by the Free Press. Moved in with grandparents Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Ala., to James and Leona McCauley. As a toddler, she moved with her mother to her grandparents' home in Pine Level, Ala., a rural community outside of Montgomery, where she was raised. Her mother was a teacher at a church school in a rural town nearby. Her father was a carpenter who left the family in search of work. She was raised among a large extended family in Pine Level. Rosa McCauley attended the school where her mother taught for a few years. She moved to Montgomery at age 11 because there were no schools for blacks beyond sixth grade in the rural towns surrounding Pine Level. She attended the Montgomery Industrial School. Called simply Miss White's School, for the cofounder and principal Alice White, it was a highly regarded school started and staffed by white women from the North who were dedicated to educating black girls. The school emphasized domestic sciences such as cooking, sewing, care of the sick, the occupations most open to black women at the time. Still, the school emphasized the lessons of self-respect and dignity she'd been taught at home. "We were taught to be ambitious and to believe that we could do what we wanted in life," she said. It was there also that she perfected the sewing skills that would become a source of pride and income for many years. Johnnie Carr, who stills lives in Montgomery, was a longtime friend who met Parks at Miss White's School. The nonagenarian said her friend's decision on the Montgomery bus was meant to be: "It was ordained by God." For many years, Carr was a leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, a group formed to end segregation on the buses. In 1932, Rosa McCauley married Raymond Parks, a barber, who had at least two traits in common with her grandfather. He was so light he could pass for white -- which initially made him unattractive to her. But, like her grandfather, he was a fearless and proud black man. In her autobiography, she said he was the first real activist she had ever met. He was a longtime member of the NAACP at a time when simply being a member of a group working for the advancement of colored people was dangerous. He also worked secretly for the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men pulled off a train, falsely accused and found guilty of raping two white women in 1931. "He was the first, aside from my grandfather and" another acquaintance "Mr. Gus Vaughn who was never actually afraid of white people," Parks wrote in her autobiography. "So many African Americans felt that you just had to be under Mr. Charlie's heel -- that's what we called the white man, Mr. Charlie -- and couldn't do anything to cross him. In other words, Parks. believed in being a man and expected to be treated as a man." Rosa Parks joined her husband in working for the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. Attempt to register to vote In 1943, she became one of the first women to join Montgomery's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She served as its secretary and as youth director for several years. The same year -- 1943 -- she made her first attempt to register to vote. Twice her attempts failed. She was told she didn't pass the literacy test -- a test blacks had to pass in order to register. She was so sure she'd passed, that on her third attempt in 1945, she made a copy of her answers, planning to take some kind of action if she was denied again. But she was informed she passed. As youth adviser to the NAACP, she helped young people organize protests at the city's main public library. There were separate libraries for black and white people. The one for blacks had far fewer books. She organized black youths to go to the main library to ask for service. By Jim Crow rules, blacks could order and pick up books from the library, but they couldn't browse the stacks or study there. Despite several attempts, they were unsuccessful in changing the policy. In the summer of 1955, Parks attended a 10-day workshop on implementing integration at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. A white friend and activist, the late Virginia Durr, recommended her to the program. The integrated school focused on labor relations and race relations. "One of my greatest pleasures there was enjoying the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing and knowing that white folks were doing the preparing instead of me," she wrote in her autobiography. "I was 42 years old, and it was one of the few times in my life up to that point when I did not feel any hostility from white people." Her attendance at the school and her activism with the NAACP is what led some people to believe she was planted on that bus that cloudy day on Dec. 1, 1955. But there is evidence to the contrary. She did not sit in the white section in the front of the bus. She sat in the first row of what was then called the colored section. But the rule was when the white section filled up, blacks had to move back. Montgomery's civil rights activists, led by the late E.D. Nixon who was a good friend of Parks, were actively seeking a case to pursue in the courts. Two previous arrests of other women had been considered. The activists didn't think those women could live up to public scrutiny. Parks' reputation was sterling. To pursue a case, the leaders needed someone about whom nothing negative could be said so that nothing could detract from their cause. Parks denied boarding that bus with that mission in mind. She said that had she been paying closer attention she never would have boarded that particular bus. The driver had put her off the bus 12 years earlier and she always tried to avoid riding his bus. Her offense then: She failed to follow the custom of paying at the front of the bus, getting off and boarding at the rear. She had deposited her money at the front and boarded the bus at the front. Parks wrote that that time she didn't go to the back door because the steps there were crowded. Her arrest led to an unprecedented display of black unity in the United States that has not been witnessed since. Black people stayed off Montgomery's city buses for a year, until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the segregated busing policy was illegal. They were inspired to stay off the buses at weekly and sometimes twice-weekly church services where their aching souls were soothed by freedom songs, and their aching feet swayed by stirring sermons. It helped, too, that news coverage attracted worldwide attention, including enough money to finance a separate transportation system made up of a fleet of station wagons assigned to various churches and augmented by black cab drivers, black car owners and whites who either supported their cause or simply needed to get their black help to and from work. The yearlong boycott stands as the nation's premier model of nonviolent social resistance. But the end of the boycott didn't end the harassment. Parks and her husband lost their jobs, although an official at the department store where she worked said she was terminated because business was down, not because her action sparked the boycott. Embraced by Detroit In 1957, the couple moved to Detroit because Rosa Parks' only sibling, the late Sylvester McCauley, who was named for her beloved grandfather, had settled in the city after serving in World War II. Parks continued her civil rights work, and worked for several years as a seamstress at the Stockton Sewing Co., a small factory in downtown Detroit where she sewed aprons and skirts for 75 cents apiece. It was during those years that she first met Elaine Eason Steele, who became a friend and confidante. Steele eventually became the director of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, which Parks founded in 1987. Raymond Parks had died 10 years earlier at age 74 following a 5-year bout with cancer. From 1965 until she retired in 1988, Rosa Parks worked as a receptionist and assistant in the Detroit office of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. In August 1994, an incident involving Parks attracted worldwide attention again. This time the incident shamed black America, in particular, and the United States, in general. Parks, then 81 and living alone, was assaulted by a man who broke into her home. Civic and religious leaders, led by her longtime friend federal judge Keith, arranged for Parks to move into the considerably more secure Riverfront Apartments in downtown Detroit. She lived there until her death, although she frequently spent the cold months living with friends and family in California. Numerous universities, organizations and individuals honored Parks, including the NAACP, which bestowed her with its highest award, the Springarn Medal, in 1979. She was also awarded an international peace prize for efforts toward world peace in 1994 -- given during her first trip to Europe -- and the Medal of Freedom, the highest award the U.S. government can bestow on a civilian, awarded in 1999, by former President Bill Clinton. Despite her notoriety, Parks remained the humble, modest person she had been since childhood. Even her choice of a church after moving to Detroit -- St. Matthew AME Church -- reflected that. She could have chosen to join one of Detroit's large, prestigious congregations, any of which count a long list of the city's who's-who among its membership, said the Rev. Eddie Robinson, before his death. A close friend of Parks, he was a longtime pastor at St. Matthew. Her current pastor there, Rev. Gloria Clark, called Mrs. Parks a role model for Christian women everywhere, especially those in the African Methodist Episcopal church. "Mother Parks was an outstanding woman of our church," said Rev. Clark, who became pastor there three years ago. "She taught us to have dignity and pride no matter what we have or don't have." Humble to the end Parks was active in the African Methodist Episcopal denomination since childhood. A chapel at her former church, St. Paul AME in Montgomery, is named for her, as are many streets and schools throughout the United States. At Detroit's St. Matthew AME, she was active as a missionary, stewardess and deaconess, the highest position a laywoman can attain in the AME church. In 2000, the AME denomination made her name an official part of its worldwide rituals. Women are consecrated as deaconess in the name of Parks and other holy women. The honors continued Recognition for Parks never ceased: During one of her last public appearances on Feb. 14, 2003, the Three Mo Tenors and a packed auditorium at the Detroit Opera House sang "Happy Birthday" to her. Parks, who was wheelchair-bound, did not stay for the duration of the tenors' concert that doubled as a 90th birthday celebration for her. Earlier that evening, at a private reception, she was inducted as an honorary member of the Links Inc., an international service group of black women. Parks' relatives held a family reunion that coincided with her 90th birthday celebration. She appeared briefly at a banquet at the downtown Marriott to be photographed with family members on . 16. Prior to that, her last public appearance was at an 89th birthday celebration and premiere of a CBS made-for-TV movie called "The Rosa Parks Story." A bevy of celebrity well-wishers and others attended the world premiere of the movie, including Stevie Wonder who sang a jazzed-up rendition of "Happy Birthday" to her, a version similar to the one he wrote in support of making King's birthday a national holiday. Those in attendance at the Detroit Institute of Arts included Angela Bassett, who played Parks in the movie, and Cicely Tyson, who portrayed her mother. Bassett said she was honored to play Parks, who she said was an incredibly courageous woman, especially given the climate in Alabama at the time of her 1955 action. She also said Parks proves a single person can make a big difference and one doesn't have to be a person with a big voice to have a big impact. "If you have a big voice, so be it. But if you do things quietly, so be it. It can be done," Bassett said. "I think it was a destiny for her life." Just months before the movie premiere, metro Detroit celebrated the 46th anniversary of the boycott at a gala reception at the Henry Ford, which now houses the bus on which Parks was arrested. In 2000, Parks joined dignitaries from around the nation in celebrating the anniversary of the bus boycott with the opening of a grand library and museum named for her and built on the very site where police arrested her 45 years earlier. The museum features an interactive display about the boycott. Walking through it is like experiencing the boycott from beginning to end. The upper floor of the facility serves as a resource center for Troy University at Montgomery, which built and owns it. In 1999, Judge Keith helped organize a benefit concert at Orchestra Hall to honor Parks and raise money for the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute. Aretha Franklin sang at the concert and then-Vice President Al Gore presented her with her gold medal. Keith has called Parks a gentle warrior for justice. "Mother Parks is special to me personally and to the world," he said. "She symbolizes what freedom is about and what a difference one person can make." When South African freedom icon Nelson Mandela came to Detroit in 1990, the person he was most honored to meet was Parks. When he got off the plane, a line of dignitaries waited to greet him. Mandela simply stood in awe when he saw Parks. "He chanted, 'Rosa, Rosa, Rosa Parks!' " recalled Keith, who had escorted her to the airport to meet Mandela. "He recognized her before he recognized anyone" else, Keith said. Mandela later told Keith that Parks was his inspiration while he was jailed and her example inspired South African freedom fighters. Mandela called Parks "the David who challenged Goliath" in a 1993 speech at the NAACP convention in Indianapolis. The best-selling poet and writer Maya Angelou said of her, "Mrs. Parks is for me probably what the Statute of Liberty was for immigrants. She stood for the future, and the better future." Angelou recalled the pleasure of having Parks as a guest at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C., several years ago. "She was as tender as a rose and she was as strong as steel." U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., said Parks was her role model all her adult life. Kilpatrick recalled first meeting her in the early 1980s as a state legislator. "I remember thinking how dare I not do all I can after seeing this little, strong woman who took a stand to make life better for me, for all of us, how dare any of us to shirk from any injustice." Fred Gray, Sr., her attorney during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, praised Parks' manner and determination. "Her quiet, dignified, but firm way gave courage to thousands of African Americans and others to be determined to stay off the buses until we could return in a dignified way," says Gray who at 74 still has law offices in Tuskegee where Parks was born. He first became acquainted with Parks when he was a law student and she was youth director and secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. "She's always been a person concerned about the youth," Gray said. During the 1995 Free Press interview, Parks spoke of the bus boycott's enduring legacy. "I hope it will remind people how we struggled and what we had to go through, and that they'll be willing to continue to work for our freedom because we still have quite a long way to go," she said. Contact CASSANDRA SPRATLING at 313-223-4580 or spratling@freepress.com.

KATRINA'S AFTERMATH: Flooded 9th Ward to evolve or vanish

2005-10-24T18:49:00.000-04:00

Oct. 24, 2005, 1:35AM By THOMAS KOROSECCopyright 2005 Houston Chronicle NEW ORLEANS - Harry Williams kicked in the front door of his hulking white clapboard house on St. Maurice Avenue, then shielded his nose from the stench. "It's bad, man," said Williams, surveying the upside-down furniture that had blocked the entry, the moldy walls and his big-screen TV, which was still holding water. "There's nothing to save in here" The 34-year-old grocery manager returned to the Lower 9th Ward last week to "look and leave," as the authorities call it. The predominantly black, working class and poor neighborhood suffered some of the worst damage when Hurricane Katrina swamped the city and Rita doused it again. Houses were knocked off foundations. Cars floated onto rooftops. A layer of gray mud settled on the abandoned beauty shops, the collapsed storefront churches, the dead shrubbery and lawns. Eight weeks after the deluge, the neighborhood is all but deserted and parts remain off limits as the search for bodies goes on. Four decades ago, after the waters of Hurricane Betsy poured in and killed 81 people, residents rebuilt the ward's shotgun houses and "doubles," with their distinctive front porches painted pink, purple or tropical blue. This time, federal officials, academics and others question the wisdom of trying to rebuild once more. They say the ward and other low-lying areas should be returned to their original state as marshland, to act as hurricane buffers protecting a smaller city occupying only the higher ground. Rich in history The debate, which touches nerves of race and class, rankles those who see the ward as an integral part of the city's history and soul. "You can't have the city as we know it without the 9th Ward," said state Rep. Charmaine Marchand, who has no doubt the area will begin to rebuild once power is restored in three to six months. "People all over the city come from there. It's in the style of cooking and the way people talk" The region's heaviest accent, a second cousin to Brooklynese, sprang from the working-class Italians, Irish, Germans and freed slaves who began inhabiting the former cypress swamp in the 1870s, historians say. In the 1960s and with the advent of school desegregation, whites fled "the Lower Nine" The neighborhood, a low bowl of land on the city's eastern end, is bordered by the Mississippi River, the parish line, a set of railroad tracks and the Industrial Canal, which separates it from the rest of the 9th Ward. It is home to rhythm and blues legend Antoine "Fats" Domino, jazz trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, 100 churches and 20,000 people, about a third living below the poverty line. On Wednesday, Mayor C. Ray Nagin declared his support for rebuilding the hard-hit ward, but he expressed doubt whether the levee along the Industrial Canal is safe enough to allow people to move back. Last month, Alphonso Jackson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told the Houston Chronicle that he counseled Nagin that it would be "a mistake" to rebuild the area. "I said I'm not sure what we do with it," Jackson said. A 17-member commission appointed by the mayor is expected to address the question in a broad rebuilding plan scheduled to be completed by year's end. State officials also will have their say. Flood zone proposed Craig Colten, a geography professor at Louisiana State University who has written extensively about the city's struggle with its watery location, is a proponent of letting the Lower 9th Ward — as well as the adjacent, predominantly white St. Bernard Parish located downstream — become part of a natural flood zone. "Regardless of class or the value of the property, the lowest areas should be devoted to safer, saner practices of flood control," he said. "These would be green spaces and flood-retention bases, so waters can collect in those areas" Rather than place residents of the Lower 9th back in harm's way, he said, officials should think about moving them, as a community, to higher and less vulnerable ground. "The Cajuns uprooted from Canada and moved as a group to Louisiana. Vietnamese communities have reassembled after moving much farther. There is precedent for doing this," Colten said. Pam Dashiell, president of Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, said she is not surprised some people want to erase the ward from the street map. "The Lower 9th has always seemed to be a stepchild of New Orleans. It didn't get the same services. It's isolated because it's on the other side of the drawbridges," she said. "It's easier to write us off than some middle-class community with more resources and more voice" In a city rife with crime, much of it drug- and gang-related, the ward was perceived as the most dangerous neighborhood of all, she said. In the month before Katrina, five men were shot to death in the ward in separate incidents, according to newspaper accounts. "We had a lot of people in the community working on the problems," said Dashiell, who wants to see the levees around the ward strengthened to withstand the most severe hurricanes. There was crime, she said, but there also was one of the highest rates of homeownership in the city: 59 percent, according to the 2000 federal census. "These are some of the greatest people, families who will want and need to return, and frankly, the city needs us" John Scully, a real estate agent and landlord with 15 houses in the area, said he expects people will face steep financial hurdles as they contemplate moving back. He carried no flood insurance on several shotgun houses he owns in the ward and he suspects most of his neighbors were also uninsured. "If you were financing, the bank insisted you have flood insurance," he said. "If the house was in your family for years and you didn't have a note, nobody forced you buy it and you probably didn't have the money to afford it" As he took his first quick tour of a house on Burgundy Street that fetched $600 a month for each of its two units, he concluded, "This is a total loss. It'll have to be torn down" About half of his tenants worked in hotels, restaurants or other low-wage jobs. The rest were on Social Security or received public assistance. "Nobody has called me yet asking about coming back," he said. Jeff Roesel, principal planner of the New Orleans Regional Planning Commission, said local officials he has talked to seem loath to "tear up their maps" and radically reshape the city. "A lot will depend on who is willing to return," he said. "Neighborhoods will be rebuilt by the people who come back" The Lower 9th Ward had a high percentage of residents who have lived there most of their lives. It had cohesive families living in their homes. "I think they're coming back," Roesel said. "And I think it would be great for the city" Williams, the St. Maurice Avenue homeowner, said he wants to return, although he doesn't see an easy path. "This is my home, and if the city gets up and running again, I will come back," he said. His extended family, numbering more than 150 with the names Williams, Davis, Baptiste and Pierre, all lived in the Lower 9th or in neighborhoods just across the canal. Scattered family Several died when their house on Jourdan Avenue, just blocks from the levee break, was inundated, he said. The rest escaped to Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Las Vegas and New Mexico. The supermarket chain for which Williams worked asked him to stay in New Orleans, but, with nowhere to live, he found another grocery job in Alexandria, La., and signed a six-month apartment lease. "I'll be there for a while," he said. Detrell Williams, his brother, moved to Alexandria two years ago. "There's a lot of bad, a lot of bad that goes on around here," Detrell Williams, said as he helped move dry furniture and a prized basketball card collection from the second floor of the family home. His son, 12-year-old Detrell Wright, rode out the hurricane with his mother in a New Orleans hotel, then spent two days on the Claiborne Avenue Bridge waiting to be rescued. "I don't want to come back. It's dangerous," said the younger Detrell, a seventh-grader. "I saw 10 people dead. They were shot, drowned" Williams' aunt, 63-year-old Mary Davis, left town before the storm with only three days of clothing because she remembered they returned in five after Betsy blew through in 1965. This time, with her house on North Galvez in ruins, she said she is too tired to rebuild. "That's for when you're young," she said. thomas.korosec@chron.com

Kentucky Historical Society putting its collection online

2005-10-24T18:35:00.000-04:00

By Joe BieskAssociated Press FRANKFORT, Ky. -- As a teenager working at a Louisville five-and-dime, former state Sen. Georgia Powers quit her job rather than tell black customers they couldn't eat their hot dogs at the counter. "I thought, 'I'm not going to tell anybody they can't stand there because if they paid for it, they can eat anywhere they want to,' " Powers said. "Well, I knew I was not going to last very long on that job." Powers' interview, in which she talks about similar issues, is preserved as part of Kentucky's oral history at the Kentucky Historical Society. But until recently, accessing the agency's collection -- from historical tackle boxes to precious maps and photos -- usually required a special trip. Now, some of it can be studied from any computer with Internet access on the society's Web site, www.history.ky.gov. "Everything on this site is something in the KHS collections," said Mary Winter, director of collections and reference services at the agency. "And that's what this is, new access to our collections." About 1 percent of the society's collection went online for the first time this month, Winter said. Still, that represents thousands of artifacts -- from original notices of some of Kentucky's earliest public sales to random photographs. The online collection also includes historic maps, recorded and transcribed oral histories, documents and biographies of Kentucky's governors. Some of the oral histories available include other interviews related to the civil-rights movement and the Bataan Death March. There also are transcribed interviews with Holocaust survivors. And more are on the way every day, Winter said. Eventually, the entire collection should be available electronically, she said. "We started out trying to give people a little taste of everything," Winter said. Electronic archivists are working to scan additional items into the system and catalog them so they can be cross-referenced with other pieces. What might be one of the agency's oldest items belongs to the society's William Calk exhibit, which Winter described as a "showcase collection." Among the Calk artifacts is a receipt from 1744 in which the pioneer traded 100 pounds of tobacco for the release of his father's debt "from the beginning of the world to this day." Calk, who came to Boonesborough shortly after Daniel Boone, also wrote a journal of his travels starting in 1775. It's part of the collection. In his journal, Calk talks about his group's encounters with American Indians and describes what they cooked along the way, Winter said. With the new technology, researchers now can view the items on their computers and perform electronic searches more rapidly. They also can study the original handwriting. There also are various maps, including one from 1839 that shows the routes and schedules of Kentucky's earliest stagecoaches and steamboats, Winter said. With 120 counties in Kentucky, organizers thought it was necessary to show items that represent "geographic diversity," Winter said. "The sort of thing that people are looking for mostly is Kentucky history and local history," she said. "So those are the things that we're going to push forth first." Users may browse and bookmark specific items. Or they can search for specific items or categories. Previously, viewing some of the artifacts in the collection was labor-intensive because researchers would have to do custom searches for every request. Having the materials online allows people to do their own searching. It also protects some of the pieces from excessive wear. The less certain items are handled, the better they will fare in the end, she said. "Nobody is more excited that these things are up than we are," Winter said. "And we're in an era now where people expect to find things online -- we can finally do that for them."

Pioneering Church marches on

2005-10-22T12:41:00.000-04:00

In Boston, Peoples Baptist marks 200 years as a force in shaping black community life. By Jane Lampman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

As the morning light streams gently through stained glass windows, the congregation lifts its hands and hearts in praise to God, singing "bless the Rock of my salvation." Moments later, attendees move around the pews, greeting each other with hugs and handshakes. In this first of two Sunday services, members of the Peoples Baptist Church in Boston celebrate their faith and commitment to community. The Rev. Wesley Roberts is preaching on "Why We Need Each Other," as the church begins a new campaign of spiritual fellowship and community service. This month also marks another celebration: the church's 200th anniversary. In 1805, free blacks on Boston's Beacon Hill started First African Baptist Church, the first independent black Baptist church in the North, and the first free black church of any denomination in New England. It has since had an uninterrupted history (through several name changes), symbolizing both the black church's strong cultural influence and African-Americans' exceptional devotion to spiritual matters.In almost any survey of religious attitudes or behavior in the US today, African-Americans stand out as the most religiously involved, the most prayerful, the most spiritually focused among America's faithful. Beatrice Busby, a native Bostonian, was baptized at Peoples Baptist back in May 1925, and her spiritual journey covers almost half the church's history. "One thing I remember very clearly from my childhood is [the pastor] always saying, 'Talk to that man upstairs. No matter what happens, talk to Him and trust Him,' " the lively octogenarian says in an interview. "There are times when your back is against the wall and you wonder if God cares. But then the door opens, and it opens wide. I could write a book about what He has done for me." Children singing in the youth choir this Sunday sound as though they could tell stories of their own. "We face peer pressures and obstacles, but with God we're able to conquer them and move on," says one young boy, as he introduces their next song: "We Are More Than Conquerors." Faith has served as a vibrant force sustaining, liberating, and shaping the black community since the days of slavery. Slaves were brought to Boston only eight years after its founding in 1630. One of the first colonies to permit slavery, Massachusetts Bay was also one of the first to abolish it - in 1780. Many free blacks first attended predominantly white churches. But after being made to sit separately in galleries and prohibited from voting in church elections or holding committee posts, many began worshipping together in homes. The Rev. Thomas Paul, a black pastor, founded First African Baptist Church with about 20 members in 1805. Immediately raising funds, the community built the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill by December 1806. On that site - now the oldest standing black church building in the US - a long tradition began of the church serving as the central social institution within the African-American community. A school was set up there to educate black children (until the government began doing so in 1855). The Meeting House became a political and social forum, a center of the abolitionist movement, and a stop on the underground railroad. William Lloyd Garrison founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society there in 1832. (Today it houses the Museum of Afro-American History.) "The church has been the center of community life, a multidimensional institution dealing with all areas touching the lives of black people," says Dr. Roberts, a former church historian at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. This month also marks his 25 years as pastor at Peoples Baptist. When Boston's black population began moving in the late 19th century to the South End and Roxbury, the church followed, buying its present building in 1898 and taking its current name in 1915. Since then, it has played a prominent community role. In the early 1970s, Roberts' predecessor, the Rev. Richard Owen, spurred construction of a 135-unit housing development in the neighborhood. For a decade, Roberts headed the city's Black Ministerial Alliance, which spiritually nurtures clergy and provides programs for the community. Under his leadership, the BMA began supporting after-school programs for children and reform in the Boston schools. Recently, it became a clearinghouse for building the capacity of local churches to participate in President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative. As Peoples Baptist enters its third century, it is rededicating itself to strengthening its own spiritual community and to reaching beyond church walls. "Spiritual growth - that's what I've found at Peoples Baptist Church," Mrs. Busby emphasizes. Now, with a congregation of close to 700, the church is initiating small groups to foster relationships that help people mature together spiritually beyond regular religious services. Still, many prize the Sunday teaching (rather than traditional preaching) which they say characterizes their pastor's style. Karla Tolbert, a mother of three, just joined the church last spring. Her kids attended first, she says, and came home to tell her "the service was great - the pastor teaches!" She has found, she adds, that this pastor and church also really care. Among the largely middle-class congregation, many members now travel from homes in the suburbs into the inner-city sanctuary, holding onto their community heritage. Peoples Baptist recently decided to adopt two Boston schools, joining with a white suburban congregation to help supply classrooms and meet student needs. "One school has no playground or landscaping; one needs shelves and more books in the library and enough books so children can take them home," Roberts says. In his quiet assurance, the pastor resembles another Jamaican-born leader, Colin Powell. He is excited about his church's latest venture, spurred by the results of an earlier experiment with small groups in the "purpose- driven church" program pioneered by megachurch pastor Rick Warren. For 40 days, the congregation got on "the same page together in the most successful spiritual campaign we've ever done," he says. And as people began sharing the results - "marriages being strengthened, finances being put back together, all kinds of miracles - it energized the congregation."

Dr. Rosalie Reddick Miller, 1925-2005: Worked to improve patient care, civil rights

2005-10-22T12:31:00.000-04:00

By CHRISTINE FREYSEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER Rosalie Reddick Miller, who experienced firsthand the effects of racism, was an advocate for patients, especially those who were discriminated against. At a time when dentists refused to care for people who had AIDS, for instance, she pushed for their fair treatment, recalled her daughter Miriam Miller. "She had great concern for the patients, that they be treated humanely," Miriam said. "She was ahead of her times." Miller, the first African American woman dentist to practice in Seattle, died Monday at the age of 79 after a battle with cancer. During her long career, she worked to improve patient care, mentored students at the University of Washington and advocated for civil rights. The daughter of a Georgia dentist, Miller enrolled in Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., to study dentistry. She was a freshman when she met the medical student she would later marry, Dr. Earl V. Miller. The couple had five children. She later returned to Georgia and took over her father's practice. While in the South, the Millers worked to advance civil rights; in one instance, they protested an all-white golf course in Georgia that was paid for with public funds, Miriam recalled. The family moved to Seattle in the late 1950s. "(We) understood that Seattle had open housing, integrated schools and he (Earl) would have no problem finding office space," Rosalie said in a January interview when her husband died. "And it turns out none of those things were true, but we stuck it out." Earl Miller was Seattle's first African American urologist. Rosalie Miller practiced at Group Health Dental Cooperative and served as the director of dental programs for the Community Health Board of Model Cities. Miller, who received a master's in public health from the University of Washington, was an assistant professor of dentistry there for 15 years until she retired in 1991. There she served as a mentor to many students, who often sought her counsel. Carl Gross, a friend and former UW dentistry student, said she was vivacious and fearless. "You could always tell when Rosalie was in the room," he said. She lived at Seward Park with her husband for 40 years before they sold their house and moved into a First Hill apartment. Her children described her as a strong and generous woman who loved her family. Pollene Speed McIntyre, a friend and former UW student, credited Miller with helping her complete the university's dentistry program. Miller also influenced many of the values that she holds today, McIntyre said, showing her the importance of setting high standards and helping other people. "We can still see the effects, the impact of what she's done through other people," she said. In addition to her children, Miller is survived by four grandchildren. At her request, there will be no service. The family asks that donations be sent to Meharry Medical College in lieu of flowers. P-I reporter Christine Frey can be reached at 206-448-8176 or christinefrey@seattlepi.com.

Thompson Book Explores Local Civil Rights Efforts

2005-10-10T18:18:00.000-04:00

Oct 07, 2005 -- In the Watchfires, just published by the Black History Committee of the Friends of Thomas Balch Library, is a vivid account of a Loudoun tradition of celebrating Emancipation. In 1890, black families in western Loudoun formed an association tasked with organizing yearly celebrations on Sept. 22 to mark the beginning of the end of slavery. On that day in 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation warning the rebellious states that all slaves should be set free by New Year’s Day. That was the Emancipation Proclamation. In marking the anniversary last month, the Thomas Balch library hosted a meeting and reception for Watchfires author Elaine E. Thompson. The event was attended by 112 people, of whom more than a third were direct descendants of founders, officers and directors of the Loudoun County Emancipation Association. They came from all around the country to share in the occasion and to hear Thompson discuss her book. In large part, the element of Loudoun history, which has until now been preserved in the oral tradition of black families, was not known to the broader community. The Emancipation Association was active for 81 years, until it was dissolved in 1971. The word “Watchfires” in the title is taken from a line in The Battle Hymn of the Republic, “I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps…” These were fires lit for soldiers who guarded Union encampments during the Civil War. For Thompson, the title of her book symbolizes the role of the Emancipation Association as a protector of the black community. She described the courage of the original families that established communities in Loudoun, building homes, schools and churches only to see their hard-won rights erode as Jim Crow swept the country after the end of the Reconstruction Period. “How they used racial pride to counter segregation in that period, how they coped with the challenges of Jim Crow, expressed our national ideals of freedom and liberty, is a real and important part of the history of Loudoun County,” she said. School children are taught that President Woodrow Wilson claimed that World War I would “make the world safe for democracy,” even though he was responsible for segregating government facilities in Washington, DC. Nevertheless the Emancipation Association contributed to the war effort. This shows their patriotism despite the wrongs they suffered, she said. She described Emancipation Day as a combination of the Fourth of July and Christmas, an all-day event featuring parades, cavalry soldiers on their horses, speeches by notables from all over the country, food, fun and games. Typically, the Emancipation Day festivities would begin with a march through town streets, an action which was a quiet assertion of the rights of the black community. The parade was led by four men who were dressed to represent Uncle Sam, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas and abolitionist John Brown. In the book, Thompson said that two of the founders are known to have served in the Union army. In 1910, the Emancipation Association incorporated and purchased 10.5 acres in Purcellville, on which it built a tabernacle with a 1,200-person seating capacity. This became the place where Emancipation Day celebrations were held but it was also a place for social activities and sporting events for the black community all year long. As the civil rights movement gained force following World War II, the Emancipation Association became less of a focal point for the Loudoun black community. Ironically, it was the achievement of its goal of desegregation and the improvement of opportunities for black Americans that led to its dissolution in 1971, Thompson said. Although the grounds are now used for other purposes and the tabernacle is long gone, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources installed a historic highway marker at the site in 2000. During the discussion period, many of those gathered at the library thanked Thompson for writing the book. Several people remarked on how the Purcellville property still seems like hallowed ground. Lemoine Pierce described the meeting as a “holy occasion.” She had found out about the meeting by researching the family geology on the Internet, she said. At the gathering, Thompson recited a roll call of the families that had served on the Emancipation Association in various capacities and asked descendants to stand. Thirty-eight did so. Also present were Leesburg Mayor Kristen Umstattd and Councilwoman Kelly Burk. The age of the audience ranged from children to Thompson’s 98-year-old uncle, Charles Presley Clark, who had been a director and vice-president of the Emancipation Association and was the son of founders Howard and Eppie Clark. Traditionally, Emancipation Day celebrations were gatherings of families that either moved away or had been been sold to distant parts during the days of slavery, Thompson said. This occasion was no different. Billy Pierce, a famous choreographer and impresario, was an early shareholder in the Emancipation Association. He is reported to have invented the Charleston by Lemoine Pierce, the widow of his son, and was an associate of famous dancers such as Fred Astaire. Lemoine Pierce came to the meeting from Atlanta and was accompanied by her son William and her grandson William who are now living in New York City. It was their first time in Loudoun, she said. Charles Clark was born in Hamilton, but for the past 71 years he has been living in a Purcellville home which he had rented and then purchased from Billy Pierce. It was a great thrill for the Pierce family to meet Charles Clark at their former home when they visited the area. Thompson grew up in Hamilton where she now lives. She is a direct descendant of Howard Clark, who at the age of 14 was the first secretary of the Emancipation Association. In 2001, when Balch reopened following renovation, the great hall where his portrait now hangs was named the Howard Clark room to honor him. “When I was a child, I could not go to Balch Library. They have made tremendous strides by preserving and collecting Afro American history. Now the rest of the country needs to catch up,” she said. The 18 members of the Black History Committee, of which Thompson is a leading member, have diverse backgrounds. Phyllis Cook-Taylor, is chairman. She was born in Middleburg in 1955, and she remembers the impacts of segregation in Loudoun. She was only able to attend an integrated school in fifth grade. Too young to participate directly in the civil rights struggle, she did experience it through the activity of her parents who were especially involved in the struggle in Loudoun County for integrated education and for voting rights. She believes that black history should be taught in the schools, and she hopes that In the Watchfires will become an important source book for school children. “All our youth, not just blacks, need to understand this history. The struggle for justice by black people is a model for all of us young and old, whatever the injustice,” she said. Lou Etta Watkins grew up in Fauquier County, but she moved to Purcellville as a young woman after her marriage. She was active in NAACP legal activities to desegregate the Purcellville schools during the 1960s. She said that one of the things she most liked about Thompson’s book was its positive emphasis on the strength and accomplishments of the black families that established themselves in the county despite discrimination and the other problems which they faced. She remarked that the Thomas Balch library was built in 1922 as a private library devoted to historic preservation. It was only opened to a broader, white population—in fact all Loudoun libraries were closed to blacks until the 1960s. Sherry Sanabria, another member of the committee, is a well known local artist. She said that being a member of the panel was an inspiration for a series of her paintings now on exhibit at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, MD, on “Slave Quarters and Other African American Sites.” In the Watchfires can be purchased for $20 at Thomas Balch library, and at 17 local stores. For more information call Janet Manthos at 703-777-2682. Publication of the book was supported by a grant from the Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy and the National Foundation for the Humanities, the Clarence I. Robey Charitable Trust, and the Loudoun Library Foundation. Further costs were paid by the Black History Committee, which meets on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. at Thomas Balch library.

225 Years After Yorktown and We're Still Not Honoring the Virginia Black Soldiers Who Fought There?

2005-10-10T18:17:00.000-04:00

By Anita L. Wills Ms. Wills is a writer, researcher, and genealogist, and author of the book, Notes and Documents of Free Persons of Color: Colonial Virginia, 1650-1850. October 16, 2005, will mark the kickoff of the 225th anniversary of the Siege of Yorktown, one of the deciding battles of the Revolutionary War. The Yorktown Battle was fought after a defeat at the Battle of Camden South Carolina, by the British General Cornwallis. Fresh from his victory, he headed for Yorktown, where he was soundly defeated. In our family Camden and Yorktown are not just historical events. We commemorate them because our ancestors fought in both battles. Charles and Ambrose Lewis fought at Camden and Rawley Pinn, John Redcross, and Benjamin Evans fought at Yorktown. They were not just soldiers, they were Natives and Free Blacks, who distinguished themselves on the battlefield. Rawley Pinn marched with his unit from Amherst County under the command of General William Cabell. Rawley was with Colonial Daniel Gaines's unit, as were John Redcross and Benjamin Evans. They were in the Second Virginia Calvary, and they left Amherst County on June 21, 1781. Half way to Yorktown, they joined up with the unit of the Marquis De Lafayette. Together the units marched into history, by way of the Siege of Yorktown. The men received little public recognition. Their names were listed in the Lynchburg News & Advance in 1884 (Amherst County, Virginia) and in a booklet published by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The article in the Lynchburg News, which ran on Thursday, May 22, 1884, listed the names of soldiers who served out of Amherst County. Appended to the list was this statement: In every war there are and always has been, thousands of privates who suffered or bled or died after patriotic sacrifice and great individual deeds, whose names as soldiers are unknown outside of the humble family. Often these men had nothing to fight for, yet they periled life and limb and often lost, for their cause, their flag..., Soon those so near us will be forgotten as the Revolutionary-great., unrecognized, have been. The old County of Amherst, then comprising Amherst and Nelson, furnished many men to face disease and death in the Revolutionary War, and they came willingly, were patriots-refused pay by British gold and place and pay, and any one who gathers the names of such patriots in any war, does a high, patriotic deed. The article does not indicate what happened to the men. It is almost certain that they did not receive veterans' benefits or land bounties. It is a safe bet that all of the men were deceased by the time this article ran in 1884. The roster containing the soldiers names was buried in the records of Colonial William Cabell at the College of William & Mary's Swem Library. That is where they were when I found them in 1999, and submitted them to a historian at Colonial Williamsburg. After proving that I was a descendant of Rawley Pinn, an event was scheduled for September 30, 2000. The event was to commemorate Native and Black soldiers (and all in between), who fought at Yorktown. I submitted a copy of the official roster to Colonial Yorktown, and believed the names would be added to the official database. Yet, this is not what happened. The database to this day does not include the names of those brave men. The celebration that is scheduled to kick off at Colonial Yorktown, on October 16th, may include America's first all-black unit, the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, but it will not include the Natives and Blacks who lived in Virginia. It is a sad footnote to American History that we are still struggling in 2005 to honor those people of color, who fought in a battle that is almost 225 years old. In July of 2004, Colonial Yorktown allowed the Nazi Party to march on the Battlefield at Yorktown. Yet, there is hesitation when it is time to recognize those who risked their lives during the Revolution. If we cannot get that history right, what are we going to say about the war in Vietnam, The Gulf War, or the war in Iraq? We worry because our children are not being properly educated, and most cannot tell the difference between a continent and a country. Yet, here is the National Park Services, a branch of the U.S. government missing the chance to set the record straight. America is a diverse society, and has been from its' inception. It should not take an Act of Congress to honor our heroes. What happened to the inclusive government that honored the contributions of all of its citizens? Has it gone the way of the dinosaur? Until every person who participated in the Siege of Yorktown is honored there is no cause for celebration. As Americans we should be hanging our heads in shame.

Batteau Day brings back canal's history

2005-10-09T17:39:00.000-04:00

PETERSBURG - Once upon a time, there were people called batteau men. Rugged and adventurous by today's standards, they braved the waterways of Virginia to transport goods and agriculture from one city to another.

Their history may seem something of a legend. In modern times, it's hard to envision two men poling an 8,000-pound "batteau," or the French equivalent of a boat, from Petersburg to Farmville. Load that batteau up with a cargo of tobacco or hogsheads and you have a mighty fun 120 miles to cover.Celebrating the legacy of the long-forgotten batteau men is what yesterday's 16th annual Batteau Day festival at Appomattox River Park was all about."Some people re-enact the Civil War. We like pretending to be boat men," said William Trout. "It's a little more civilized."And quieter. Dressed in period garb from the 1800s, batteau enthusiasts spent the day floating passengers up and down the peaceful, man-made canal of the Appomattox. Until the railroad came along in the late 19th century, the same canal bustled with batteaux from Petersburg. Their deliveries fueled the area's economy."[Batteau Day] is a way to bring history back to this part of the country," said David Haney, a batteau enthusiast. "So much of history is forgotten. It's also to bring people back to the community to let them know they do have a canal here."Trout, a member of the Virginia Canals and Navigations Society, is a local expert on Virginia waterways. He's studied the Appomattox canal in depth and even published an atlas on his findings."This is one of the few canals in Virginia that you can actually take a boat on," he said. "[Batteaux] bypassed the dangerous part of the river so there could be commerce."The batteau way of life is unique in American history. Many batteau men were slaves who were permitted to travel hundreds of miles from their homestead. Some were freed blacks. Special laws allowed them to cross state lines several times in one trip.The batteau itself is a long, narrow, flat-bottomed water craft that is poled through the water. The largest batteaux could carry up to 12,000 pounds of cargo. Because of the batteau and the canal system, new cities came about and Virginia became linked to the global economy. But at Batteau Day, the main focus is the pioneering spirit of the batteau era. The festival featured a museum of Appomattox history and photos provided by Larry Holt, a Colonial Heights resident whose ancestors were batteau people in Matoaca."Batteau people could do anything," Trout said. "Even the modern batteau people can do almost anything."

Old North: Recalling the Real Slaves of New York

2005-10-09T17:36:00.000-04:00

By Michael Powell, Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, October 9, 2005; Page D01

NEW YORK -- One fine morning in 1720, George Clarke sent his agent off to the market in downtown Manhattan. At the top of his shopping list was a good field slave. Alas, the market offered spare pickings. There was a house slave, too soft for fieldwork. Another, a strapping fellow, was overpriced. But the day was not lost. As Clarke's agent wrote in fine olde script, "I was able to find some garlic." One fine morning in 1720, George Clarke sent his agent off to the market in downtown Manhattan. At the top of his shopping list was a good field slave.

It's the workaday language of the unspeakable, and for almost two centuries it was the daily argot of New York, arguably the slave capital of the New World. This wealthiest and most mercantile of American cities was constructed on the backs of African slaves. The elegant old New-York Historical Society -- itself founded by a slave owner -- has lifted a curtain and mounted the first expansive exploration of slavery in New York City, running through March 5. The distinct impression is of an Up-South city. When the Civil War loomed, New York's mayor suggested that business common sense dictated seceding and joining the Confederacy. "New York's whole economy was built on the cotton industry," said Richard Rabinowitz, who curated the 9,000-square foot exhibition. "New York was in every sense a slave city." Slaves built the walls of Wall Street, the first city hall and Trinity Church. Slaves accounted for 20 percent of the population of Colonial New York, compared with 6 percent in Philadelphia and 2 percent in Boston. Forty percent of New York households owned slaves. Slaves dredged ponds, cleared Harlem woods and constructed Fraunces Tavern, which was owned by "Black Sam" Fraunces, a West Indian. George Washington, a slaveholder, bade farewell to his lieutenants at that tavern.

There were peculiarities to the slave experience in New York. The great cost of tiny real estate plots meant the typical white New York family owned but a single slave. Black women who bore children were not desired and were often sold to farms. "More New Yorkers owned slaves than whites in the antebellum South," says Leslie Harris, a professor of history at Emory University, who edited a book on the exhibit. "We need to acknowledge that our history is much more complicated than a benighted racist South and a free North." Nor was urbanized slavery necessarily more benign. Blacks in New York worked from dawn to well after dark. They could not own property and could not meet in groups of more than three. Any hint of defiance was met with unyielding violence. One reads of rebellious blacks burned, stretched on racks and run through. This is a tale movingly told in an exhibition that shies from the didactic through innovative use of sound and subdued lighting, graphics, copious documents and splendid new maps and artwork. If few blacks left a written or visual record -- it's not until the 1790s that paintings begin to depict blacks -- the designers respond with what feels like judicious imaginative leaps. There are yellowing ledger books of slave ships recording the "38 negroes lost in passage" and classified newspaper advertisements for "whole bodied negroe men" and an African runaway whose "hair or Wool is curled in locks in a very remarkable manner." Round a corner into a room and the ear catches the rounded vowels of Akan, a language spoken along the west "Gold Coast" of Africa. Wander a few more feet and you come to a re-created well where slaves gathered to tote water for their owners' tea. These communal wells downtown became a crossroads. In this exhibit, you peer into the well and see the shimmering reflection of black slave women. You hear them asking after family sold up the Hudson River Valley, gossiping about boyfriends, laughing and whispering. * * * Two decades into the life of New Amsterdam, in the 1630s, when it was a tiny collection of wharves, forts, homes and businesses at the toe of Manhattan Island, it had 800 slaves. These Africans arrived from Guinea and Angola and Madagascar, a transoceanic commerce that would send 80 Africans per day to the New World for 400 years. The first slaves were akin to indentured servants. The city was a typical Dutch mosaic -- burghers, Jews, Flemish, Indonesians and blacks living at close quarters. Slaves could earn limited freedom, although if they wanted to buy a house they had to move "uptown" to lands not protected from Indians. Intermarriage was legal, if rare. "The racial stereotypes were not fixed yet; it was a frontier town, and it was possible for blacks to negotiate a half-freedom," Harris says. "Then the British took over and the vise tightens." When British governors took charge in 1664, they realized that New York, with its harbor and bred-in-the-bone entrepreneurial fever, could dominate the Colonial economy. Blacks became the town's sinew. Some slaves lived well enough, becoming stevedores and metalsmiths. But there's no mistaking bondage as less than bitter. The slave John Jea lived on a diet of boiled corn doused in sour buttermilk with a slice of dark bread and rancid lard. On a rare day, an owner might toss in salt beef and potatoes.

In 1991, contractors unearthed an African burial site in Lower Manhattan. The story pathologists found in those bones is related here. The early slaves had spinal fractures and severe deformations from hauling stones and other heavy loads over many years. Revolt was common. In some cases, blacks conspired to slay their owners, sprinkling themselves with sacred powder in hopes of making themselves invisible. Some committed suicide rather than face recapture. Many blacks saw little promise in the American Revolution. The British, no doubt cynically, offered blacks freedom in exchange for fighting on their side. The revolutionaries offered no deal at all. They gave 500 acres to any New York slaveholder who enrolled his slaves in George Washington's army. Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery, in 1777. Massachusetts did so in 1783. New York did not follow until 1827. Even after that, teams of white men -- known as black birders -- roamed the night streets, grabbing freed blacks and secretly shipping them south to again become enslaved. The mystery is that so little of this grim story is known. "As slavery ends, it's as though blacks and whites stop talking about it. . . . There was a lot of shame involved," says Harris, who is African American. "We underestimate the good power that comes when people see their history fully represented for the first time."

Aaron Burr fans find unlikely ally in black descendant

2005-10-08T15:43:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

By Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal

PHILADELPHIA -- For years, Stuart Fisk Johnson, a white criminal-defense attorney, has doggedly researched the life of his distant ancestor Aaron Burr in hopes of restoring Burr's good name. Recently, Mr. Johnson found an unlikely ally here: an 86-year-old retired black nurse who says she is Burr's great-great-great-granddaughter, the descendant of Burr's illegitimate, mixed-race son. The nation's third vice president, Burr hasn't been treated kindly by history. He is chiefly remembered for killing his rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Thomas Jefferson suspected Burr of trying to take the presidency from him in the disputed election of 1800. Years later, Jefferson had him arrested for treason for allegedly trying to start a war with Spain and separate the western territories from the United States. Though Burr was acquitted, his reputation was ruined. It has more or less stayed that way, in part because of the great esteem in which Hamilton and Jefferson are still held. Lately some historians have painted a more benign picture. They note that Burr, unlike Jefferson, actively opposed slavery (though he may have owned a few slaves himself). He introduced a bill in the New York Legislature to abolish slavery. He courted the political support of New York's black leaders. And his purported illegitimate son, Philadelphia barber John Pierre Burr, was a prominent abolitionist. At its annual meeting in King of Prussia, near Philadelphia, this week, the Aaron Burr Association, a small group of Burr devotees headed by Mr. Johnson, plans to share a trove of family documents, pictures and oral history owned by Louella Burr Mitchell Allen, the nurse who traces her lineage to John Pierre Burr. Mrs. Allen, who lives in a Philadelphia retirement home, will speak at the meeting about Burr's family of color. The documents and oral history aren't conclusive; there is no birth, death or marriage certificate linking Aaron Burr to John Pierre Burr. And DNA testing hasn't been done. Still, Mr. Johnson and his association are embracing Mrs. Allen and her relatives as long lost kin. "Even though it hasn't been proven yet, we're very conscious (Mrs. Allen) is getting up in years and we want to learn about her and this family before it's too late," says Mr. Johnson, 62 years old, who runs the association from his home in Upper Marlboro, Md. His sister, Phyllis Morales, says there's no question that Mrs. Allen "is my relative," adding that she "looks just like us -- her mannerisms, her voice." Mr. Johnson and Ms. Morales trace their family tree back to a cousin of Burr's. The Burr group's embrace of Mrs. Allen contrasts with the cool reception many of Thomas Jefferson's white descendants have given descendants of Jefferson slave Sally Hemings. In 1998, DNA testing demonstrated that Jefferson was probably the father of one of her sons. Nonetheless, the Monticello Association, which controls burial rights at the Jefferson family cemetery near Charlottesville, Va., says the DNA evidence is not conclusive. So far the association has declined to permit Hemings descendants to be buried at the cemetery, which is restricted to Jefferson's direct descendants. Many of the details of Burr's life are well-known. In 1782, he married a woman 10 years his senior, Theodosia Prevost, the widow of a British army officer. They had at least two children, but only one survived to adulthood, a girl also named Theodosia. Burr was rumored to have fathered illegitimate white children, but Mr. Johnson says he knows of no living descendants of them and no descendants of Burr's daughter. Much of what the Aaron Burr Association now knows of Mr. Burr's mixed-race family was collected and written down by Mabel Burr Cornish, the great granddaughter of John Pierre Burr. After Mrs. Cornish died in 1955, her notes were given to Mrs. Allen, her niece. Mrs. Allen displays a thick scrapbook of documents and handwritten remembrances in her retirement suite. "We are proud of the fact (Burr) was an upstanding citizen and not a dirty politician," she said. She opened the book to a picture of John Pierre Burr that, she says, hung in his Philadelphia barber shop. It shows a handsome, grave man with a distinctive narrow nose that resembles Aaron Burr's and Mrs. Allen's. The history collected by Mrs. Cornish and Mrs. Allen suggests that Aaron Burr had two children with Mary Emmons, who was a servant but not a slave in Burr's household in Philadelphia while he was married to Theodosia. Mary Emmons was born in Calcutta and lived in Haiti before coming to the U.S. The couple had a daughter, Louisa Charlotte, in 1788. They had a son, John Pierre, in 1792. Allen Ballard, a distant cousin of Mrs. Allen who counts himself as a Burr descendant, says that some of his own, older relatives felt ambivalent about being descended from Burr. "This traitor thing still hung on him," he says. "There hadn't been all this revisionist history" of recent years that portrays Burr as victimized by the malice of Hamilton and Jefferson. Mr. Ballard, who teaches history and African-American studies at the State University of New York at Albany, says his mother's aunt had a marriage certificate showing that Burr and Emmons were married after Theodosia's death but that the aunt tore it up out of frustration with the family's lack of interest. Though his mother may have been East Indian, John Pierre Burr considered himself an African American. A free man, he turned his barber shop into a station in the underground railroad. He hid slaves in the backyard and attic, according to Mrs. Cornish's writings. Mrs. Allen thinks Aaron Burr may have quietly supported John Pierre Burr in his abolitionist activities although there's no proof of that. After serving as an officer in George Washington's army, Burr became prominent in New York state politics. In 1800, Jefferson chose him as his vice-presidential running mate. The two tied in the Electoral College, which in those days did not cast separate ballots for president and vice president, so the decision was thrown to the House of Representatives. Whether Burr actively tried to become president is unclear but Jefferson, who eventually prevailed, suspected that he had, and hated him for it. Burr later ran for governor of New York, incurring the wrath of Alexander Hamilton, who tried to undermine Burr's candidacy. Hamilton's alleged slanders -- precisely what he said is unclear -- led to the fatal duel, fought on the New Jersey cliffs overlooking Manhattan. Burr then traveled west to explore turning Spanish territory, and possibly some of the newly acquired U.S. western territory, into a separate country. Jefferson learned of the plan and had him tried for treason in 1807. He was acquitted thanks to the interventions of Chief Justice John Marshall, a Jefferson antagonist, who presided over the trial. Burr, his reputation ruined nonetheless, left for Europe. He returned in 1812. He married a wealthy widow in 1833; they were divorced the day Burr died in 1836. The new evidence of Burr's family of color gets mixed reactions from historians. Thomas Fleming, author of "Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America," is skeptical, arguing that Burr's enemies would almost certainly have learned of such a family's existence and "played it up very big." But Roger Kennedy, author of "Burr, Hamilton and Jefferson: a Study in Character," calls the story "plausible." He notes Burr, in a letter to his daughter Theodosia, briefly mentioned a woman in Philadelphia about whom he seemed to feel both affection and guilt. Mr. Kennedy speculates it may have been a woman of color. The Aaron Burr Association has explored DNA testing to verify the link. But the test is generally on the male Y chromosome, which changes little between generations, and the association has not found a suitable male descendant of John Pierre Burr from whom to take a sample. Mrs. Allen has no doubts. "Since the beginning of time, the races all meshed," she says. "And you know what? You get quality from this combination."

Another remarkable voice for civil rights passes

2005-10-08T09:00:00.000-04:00

By Merlene DavisHERALD-LEADER COLUMNIST With the death last week of Constance Baker Motley, most of the warriors of the Civil Rights Era have been laid to rest. Her death means there is one fewer fighter willing to sacrifice life and limb to force America to end years of unequal treatment of its citizens. Motley, 84, who began her career in law as a clerk for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1945, was the first black woman named to the federal bench, as well as the first black woman in the New York State Senate, and the first woman to be Manhattan borough president. She joined the Defense Fund in 1945, while still a student at Columbia Law School and worked under Thurgood Marshall, who later became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. When she earned her law degree, Motley fought to tear down Southern segregation through the court system until 1963. In 1950, she prepared the draft argument for what would become Brown vs. Board of Education. Later, she helped argue that desegregation case. In 1957, she argued the case in Little Rock, Ark., that led President Eisenhower to call in federal troops to protect nine black students at Central High School there. And she represented James Meredith in his successful bid to be the first black student at the University of Mississippi in 1962. Marshall placed the latter case on Motley's desk because he believed Southern racists wouldn't harm a black woman, she said in a 2003 interview with the American Bar Association's "Litigation Online." "Thurgood's theory was, in the South they don't bother black women because they all have mammies," Motley said. She won the case but was afraid Meredith would flunk out his first semester. "U.S. marshals had to sleep in the room with him," Motley said. "How are you going to study with marshals with guns?" But he did finish, and he had marshals with him the entire time. That was one of nine cases she won before the U.S. Supreme Court. She lost only one before that august body. And yet, she was before her time, facing discrimination oftentimes because of her sex rather than her race, even at the NAACP. "Women just didn't have the status that we now have in the field," she said. Born in New Haven, Conn., to parents who emigrated from the British West Indies, she was one of 12 children. Her father worked in food services at Yale University, so there wasn't enough money to send the children to college. A white businessman, Clarence Blakeslee, whose family had ties to abolitionists, paid her way to college and through law school. She said he did that for several students, black and white. "He was at my graduation from Columbia Law School," she said. "So he was somebody who took an interest -- he didn't write a check to get a tax exemption. I sometimes wonder if we still have people like that. I guess we do." President Lyndon Johnson named her to the federal bench in 1966. She was still working as a senior judge when she died. Motley didn't hold out much hope for change in this country, however. She believed the battles are the same. She said when she attended a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Brown in Alabama, the young man assigned with picking her up and taking her back to the airport did not know anything about the "Brown case." "Then I knew it was all over," she said in the ABA interview. "We are going to fight the same battles in this century that we fought in the last. "The reason is, if you don't know your own history, you are bound to repeat it," she said. "He is 18 years old," she continued. "He didn't know. He was in Alabama, and he never heard of Brown vs. Board of Education. So that's where we are, I am sad to say." Mercy. I just had to be sure we did not ignore her passing.

New Orleans's Black Colleges Hit Hard

2005-10-04T19:07:00.000-04:00

Schools Worry About Losing Faculty to Host Institutions While They Rebuild By Lois RomanoWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, October 1, 2005; Page A01 Concern is growing among black educators about the future of New Orleans's three historic African American universities, which were hit much harder by Katrina -- and have fewer resources with which to recover -- than the city's other major colleges. Dillard University, Xavier University of Louisiana and Southern University at New Orleans got smacked with at least $1 billion in flood and fire destruction -- by far the worst damage of all the city's institutions of higher education. The schools' limited endowments, coupled with a generally less-moneyed alumni base, have posed particular challenges to saving these venerable institutions, say school officials and education advocates. Sources say there have been some preliminary discussions about whether the schools can continue to pay faculty salaries and benefits while rebuilding. "The task is just daunting," Dillard University President Marvalene Hughes said after she viewed the damage firsthand on Friday. "Seeing it was my reality." In the hours after the storm, Dillard -- a stately, leafy 135-year-old campus -- was floating in upwards of 10 feet of water and lost three dorms to fire. Xavier, the nation's only historically black Catholic college, is today drenched in sludge and mold and has a flooded library, among other damage. Southern, part of the only black college system in the nation, was flooded in all its 11 buildings. Chancellor Edward Jackson believes the entire campus needs to be razed and rebuilt, at a cost of $500 million. Last week, school administrators pleaded with government officials for special and expedited financial help that would include generous incentives to lure back faculty and 8,000 students to the colleges -- long considered a vital part of the culture and fabric of the city's large black community -- who dispersed to other schools when New Orleans was evacuated. "These students have to go back to their home institutions for the schools to survive," said Lezli Baskerville, president and CEO of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. There is a very real concern that hosting institutions will see value in trying to retain good minority teachers and faculty from quality schools with stellar reputations. Xavier, established in 1925 to educate blacks, today turns out a quarter of the nation's black pharmacists and sends the largest number of African American students on to medical schools. Its enrollment for 2005 was about 4,000. Dillard, a traditional liberal arts school with 1,500 students and 19 buildings, was before the storm a glorious campus with white turn-of-the-19th-century buildings sitting on 50 acres. The school is known to instill in its students a strong sense of culture and heritage, emanating from its 1869 founding mission to offer otherwise unattainable education to blacks in the South. The United Negro College Fund has raised more than $2 million for Dillard and Xavier and their students, many of whom need money for books and other expenses at hosting schools. Radio personality Tom Joyner, who has raised $30 million since 1998 for black colleges, diverted $1 million from his foundation to help New Orleans students and is soliciting donations on air. The schools are asking foundations and corporations for funding. At Southern University, a state commuter school, administrators are also dealing with the fact that the vast majority of students probably also lost their homes. "We just can't afford to lose these schools. . . . They need special attention, and they need it urgently," said Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund and a former president of Dillard. "They are a major part of the national strategy to close the education gap and have long been engines to the black middle class -- producing doctors, teachers, lawyers." While Xavier and Dillard have some insurance, administrators maintain it will not go far given the extent of the damage. "Clearly, insurance will not be sufficient," said Hughes. "And we could not operate for more than a year if we had to draw down our endowment -- which I will not do. We'd be out of business." Congressional sources say that while legislators are acutely aware of the issues facing the schools, it is impossible for them to assess the damage and needs at this time. Most school administrators have not even laid eyes on the damage since Katrina. They have not been able to get to their financial records, and insurance adjusters are just beginning to assess. "SUNO serves a particular clientele that no other college does -- a low-income adult population that desires a four-year degree. They work to get through school, and most of them lost everything," said Jackson, the chancellor. "But it's not just about fixing the school. It's about the city, about having a rebuilt infrastructure so it's a place people want to come back to." Tulane University and Loyola University, which are scrambling to rebuild their own campuses, have offered the two private schools temporary space so that they may open in January. The offer would also help Tulane and Loyola, which need to bring activity and resources to their campuses as soon as possible. Meanwhile, educators and community leaders are confident that a high percentage of the city's 75,000 college students have found temporary homes at other institutions around the country -- many of which are allowing the students to attend at no cost right now. According to a spokesman for the American Council on Education, all the Ivy League schools, the Big Ten and at least five schools in the California system agreed to take a specified number of students. While the New Orleans schools are worrying about other schools raiding faculty, there is less concern that hosting schools will try to hold on to the visiting students. Students who want to stay at a host school would have to apply and be subjected to the school's rigorous admissions standards. Troubling for administrators, however, is that the schools do not know where their students landed, and have to rely on being contacted by them or trying to reach them through their parents' addresses. The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers would like to tap into a nonprofit national data bank that collects student information, but federal privacy laws prevent the transfer of information on students. A spokesman for the Education Department said agency lawyers are reviewing whether an exception can be made.

Racist backlash after Katrina reflects ugly historical trend

2005-10-04T19:00:00.000-04:00

President Bush marked the end of the Hurricane Katrina disaster -- and the beginning of the flood as metaphor -- when he addressed the nation from New Orleans' Jackson Square on Sept. 15. The president's purpose was to sell the public a dream of a brighter future. Having already flooded the region with hugs, ex-presidents and bottled water, Bush promised a torrent of tax-free enterprise zones and ATM cards. The flood had made possible a new New Orleans, reborn in the image of America's democratic ideals. The biblical metaphor of rebirth after the flood must not make the public forget about the issues of race and poverty. While the media focused on "black-on-black violence" in the Superdome and convention center, anybody with a historical memory might have anticipated that the mass flight of black evacuees would incite a backlash among whites. Three days after Katrina hit, hundreds of desperate African-Americans attempted to cross the Mississippi River Bridge and reach for a friendly hand on the other side in Gretna, La., a largely white suburb. Armed police met them and turned them back into the chaos of flooding New Orleans. The Gretna City Council then passed a resolution supporting this hostile action. If Bush had been less concerned with painting pictures of the future, he could have denounced Gretna's actions. Like the breached levee, the backlash was predictable. American history has proven time and again that racism makes natural disasters more dangerous for blacks than for whites. In 1793 in Philadelphia, then the U.S. capital, a plague of yellow fever killed about 4,000 people and caused about 20,000 others to flee the city. Unsure of the cause, citizens tried to protect themselves from the invisible killer by purifying the air. They soaked their clothes in vinegar, wore garlic necklaces, smoked cigars and exploded gunpowder inside their boarded-up homes. As disease swept through the city, congressmen, religious ministers, city officials and others with money and transportation escaped to the country. African-Americans, trapped in menial labor positions and disproportionately poor, were left to die. During the chaos, a remarkable union occurred. Whites who stayed behind turned for aid to two African-American leaders, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen. Jones and Allen distributed food and medical supplies to the poor and the sick, enlisted black volunteers to remove decaying corpses and bury the dead, and sent black nurses to care for sick and dying whites. The efforts of Philadelphia's black population helped to save the city, a fact that didn't stop whites from attacking them. Hostility increased until an emergency law was passed to prevent racist attacks against African-Americans, since it hindered the relief effort. During the epidemic and long afterward, whites accused African-Americans of looting abandoned homes, spreading the fever and extorting money from the sick and dying. When it comes to racial issues in America, history has a way repeating itself. Novelist Ralph Ellison called this the "boomerang effect." The horrors of yellow fever exacerbated Philadelphia's racial tensions. As yellow fever outbreaks increased throughout the 1790s, many outlying towns and villages barred African-Americans from entering and finding refuge. More than 200 years later, in Gretna, La., the same spirit was displayed. Race has everything to do with why Bush converted the flood into a metaphor of a new beginning. The metaphor deflects attention from the horrible images of African-Americans abandoned on rooftops and from multiplying charges of the administration's racism. In a stunning reversal, Bush referred in his speech to poverty's "roots in a history of racial discrimination." It was a brilliant bait-and-switch. Many commentators applauded the president's belated awakening to issues of race and poverty. But the comment was nothing more than political opportunism. According to the Bush administration's logic, poverty and race are no longer related. Racial discrimination is history, while class is the real issue that persists into the 21st century. With the "bold action" of billions of dollars, President Bush promised to eliminate it once and for all. While images of looting and violence dominated the media's coverage of the tragedy, we might keep an eye out for the boomerang tossed in Gretna. If history is any teacher, the story of rebuilding will disappear, washed away in a flood of indifference. Andy Doolen is a professor of American studies at the University of Kentucky. E-mail him at andy.doolen@uky.edu.

Civil War Trails Signs In Dayton, Cross Keys Interpret History

2005-10-04T18:59:00.000-04:00

Roadside Markers Expected To Help Attract Tourists By Jeff Mellott DAYTON - Betty Jo Meyerhoeffer has lived in her home on the southern edge of town for more than 50 years and is well acquainted with the story of Davy Getz. Tradition holds that Getz is buried on her property in a former orchard, said historian John Heatwole. Federals in October 1864 killed Getz after the Woodstock resident dug his own grave. The Getz story prompted one of three new interpretive signs that have been erected as the result of a collaborative effort between Civil War Trails and the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation. Bloody Prediction Fulfilled Federals took the 39-year-old Getz into custody. He wore civilian clothes but he also carried a squirrel rifle in an area where bushwhackers and Confederate raiders had harried federal troops. Woodstock town elders pled for Getz’s release and told federals that the man had the mind of a 6-year-old. On the southside of present Dayton, Gen. George Custer ordered Getz shot. A Woodstock merchant warned Custer that he would die in a bloody grave because of Getz’s death. The prediction, Meyerhoeffer said, came true when Indian warriors killed Custer and most of his command in Montana nearly 12 years later. "His reputation followed him on to the Little Big Horn," she said. Destroying Bowman Mill Custer was part of Gen. Philip Sheridan’s command in 1864. Sheridan ordered the systematic burning of the Shenandoah Valley. Custer’s torch, said Cheryl Lyon, burned down the David Bowman Mill. Bowman favored the Union, said Lyon, who owns Silver Lake Mill, which rests on the foundation of the Bowman Mill. "He’s a very central figure to me and the history of the mill," she said. According to family history, Lyon said, Bowman bought slaves and then freed them. Some of them, she said, worked at the mill as freed blacks. The war ruined the Valley’s economy. After the fighting ended, Bowman sold land and used the proceeds to help others get started, Lyon said of family histories. They seem to be borne out, she said, by the large number of land transactions he was involved with in the post-war period. Family efforts to recoup their losses for the burned mill from the federal government were unsuccessful, she said. According to family history, Bowman had a signed letter from Sheridan protecting the mill because it ground corn for the Union. But Custer ignored the letter, the family history goes, and burned the mill, Lyon said. Mill Creek Brethren The two signs in Dayton are up in time for Dayton Days, a special celebration that attracts thousands of tourists to the town. The Civil War Trails signs are designed not only to interpret historic locations but also to guide tourists to their location with the use of specially designed maps. Along with the signs in Dayton, the Mill Creek Church of the Brethren has allowed a Civil War Trails sign on its property on Port Republic Road. The sign describes Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson’s encounter with Campbell Brown, who served on Gen. Richard Ewell’s staff at the battle of Cross Keys, and the role of the pacifist Church of the Brethren during the Civil War. Memorial Sought Meyerhoeffer is excited about the sign near her home in Dayton that tells Davy Getz’s story. She hopes it stirs enough interest in his story to help pay for a fitting memorial for Getz. A plain white stone marks the presumed location of Getz’s grave. Meyerhoeffer, who enjoys history, wants to do more. "I am trying to get a little memorial for him," she said.