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Spectrum

BEHIND THE LINES
special issue of Spectrum
This
began several months ago

Dr. Ekema Agbaw,
director of the Frederick Douglass

when

Bloomsburg University,
suggested that Dr. Walter Brasch,
Spectrum editor-in-chief and professor of journalism, might want
to have his newswriting class focus
Institute at

upon the Underground Railroad.
And so a culturally and racially
diverse group of freshmen and
sophomores, few of them journalism majors, helped establish the
foundation for a special issue of a
magazine that usually only upper
division students produce.
To get their stories, the students lower division students in
Newswriting, in collaboration with
the Institue, and upper division
students in Magazine Editing and
Production dug into courthouse

—

—

add more color pages, and increase our circulation.
Spectrum has done only three
special issues. The first one was a
look at Columbia and Montour
counties' relationships with the
rest of the world, and included features about what was produced
in these two small rural counties
that had an impact upon the people and business communities in
other countries. That issue earned
the magazine recognition from the
Agency for International Development. The second special issue
looked at Domestic Court issues
and problems of violence. For that
in-depth look, the American Bar
Association honored Spectrum, the
only time the ABA ever honored a
college publication. Along the way,
we have been inducted into the

The university administration

Hall of Fame of the Associated
Collegiate Press, an honor only
four other college magazines have
earned; and have earned dozens of
other national honors. But, we
don't publish Spectrum to win
awards. Our intent is to report
and bring information to our readers to help them better understand their own lives and the lives
of others around them. In every
one of our issues the past 17 years,
we have presented features that
recognize the fine work our counties' residents do
including a
woman with cancer who is an

has been a strong supporter of
Spectrum. But, like any commercial publication, Spectrum must
pay for itself from advertising
and circulation revenue. Further,

accomplished folk artist, a man
who customizes Corvettes, and
features about the owners of two
major orchards. And, we have
presented controversial issues,

establish our editorial independence, we have been reluctant
to take outside funding. However,

looking at Courthouse security,
steroid usage in local schools, and
nuclear plant safety.
By publishing Spectrum, not only
are students learning more about
journalism, they are helping themselves and others better understand who we are, who our neighbors are. and the achievements and
problems all of us face.

records, historical society papers,
off 150-year-old newspaand conducted research in
both the college library and the

dusted

pers,

Library of Congress.
This issue is the largest in our
17-year publishing history. And,
it is the most controversial, as the
entire staff investigated numerous historical and contemporary
issues, talked to dozens of people,
and learned that American Black
history is also a study of local and

American

history.

to

for this special issue,

we

received

additional funding from the Bloom-

sburg University Foundation. This
financial assistance allowed us to

increase our editorial expenses
while significantly improving our
editorial quality, double the number of pages we normally publish.

Winter/Spring 2004

—

— THE EDITORS

Spectrum Magazine
Volume

17,

Nos.l&2 Winter/Spring 2004
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Walter M. Brasch
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Christine M. Varner

MANAGING EDITOR
Jonathan Gass
ART/PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

MaryJayne Reibsome
.^SSOCUTE EDITORS

Matthew Cateriniccia
John Elliot
ASSIST.ANT EDITORS
Johnetta Clarke. Rachel Fiedler.
Joe Mariscano.
Michelle Johnson Sorber

REPORTER-EDITORS

Karen Andzejewicz.
Dennelle Catlett, Mark Ensminger,
Beth Krysztoforski, Dana Nagj-.
Beth Roberts, Mike Sullivan
EDITORIAL SPECL\LIST

Rosemary

R.

Brasch

EDITORL\L .ASSISTANT
Justin Pelletier

REPORTERS
Alexander Agard, Alfonse Aniodei.
Laki'ya Bolden. Erika Elder,

Veronika Frenkel. Patrick Higgins
PRODUCTION SPECLAXIST
Amelia McKean
PRODUCTION CONSULT.\NTS
Dick Shaffer
Dave Fry
.ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES
Angle Adams. Kendra Branchick,
Michelle Zarko

CIRCUL.\TION/PROMOTIONSPECl.\LISTS

Angie Adams, Karen Andzejewicz.
Kendra Branchick (nigr.). Dennelle
Catlett. Johnetta Clarke. Mark
Ensminger. Rachel Fiedler. Beth

Krysztoforski (nigr.). Dana Nag>\
Justin Pelletier.
Beth Roberts. Michelle Sorber.
Michelle Zarko (mgr.)

BUSINESS OPER.ATIONS DIRECTOR
Jessica Snyder
Spectrum is piihtishcd twice a year by the
Journalism program at Bloomsburg UniversUy.
No portion of Spectrum may be reprinted,
including advcrliaing. without its permission.
Printed by GRlf(.\tontoursville. Pa.)
Circtilatinn: 2.^00

Copyright 2004 Spectrum
Bloomsburg University
400 East 2nd Street
Bloomsbui-jr. Pa. 1781."

(570) 389-4825

6 All Aboard to

Freedom

BY MICHELLE JOHNSON SORBER
The Underground Railroad was the path
freedom for more than 100,000 slaves.

to

10 Journey of a Slave
BY DANA NAGY

Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped,
enslaved, but became a writer.

12 Freedom's Friendly Faces
BY MICHELLE JOHNSON SORBER
AND JOE MARISCANO
Conductors of the Underground Railroad

o

helped slaves survive mankind's cruelty.

O

18 Preserving the Past
BY CHRISTINE VARNER

Owners save
first act

Tubman's

site of Harriet
of defiance.

20 Trap Doors and False Walls

About the Cover

BY RACHEL FIEDLER AND JONATHAN GASS
Underground Railroad station houses
provided safe havens.

The cover depicts
"The Kneeling
Slave-Am Not a
Man and a Brother,"
an oil painting on
canvas by an
unknown artist from
the English School in
I

the

1

8th century.
is in

the

Bridgeman

Art

original

26 Decoding the Paths

to

Freedom

BY PATRICK HIGGENS
Lawn jockeys, weather vanes and Negro
spirituals helped point the

way

to

freedom.

The

28 This Side

Library. British anti-

Up With Care

BY CHRISTINE VARNER
A slave shipped himself to freedom.

slavery advocate
Josiah Wedgwood

produced the Slave
Medallion

in

1787.

Benjamin Franklin,
upon receiving some
medallions, wrote to
Wedgwood that he
was "persuaded it
may have an effect

30 Treason!

equal to that or
best written parrij..
in procuring honou
to these oppressed

34 Peaceful Rebellion

BY RACHEL FIEDLER
In a Pennsylvania town, the federal government

brought 38

men

to trial for

helping slaves escape.

BY JONATHAN GASS
Pennsylvania's Quakers defied federal laws
to help slaves escape into the North.

people."

Spectrum

4

1

Wiiiter/Spriiig

2004

36 Route to Freedom
BY CHRISTINE VAENER AND VERONIKA FRENKEL
Anthony Cohen retraces the Underground Railroad.

40 Abolition's Newspapers
BY JOHN ELIOTT AND CHRISTINE VARNER
Anti-Slavery advocates used the media
as their most powerful weapon.

44 Contemporary Voices
BY MICHELLE JOHNSON SORBER
Publications emphasize Black
culture

and

issues.

46 Sing Along
BY CHRISTINE VARNER

Kim and Reggie Harris
to tell the stories

of the

use music and theatre
Underground Railroad.

47 Slavery's Virtual Tour
MN^

BY MICHELLE JOHNSON SORBER
brief look at the National Underground
Railroad Freedom Center.

A

48 Her

Name Was

William

BY NICK VARGAS
She was a soldier with a

secret.

50 Sculpting Her Future
BY ALEXANDER AGARD

Edmonia Lewis overcame

color

barriers to prove herself as an artist.

Vol. 17, Nos. 1

p

&3

,Fjve generations oi

South Carolina. Phoi

ves on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort,
^ken inJ862 during thejCivil War.

<•

\4-

The

railroad that

changed

history

by Michelle Johnson Sorber
ithout reliable

means

of transport, enslaved

Blacks breaking free
from the gi'ip of owners, faced daunting obstacles.
Slave-catchers searched for run-

aways

to return

them

for bounty.

Escapees often left families,
friends, and security behind to
march hundreds of miles to the
free North. A few compassionate
individuals

risked public scorn

and imprisonment to provide runaways with shelter and support in
a loose-knit network called the
Underground Railroad.
The term "Underground Railroad" was first used in the 1830s.

From then

until 1865, the system

helped thousands of slaves escape.

Although

it

isn't certain

Underground Railroad
it is

believed that the

tionist

1775 in

when

first

the
began,

first aboli-

was organized in
Pennsylvania. Members of

society

the Religious Society of Friends,
commonly known as Quakers, pro-

vided shelter and food for Blacks
escaping to Canada.
In spite of its namesake resemblance, one of many myths claims
the Underground Railroad coined
its

name from

the railway system
at the

"stations," while the
escaping slaves were called "pas-

were called

sengers," "cargo," or "goods."
Another myth tells of a slave

Tice Davids who fled from
Kentucky and may have taken
refuge with John Rankin, a White
abolitionist, from Ripley, Ohio.
Determined to retrieve his property, the owner chased Da\ads to
the Ohio River, but Davids disappeared without a trace, leaving
his owner to wonder if he had
"gone off on some underground

named

road." Thereafter, the

term "Under-

ground Railroad" was used
describe

to

the network of people

that helped escaped slaves.
In the antebellum South, plantation owners had acquired valuable possessions known as chattel. This included, but was not
limited

to,

household items such

as furniture

and cabinets as well

as livestock, horses, and slaves.
The slaves were legally considered part of the estate and were
treated similarly to other possessions, only worse.

Slaves were an integral part of
the economy of the antebellum
South. Southerners relied on the

work and performance

of their

much

as they did their

time.

draft horses

and farm machin-

relied heavily

ery.

The places along the escape route

slaves to be in the same classification as the farm animals. The
labor-intensive farming of the
time required cheap fieldhands.

that

was being developed

"Underground" operations
on secret code using
railroad jargon, which allowed
both slaves and their "conductors"
or "engineers" to communicate.

slaves

Southern

cvilture considered

AUCTION SALE
OF

This day,

at

Eleten

o'clock,JI.JtI.

At the North of the Exchange,
BY

J. S.
1

RYAN.

.

.

on which to escape. Using these
slaves would follow the
path toward safety and the nearest "safe house." Once there they
clues,

Runaway

money and a
it was safe to

found safety

travel again. However, conditions

behind Union

received food, water,
place to rest until

were often poor,
but runaways would sacrifice in
in these houses

order to obtain freedom.
Runaway slave Harriet Jacobs
wrote in her book, Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl, of the conditions she withstood: "It seemed
horrible to sit or lie in a cramped
position day after day, without

who

slaves

lines

were

considered
"contrabands
of war"

worked

and

for the

Union army

one gleam of light. Yet I would
have chosen this, rather than my
lot

as a slave."

Runaways
es,

also

employed disgius-

often dressing in clothes of the

other gender. Fair-skinned Blacks

passed as Whites, and others pretended to dehver messages or goods

catchers would attempt to kidnap

ciples of the

any Blacks and sell them for profit.
Even states that were free of slavery were unsafe; Blacks were
forced to go to Canada, Mexico, or

have paved the way

the Caribbean.

[Contributing to this story icas Jon J.
Additional information can be
found at: wwu. cr.nps.gov / aahistory /
Also see TJie Underground Railroad in
Pennsylvania by Charles L. Blockson. or
the video. Safe Harbor a Main Street

The Undergi'ound Railroad

for their masters. Journalist Frede-

rick Douglass used a disguise

by

to

freedom

for

led

thousands of slaves.

won

posing as a sador while making his

But

escape from Maryland to New
York. Henry "Box" Brown, with the
help of underground assistance,
went as far as to ship himself by

est battle with the ratification of

packed in a crate, from
Richmond to Philadelphia.
The passage of the Fugitive
Slave Law in 1850 made escaping
more difficult. The law demanded
the return of runaways, and proclaimed that federal and state officials as well as private citizens had
to assist in their capture. Even free

nor involuntary servitude
shall
exist within the United States."
The principle of the Underground Railroad has outlasted the

train,

Blacks were in jeopardy, for slave

Venezuela

abolitionists

their great-

the Thirteenth Amendment in
December 1865, which ensured

Undergi-ound Railroad
for others
seeking refuge from their lives of

hardship, neglect, and abuse.

Strine.

Media Production.]

that forever after "neither slavery
.

.

.

was later used in
1960s for anti-war activists
and young draftees escaping to the
Canadian border, and again for
battered women escaping their
lives of abuse. The paths and prinend

%mmmY.
Ki\IIVi1

of slavery. It

the

Puerto Rico

from
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r.

tlM-

niHlprUc^rd. Ih In:; uu 4 urn ill
f>wW<' ititleik uboi r l>oiil|tliaii.

:ilmiil

q"0 BE SOLD

on board tht

Ship Bante-

on tucfday the€th

of May

Ifland,

j

next, at

/Ifiiley-

Ferry

cirgo ot about 250

fine

^

J

a choice

<,

healthy

-

NEGROES,
juft

arrived

from

rhe

Windward & Rice Coaft.
•—The utmoft care has
lah-eady been taken> and,

^

be continued, to keep them free from
'danger of beir^ infeded writh the
SMALL-FOX, no boat having been on
board, and ail other communication with
fhall

the

a olave
by Dana Nagy

leart:

people from Charles-Town prevented. Aullin, Laurens,
/Ipplehy.

&

f"«.<"'t?'''f of 'heato" Nesro.,h»»e had the
thfirowa Country.

Q,i^i,^;
SMALL-POX
m

o

ne daij, when all our people were^one out to their works as
usual, ana only land my dear sister were leit to mind the house,
tw^o men and a w^oman ^ot over our w^alls, and in a moment

seized ushoth, and, w^ithout ^ivin^ us time to cry out, or make resistance,

they stopped our mouths, and ran
And so began the journey of a
young boy named Olaudah Equiano, as described in his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative

of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa, the African. The

year was 1756, and Equiano was
11 years old.
Almost 20 million other Africans, like Equiano, were kid-

napped from their

villages, rea-

why unknown

to them, and
march to the west coast
of Africa where European coastal
forts were set up. Only half sur-

sons

forced to

vived these death marches.
"The first object which saluted
my eyes when I arrived on the
coast, was the sea, and a slave

which was then riding at
anchor, and waiting for its cargo,"
Equiano wrote. "These filled me

ship,

with astonishment, which was
soon converted into terror, when I
was carried on board."

The

potential slaves

endure

now had

to

journey across the
Atlantic Ocean, known as the
Middle Passage because it was
the middle leg of a three-part
journey for the Europeans on the
ship.

10

A

a

typical Atlantic crossing

oJfJfwith us into

took 60 to 90 days, but some lasted up to four months.
In the mid-eighteenth century,
the number of Africans making
the Atlantic crossing peaked at
about 60,000 to 70,000 per year.
Of the estimated 10 million who
survived the death marches, it is
believed that 10 to 20 percent of
them did not survive the ocean
journey, according to "Africans in
America," a PBS documentary.
Having been taken out of the
only life they knew, most Africans
felt hopeless about their future.
"When we found ourselves at
last taken away [from the African
coast], death was more preferable
than life," Ottobah Cugoano wrote
in his narrative.

the nearest w^ood.
board the ship. "Indeed, such
were the horrors of my views and
fears at the moment, that, if ten
thousand worlds had been my
own, I would have freely parted
with them all to have exchanged

Enslavement of a

Native of Africa, "and a plan was
concerted amongst us, that we
might burn and blow up the ship,
and to perish all together in the
flames."

Fear and ignorance plagued the
thoughts of the Africans.
"I was now persuaded that I
had gotten into a world of bad
spirits, and that they were going
to kill me," Equiano said of his
surroundings when he was on

Spectrum

my condition with that of
the meanest slave in my
own

country."

Sometimes

fear

of the

unknown outweighed even
the will to live.
"Often did I think many
of the inhabitants of the

deep much happier than
myself," Equiano said of
the many Africans who had
died aboard the ship and
were thrown overboard.
Also persuading many
Africans to die rather then
continue were the conditions aboard the slave
ships. Slaves often traveled the Middle Passage in
a deck within the ship that

had

less than five feet of
headroom. With 300 to 400
people packed within a
tiny area with little ventilation
and, in some cases, not even
enough space to place buckets for
human waste, smallpox and yellow fever spread quickly.
"The closeness of the place, and
the heat of the climate
added to the number in

the ship, which was so
crowded that each had
scarcely room to turn
himself, almost suffocated
us," Equiano said of the
ship's conditions.

"The

air

soon became

unfit for respiration," Equi-

ano wrote, "from a variety of loathsome smells,
and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of
which many died."

The

slaves

who

sm-vived

the crossing were about to

complete theu' jom-ney; they
were now to be sold. Once in
America, most slaves went
to the West Indies, but
approximately
400.000

went

to the colonies.

"Many merchants and
planters now came on
board, though

Winter/Spring 2004

it

was

in the

evening," Equiano recalled of the

Equiano purchased his freedom
by careful trading and

evening he reached Barbados.
"They put us in separate parcels, and examined us attentively.
They also made us jump, and

in 1766,

pointed to the land, signifying we
to go there." Still, fear of the

freedom since he had raised the
same amount that King had him-

unknown overtook the Africans, many thinking the white
men were going to eat them.

self paid.

were

"At last the white people got
old slaves from the land to

some

pacify us," recalled Equiano. "They
told us we were not to be eaten,
but to work, and were soon to go
on land, where we should see
many of our country people."
Slavery was nothing new to
them; it existed for centuries in
many parts of Africa, but it differed vastly from the slavery that
developed in Europe and the
Americas. African slaves could

saving. His owner, a Philadelphia

Quaker named Robert King,
allowed Equiano to buy back his

Equiano went to England and
became involved in the movement to abolish the slave trade,
an involvement that led him to
write and publish his autobiography in 1789. "Tortures, murder,
and every other imaginable barbarity and iniquity are practiced
upon the poor slaves with impunity,"

Equiano wrote.

"I

hope the

slave trade will be abolished.

I

may be an

pray

it

many, own property, and after a
number of years of servi-

event at hand."
He died in 1797. 41 years before
Great Britain abolished the slave
trade and more than six decades
before the United States banned
slavery, a goal which he fought so

tude were set

hard

to achieve.

certain

Davidson

in

free, wrote Basil
The African Slave

Trade. African slavery also never
passed from one generation to
another, and it lacked the racist
belief that Whites were masters

and Blacks were

slaves.

[For more inforation. see The Afi'ican
Slave Trade 6.v Basil Davidson, and The
Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano. or Gusta\T.is Vassa. the
African. Slave Coast of West Afi-ica. 15501750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave
Trade on an African Society. Robin Law.}

11

Freedom's Friendly Faces
Conductors on the Underground Railroad risked their

freedom

to help

thousands escape their lives of slavery

by Michelle Johnson Sorber and Joe Marsicano

Seventeen

runaway

slaves

from Kentucky had filed into
the Levi and Catherine
Coffin's kitchen in Newport, Indiana, late one night in 1826.

They were mostly Blacks
and former slaves but many
apart.

Whites, predominately Quakers,
assisted runaways.

The Underground Railroad's

and said "There's an Underground

thousands of abolimoved hundreds of slaves north each year.
About 100,000 slaves escaped
from the South between 1810 and
1850. Approximately four million
remained in slavery on the eve of

Railroad around here and Levi

the Civil

Coffin is its president."

the
Underground Railroad at night
and rested during the day to
avoid being captured.
"Once the slaves got off the plantation it was like a foreign country," says Dr. Jeff Davis, assistant

Outside,

fifteen

slave-catchers

arrived at Coffin's house, hell-bent

on capturing the runaways.
The Southerners called Coffin a
"nigger thief." As they passed his
house, one slave-catcher gestured

Coffin,

Uke many

abolitionists,

helped slaves escape their lives of
servitude. They were the "conductors" of the Underground Railroad. Conductors aided escaped
slaves and transported them to
"stations" often located 10-20 miles

12

effort included

tionists

who

secretly

War in 1861.
Runaway slaves traveled

wandered around
and were helped by conductors,
who gave them directions to the
University. "They

next station."
Conductors hid escaped slaves in
their homes and usually transported them using wagons with false

bottoms. A wagon containing
slaves hidden underneath was
called "a load of potatoes."

Slaves

were also transported by train and
boat and given money for better

unwanted attenThe escape money was raised
by Vigilance Committees that
clothes to avoid
tion.

professor of history at Bloomsburg

opposed slavery.
Captured slaves were generally
branded with an "R" for "runaway,"
then sent to the Deep South, a
place few slaves escaped because
working conditions were so severe.

William Lloyd Garrisoi

Frederick Douglass

Henry David Thoreau

(1805-1879)

(1818-1895)

(1817-1862)

Spectrum

Illustration

by Charles

T.

"In a slave state a slave may be
punished by their master in any
way they wanted," Davis says.
"Usually the worst type of punishment for a slave was being put
back into slavery."
Because of the secrecy of the
Underground Railroad and punishment for helping a slave, few

Gerrit Smith
(1797-1874)

Winter/Spring 2004

Webber

1893. of slaves between Underground Railroad stations

conductors were known.
uctors faced hefty fines

and

Condpossi-

imprisonment if caught. A few
conductors kept records of escapes.
Levi Coffin was one of them.
Coffin, a North Carolina Quaker

ble

moved from Kentucky

Newport,
Indiana, in 1826. His eight-room
Federal style brick home served as

Harriet

to

Tubman

(18197-1913)

a safe haven for runaway slaves on
trek to Canada. Slaves were
concealed for several weeks until
they had enough strength to continue their journey.
theii'

"We knew
what hour

not

what night or
we would be

of the night

roused from slumber by a gentle
rap at the door. That was the sig-

Susan

B.

Anthony

(1820-1906)
13

nal announcing the arrival of a
train of the Underground Railroad," he wrote in his autobiography, The Reminiscences of Levi
Coffin (1876).
"It

was never

or the

my

hoi-u-

too cold or stormy,

of the night too late for

wife to rise from sleep to pro-

vide food and comfortable lodging
for the fugitive,"

he wrote. "This

work was kept up during the time
we hved at Newport, a period of
more than twenty years."
The Coffins went to Cincinnati in
1847 and opened a wholesale
warehouse. The new store provided merchandise to other abolitionists. During the years the Coffins
hved there, they continued to aid
more than 1,000 runaway slaves
through Ohio.
Coffin and his wife moved to
England shortly after Lincoln

signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. There he

helped start the Englishmen's
Freedmen's Aid Society. The society, like many freedmen's aid
societies in America, assisted
raised money for
them and gave them the materials needed to live an emancipated
freed Blacks,

Throughout his years as a
conductor, Coffin helped more
than 3,000 slaves escape.
Coffin may have been the "Preslife.

14

ident of the Under-

ground Railroad," but

William

Still,

a free-

born Black man, was
called the "Father of
the Underground Railroad."

In 1847, Stm became
a clerk with the Pennsylvania Anti- Slavery
Society in Philadelphia
and later served as the
secretary for the Phil-

adelphia Vigilance
Committee, an organization that helped
slaves seek shelter on
their

way

to

Wagons were used
in

and Canada.

In an interview with an
escaped slave named Peter, Still
learned Peter was his brother
who had been separated from his
family at birth. The reunion with
his brother led him to preserve
the written accounts of every
assisted.

house was a haven for
fugitive slaves and became one of
the busiest stations along the
Underground Railroad. According
to his records, he helped 649
Still's

slaves escape.
Possibly the most famous con-

ductor

mer

was Harriet Tubman, a

slave

escaped slaves

safe

places in the North

runaway he

to transport

secret compartments surrounded by cargo.

who escaped

for-

in 1849.

Lucretia Mott

Levi Coffin

(1793-1880)

(1798-1877)

After her escape to PhiladelTubman worked to help
others escape. She saved her
wages as a hotel dishwasher;
when a sufficient amount was
secured, she disappeared from
phia,

her home and appeared on a dark
night at the door of a Southern
plantation cabin.
Tubman led slaves to freedom
by following the North Star
through mountains and rivers,
lying concealed in the forests as
her pursuers passed her by. She
usually chose a Saturday night to
start her "train," because a day
would pass before a runaway
advertisement could appear.

Catherine Coffin
(1803-1881)

Spectrum

Although

ilhterate,

Tubman's

intelhgence was as sharp as the
crack of a plantation owner's
whip. The sound of a horse galloping in the dark called for quick
concealment by the side of the
road; the cry of a baby slave
meant an extra dose of paregoric
so the child would lay in a stupor
in its mother's arms.
She was also a master of disguise. On one occasion, she disguised herself by pretending to
read a book. As two slave-catchers
approached her, Tubman overheard them say, "This can't be the

woman. The one we want

can't

Located in tiie Levi Coffin tiouse, a secret door used to hide slaves was
was concealed by placing a bed in front of tlie opening.

read or write."

Tubman

also possessed fearless

a slave wanted to go
back, she would point her revolver
courage.

and

say,

If

"Dead Negroes

tales; you'll

be free or

die."

tell

no

A finger

on the trigger and a threat was

all

they needed.
Tubman claimed never to have
lost a life. "I nebber run my train
off de track and I nebber lost a passenger," she told Sarah Bradford,
author of Harriet Tubman; TJie
Moses of Her People (1869).
Plantation owners offered a
reward of $40,000 for her capture.
"She seemed wholly devoid of personal fear. The idea of being captured by slavehunters or slave-

Salmon Portland Chase
(1808-1873)
Winter/Spring 2004

holders,

seemed

mind," William

to

never enter her
said in his

Still

book. The Underground Railroad

Tubman made

William Goodridge, a conductor
from Pennsylvania, used his
wealth and his business to help

19 trips to

runaways. Goodi'idge owned a con-

the South, helping over 300 slaves.

fectionery that sold candy, jewehy,

During the Civil War, Tubman
became a nurse and a spy for the
Union army. In 1908, with the help

and wigs as well as a barbershop
on Centre Square in York. He traded animal hides with local tanneries and started York's first newspaper distribution business.
Becoming involved with the
Underground Railroad was a
great risk of Goodridge's wealth.
His home housed a substantial

(1872).

of the Afincan Methodist Episcopal

Zion Church, Tubman established
a home for sick and needy Blacks
in Auburn, New York. In 1911, she

moved

into the

home

herself.

She died of pneumonia in 1913 at
the age of 93. Her final two years
were spent m good health at the
home, sitting with visitors and telling stories about her adventiu'es.

William Wells

Brown

(1814-1884)

number

of fugitive slaves

and was

constantly monitored by slavecatchers. In order to safely hide
slaves. Goodridge hid the fugi-

William

Still

(1821-1902)
15

Between 1790 and 1908, the
house was the residence of five
generations of the Johnson family.
The third generation was
in the abolition

active

movement

during the 1850s. Along with their
spouses, Rowland, Israel, Ellwood,
Sarah, and Elizabeth Johnson
were members of the American
Anti-Slavery Society and the

Germantown Freedman's Aid

The Levi and Catherine Coffin IHouse, located in Newport, Indiana, was
used to house runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad.

Association. Through their ties
to these groups the brothers and
sisters became involved in the
Underground Railroad and used
their homes, along with homes of
nearby friends and relatives, to
harbor slaves on their journey to
freedom.
Another stop on the Pennsylvania path was Oakdale, the home
of Isaac

tives in a straw-lined trench in

the back of his

room

home and

a small

basement.
When the Confederacy invaded
York in 1863, Goodridge and his
family fled to Minnesota. Slavesecret

in his

located in

remained in Minnesota until his

helped form the Society of Progressive Friends at Longwood in
1853. Oakdale was the first stop
north of the Delaware line and provided temporary shelter. A distinct
feature in Oakdale is a concealed
room, built between a walk-in
fireplace and the west wall of
the carriage house and entered
through a loft that Isaac built for
the escaping slaves.

death in 1873.
In Phoenixville, Pennsylvania,

and prominent aboliPennypacker (18021888) used his home, the White
Horse Farm in Schuylkill Town-

politician

tionist Elijah

ship, as a station. In 1839, Pennypacker ended his career in politics
in order to fully devote himself to

©PMCBAISK
The Thinking Behind The iVIoney-

the anti-slavery cause. He became
active in several organizations
and spoke widely against slavery.
In 1840, he opened his home as a
major stop on the Underground

Hundreds of runaway
coming from neighboring counties and Delaware, were
directed to the White Horse
Farm. Pennypacker personally

50 W. Main Street
Bloomsburg, PA 17815
570-387-4501

Member
FDIC

were leading abolitionists who

Another leader was Dr.

F. Julius

LeMoyne

(1798-1879) of Washington, Pennsylvania. His home, the
LeMoyne House built in 1812, and

Railroad.

was a center

slaves,

southwestern Pennsylvania,
and today is a National Historic Landmark. In 1834 LeMoyne
joined the Washington AntiSlavery Society and was the organization's president from 1835 to
1837. After his term he was commissioned by the American AntiSlavery Society to be its regional
agent. The tightly-knit free Black
communities in southwest Pennsylvania helped slaves escape and
developed a network that White
antislavery activists, like LeMoyne,
joined. His correspondence from

transported slaves from his home
to Norristown and other points to
the north and east. It is said that
no slave was ever apprehended
in his care.

Other Pennsylvania leaders
were the Johnson Family of Philadelphia. The Johnson House, a
National Historic Landmark, is
one of the key sites of the abolitionist

16

and Dinah Mendenhall,
Chadds Ford. The two

catchers attempted to kidnap
him but were unsuccessful. He

movement

in

the area.

for abolitionist activ-

ity in

Spectrum

the 1840s included letters from
individuals asking for aid and

thanking him
getting

for his assistance in

them and

their friends

and

relatives out of the South.

Many

conductors continued to
escaped slaves, knowing
the consequences of their humanitarian efforts. Conductors saw a
slave as a human being created
by God and not as "property" of a
Southern plantation owner.
The price of freedom was
assist

high for

their lives. Tubman compared her
freedom to being in heaven, "When
I found I had crossed that line, I
looked at my hands to see if I was
the same person. There was such a
glory over everything; the sun
came like gold through the trees. I

laities

gX.e

..

.

was in heaven,
was free."

felt like I
I

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& Supplies

Janome Sewing and

slaves;

sometimes
it meant.
[For more information, see Harriet Tubman: Conductor
on the Underground Railroad, by Ann Petry, The
Underground RaUroad by Raymond Bial. Also see the
following web sites:
www.undergroundrailroad.org

www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/

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17

IPreservim
Owners

me

IPast

save site of Harriet/ruknian s first act of defiance
Story and photos by Christine Varner

^^usan Meredith's face lights

low slave go into the

says Meredith, tossing a similar

\

also

weight back and forth in her
hands. "It missed him, and it

up when she starts talking
about Harriet Tubman.
"She's my hero," says Meredith
while standing inside the Bucktown Village Store, located near
Tubman's birthplace in Dorchester
County, Maryland. She and her
husband. Jay, own the store,
known as the site of Tubman's first
*

^^

act of defiance.

While working the fields as a
young woman, Tubman saw a fel-

18

store. She
saw the overseer of the plantation approaching the store.
Knowing the slave would be punished if he was caught at the store
without permission, she went to
warn him, but it was too late; the
overseer was already there. He

ordered Tubman to hold the disobedient slave for a whipping, but
she refused. "As the slave ran to
the door, the overseer threw a two
pound metal weight at the boy,"

hit Harriet in the forehead."

That blow

Tubman

to the

head caused

to fall into a

coma;

it

took several months before she
was able work. "They carried me
to the house all bleeding and
fainting. I had no bed, no place to
lie down on at all, and they lay
me on the seat of the loom, and I
stayed there all that day and the

Spectrum

next,"

Tubman

later recalled as

she dictated her story to Emma
Telford in 1911. While she eventually returned to work in the
fields, she never fully recovered
from the injury. For the remainder of her life, she was subject to
blackouts, often while leading
escaped slaves to freedom.
While time has erased many of
the buildings associated with history, the Bucktown Village Store
remains. Walking through the
doors of the Bucktown Village
Store is like walking through a
portal to the past. The floorboards
creak, and the smell of years gone
by greets guests as they enter.
The light blue paint on the
shelves and counters is chipped
and worn with age. Antiques fill
the shelves throughout the store,
some of which date to when

Tubman was

a slave. Old wooden
packing crates, bed warmers, and
wooden casks are just a few of the
items on display.
A brick, believed to be made of
layered marble, adorns the count"After the slaves were freed,
one of Thomas [Meredith's] slaves
er.

made

it

and gave

it

to

him

in

^^They carried

and fainting.

down on

at

me
I

had no

all,

house

to the

bed,

all

no place

and they lay me on

of the loom, and I stayed there

day and the next
appreciation of being treated with
kindness through the years," says
Jay Meredith. The brick has been
passed down through the genera-

and now sits in the store.
Believed to be built in the first
quarter of the 19th century, the
store was purchased by Jay's

tions,

great-great grandfather, Thomas
Meredith, sometime around the

War. "We believe he modernsomewhat when he bought
it," says Jay Meredith, "but it hasn't changed much since then."
Thomas, the largest landowner of
Civil

ized

it

tillable

bleedmg

land in the county, also

bought "The Big House," which
once belonged to Edward Brodess.
Tubman's former master.

to

he

the seat

all that

— Harriet Tubman
Pritchett Meredith, Thomas'
also has a connection to
Harriet Tubman. After she made
her escape in 1849. she returned to

father,

Bucktown and helped Thomas
Elliott and Denwood Hughes,
enslaved by Pritchett Meredith,
escape to fi-eedom.
Two generations of Merediths
lived on the property. About 20

years

after

McKenny White

Meredith. Jay's gi-eat-gi'andfather.
died, the family sold the property

and moved closer to town. Thomas
Vickers Meredith. Jay's grandfather, and John, Jay's father, hunted the land throughout the >-ears.
and often took Jay with them.
"I

knew then

that

[presening

would be my destiny."
he says. The Merediths bought
"The Big House" in 1998: in 2000.
they acquired the store. They ha\'e
since founded the Bucktown Village Foundation, whose mission is
to preserve and promote the
this place]

Bvicktown heritage.

"We bought

all

this for the

not being
destroyed." says Jay Meredith.
"This area is known for having
racial tension, and preserving
this has given us an opportunity
to build bridges and do our part to
sole

purpose of

it

promote unity."

IFor more information on the
Bucktown Viliagc Foundation, or to
arrange a tour of the Bucktown

Susan Meredith, co-owner of the Bucktown

Village Store,

has helped

presen/e the 19th century store that was part of Harriet Tubman's

Winter/Spring 2004

life.

\'illage Store, call 410-228-7650.
Correspondence can be sent to
Bucktown Village Foundation. P.O.
Box 711, Cambridge, MD, 21613.]

19

Station hBtise

-'-:-

Uni.ergfound Railroad

by Rachel Fiedler and Jonathan Gass

*

'M

.^4f#'^^^

Secret entrvwav

in

the Irondale Inn

The

sliding door

accounts

remain

on the roof
Irondale Inn in
Bloomsburg is the only
entrance into the attic, and large
"voids" found on the property suggest previous Underground Railroad activity. "There was no other
way to get in the attic, we had
to make one," says owner J.D.
Davis. A tunnel still runs from
the basement to the nearby railroad tracks, where it is believed
slaves would ride the trains to
Danville and on to Williamsport.
Throughout Pennsylvania are
homes that hold ties to the
Underground Railroad. Few
of

the

connecting

these houses to runaway slaves.
The tunnels, trap doors, and
secret

rooms may

have been

all

hiding places, but many of the
conductor's written records
have long since been destroyed.
Besides the physical structures,
local tradition and family stories exist as the only other evidence of the station houses in
Pennsylvania.
Just outside Bloomsburg in
Espy, the home of Bill and Sara

Hughes was a possible station
house. Journalist and historian
Ted Fenstermacher researched
the house for a series of columns
for the Press Enterprise based
on the previous owner's "family
legend." The original owners,
Cyrus and Catherine Barton, had
been abolitionists in the 1830's
when the house was built. A
three-foot crawl space is hidden
behind a panel in the wall by the
staircase "large enough for a man
to fit in," says Hughes.
The use of houses along the
Underground Railroad is known
only by the evidence of secret
rooms, trap doors, tunnels and
their location in relation to the
believed paths of the Underground Railroad. Most of the
other records of stations regard-

ing

involvement

have

been

destroyed and the stories have

Winter/Spring 2004

only been passed
families

and

down through

local residents.

The route to freedom never
would have existed without the
help of those who provided shelter
for escaping slaves. They allowed
escaped Blacks to come into their
homes as a place of refuge during
their long journey. Many of these
houses were located in Pennsylvania since the state is on most
routes leading to Canada.
The trails mainly followed the
fi-om Maiyland
what is now Interstate 83.
Many of the slaves traveled to York
and on to Wrightsville or York
Springs where Quakers were the
rivers,

coming up

aiid along

primary religious gx-oup. The trails
also ran along the same lines as
what ai'e now Routes 30 and 116.
The passage of the Fugitive
Slave Act of 1850 intensified the
need for smuggling centers to go
undetected. The Act mandated
that anyone caught harboring
slaves or preventing their capture
could be fined up to $1,000 and
imprisoned for up to six months.
Conductors aiding slaves constructed hidden rooms and passages within buildings; in some
cases, they dug tunnels to provide
slaves with a safe passage. Only
symbolic markers identified the
houses used as stations. To this

21

"

day,

station houses blend well

into their surroundings, but lack

of record keeping regarding
Underground Railroad activity
makes it difficult to positively
identify slaves' hideaways.

Many of the houses were
in York, Lancaster,

counties,

located

and Chester

Two members of the Society of
Progressive Friends, an abolitionist group, lent short-term
shelter for escaping slaves as the
first stop north of Delaware in
Pennsylvania. Isaac and Dinah
Mendenhall housed slaves in
their home in a concealed, square-

easy escape route in case slaves'
whereabouts were suspected.
Also in York County, William
Goodridge, a freed Black, used
both his home and his railroad
business to move slaves north
through the state. The hidden

Historic

Landmark

local

slave catchers contin-

^'Staircases

up

to

between rooms were

set

uously kept watch on
his house. "The slave-

confuse slave-catchers.

holders of the South
would gladly have kid-

-Marilyn Cohick

of

the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania.
Dr. LeMoyne, an active abolitionist, was the president of the
Washington An ti- Slavery Society
for two years until he became its
regional agent in 1838. He began
his fight against slavery by
speaking to the public, raising
support, and allowing runaways
to rest at his

and

suspected

other counties which

bordered Maryland.
The F. Julius LeMoyne
House in Washington
County was the first
recognized National

home was

slave activity at his

along with

shaped room, built between a
walk-in fireplace and a west wall
of the carriage house.
Trap doors and

common

were

station houses.

Such homes as Elmwood Mansion, home of York bank director
Jacob Brillinger, had three trap
doors in

down

home.

in the

false walls

into

attic that dropped
back staircases for an

its

napped him," wrote
historian Israel H.
Betz in a series of
papers on station houses in the
early 1900s.

In Goodridge's home were two
for the slaves. There
was a small secret room near the
rear of his basement and a trench
lined with straw underneath a
building by the house. Goodridge
also owned a variety store in
locations

York Centre Square where secret

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Spectrum

panels were built into the walls
and slaves were held until they
moved to Philadelphia and further north.
One of the most active leaders
in the Underground Railroad was
Amos Griest, a Quaker who
owned a large portion of farmland across the county. He and
Goodridge worked together to aid
slaves to freedom by hiding them

Susquehanna Valley, New York,
and into Canada.
In Philadelphia, Quaker Samuel

Johnson hid Blacks

vant's attic of his

in the ser-

home which had

through the state there were still
an abundant number of stations
willing to house the Blacks for a
of

Many

Stah's, located along Village

Road

night or two.

The House

a separate back entrance from the

in Pennsdale. is scarcely notable.

main house. There is only one
account recorded of a slave almost
being found, says Najah Tain,
curator of education at the house.
She says a sheriff came to look

The house received its name
because of staircases between
rooms set up to confuse and disori-

shucks between
houses. Griest met runaways near
Baltimore and guided them to his
home and to a secret second floor
room. From there they would

around and was stalled downstairs by the Quakers in a prayer
meeting; meanwhile, the slave
had a chance to escape onto a

literall>'

travel in Goodridge's railroad cars

the room

among

to

corn

Lancaster County, through the

Winter 2003/Spring 2004

window before
was checked.

ledge outside of a

As the slaves moved north

ent slave-trackers. Mai'ihTi Cohick,
a neighbor, explains, "you could

walk up and down and
around and aroiuid the rooms all
day" and never find a hidden slave.
There is evidence of a tunnel
leading from the house to a small
farm home at the other end of
Pennsdale. which slaves would

23

travel

until

the

slave-catchers

were cleared. One of the staircas-

room conwall and a secret

es led to a second floor

taining a false

chamber. This room's window
also served as a lookout tower

where conductors could scan

for

strangers to the Pennsdale area,
says Cohick. Pennsdale served as
a stop along the way to Williamsport, where slaves would be sent
north via railroads and barges.

Three houses in Lewisburg

may have been

stops for run-

aways. Stories passed down
through the owners of the Nesbit
House tell of the use of a crawl
space in what used to be a bedroom, says Richard Smith the
current owner. A person could
crouch in the small hatch, but
wouldn't be able to stand up.

On

the old

Main

Street, in the

Robert Irwin House

is a trap door
that leads to a hole in the ground.

Although

it

may have been used

as a storage place, the area of the
home and local tradition, allude
to its

use in escape routes.

The Rev. George

Bliss, a profes-

sor at Bucknell University during

the

time

of

the

Underground

Railroad, used a stable on his property as a refuge. Bliss's daughter,

Lucy, once mentioned the stable as
'"being used to hide 'contraband'
until these fugitive slaves could be

moved," says Doris Dysinger, curator of the university's archives.

The Governor Snyder Mansion
24

Spectrum

The house at 17
Water Street in
Lewisburg has
a trap door in
the kitchen

thought to be
a hiding place
for

runaways.

River,

says he never knew about any
tunnels, but that "a few areas
took a lot to fill" when a parking
lot was paved.

possibly used by slaves. The
current owner, Tom McNabb,

[For further information see The
Underground Railroad by Charles L.

had underground tunnels running toward
a church and a small home

in Selinsgrove once

along the Susquehanna

Blockson; Freedom Roads: Searching for
the Underground Railroad 6v Joyce

Hansen and Gary McGouan: Many
Thousand Gone: African Americans from
Slavery to Freedom by Virginia Hamilton
and Leo Dillin: The Undergi-ound Railroad
in

Pennsylvania by William

J. Switala.]

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25

Decoding the

« Paths to
Freedom
Lawn

jockeys, weather vanes, and Negro

spirituals

helped point the

way

to

freedom

by Patrick Higgins

Escaping slaves traveled in the

dead of night. With no maps
to guide them, they relied
solely on their wits and their will
to

survive.

From code songs

secret handshakes, escapees

those

to

and

who aided them developed

methods

of

communication

relay messages, ease fears,

to

and

protect themselves.

On the plantations, slaves sang
while working in the fields. To
plantation owners, this meant
slaves were content and less likely
to escape. In reality, many of the
songs held hidden meanings and
told slaves where to go once they
made

their escape.

"Follow the Drinking Gourd" is
perhaps the best-known "code"
song. The words "drinking gourd"
referred to tht Big Dipper and
the North Star & :1 told slaves to

walk toward this constellation. The phrase
"the dead trees show
you the way, left foot,
peg foot, traveling
on" meant to follow
the drawings of left
feet on the dead
trees on the banks
of the Tombigbee
River that flows
through Mississ-

---X.
H^T.

ippi and Alabama.
These markings
would designate

the Tombigbee
from rivers that
flowed into it. Other phrases told

runaways how

to get

Tennessee River and
to follow it until they reached
the Ohio River. They were
then directed to cross the Ohio
to the

Spectrum
26

where

guide

a

Underground
met them.

different

on the
Railroad

The

spiritual,

and would not have
understood the different
patterns of code within
these quilts," he says, also
noting, "escapees traveled

harsh weather, like
snow and rain, and the
quilts would not have been

"Wade

in

in the Water," told escapees

they traveled in water,
would be undetectable to the bloodhounds
that trailed them, says Dr.
Charles Blockson, professor of hisif

"Torches or lanterns were used
on the banks of rivers like the

able to withstand the
tough weather conditions."
In addition to using coded
messages and phrases, conductors developed covert means of
transportation. According to the
National Parks Service Underground Railroad Network to

Susquehanna

Freedom

their scent

Temple University.
Escaping slaves and those who
aided them used special code
tory at

words to communicate. The
Underground Railroad was called

Conductors told escapees the
exact location of statues to avoid
any confusion.

escapees,"

Canada was called "Canaan" or
"The Promised Land." "Shepards"
encouraged slaves to escape,

light

and "conductors" transported the
slaves. A "station house" was a
safe house, the "station master"
of the house,

and

a "stockholder" donated money to
keep the operation running.

Messages were relayed using
code phrases. The phrase, "the
wind blows from the south today,"
alerted conductors of escapees in

"When

the sun comes
back and the first quail calls," signaled that early spring was a
good time to escape. If slaves
couldn't see the stars, "the dead
trees will show you the way,"
the area.

reminded them moss grows on
the north side of trees. They also
looked for weather vanes on certain

homes

to point the direction

to the next safe house.

Small cast iron statues on the
lawns of many homes indicated
safety or danger. The statues
were usually a Black man with
ne hand extended. If it held an
American flag, this indicated

absence of a flag signaled
danger, says Underground Railroad historian Wilbur Siebert.
safety;

Winter/Spring 2004

to

give signals to

says Dr. Jeff Davis,
assistant professor of history
at Bloomsburg University. "One

the "freedom train" or the "gospel
train." "Baggage" and "bundles of
wood" referred to escapees, and

was the keeper

the

in

write,

Another song, "Steal Away
to Jesus," alerted other
slaves on the plantation
that an escape was imminent.

places

south, could not read or

meant it was safe to cross,
and two lights meant there was
danger ahead and not to cross."
The Underground Railroad frequently had spies who reported
escapees, so a method of identifj^ing them was devised. A token

bearing the emblem of the Northern Anti-Slavery Society, a man
kneeling with the motto "Am I
not a man and a brother," was
given to those who were certain
not to be spies.
Conductors and runaways also
used specific handshakes to identify themselves. Handshakes, based
on Masonic rituals, were probably
developed by William Lambert, a
free Black from Michigan.

Some

people believe quilts were
used as a form of communication
on the Underground Railroad.
Quilts were hung in front of
homes, and certain patterns

regularly

Men

often

Program,
employed

masked

runaways
disguises.
their

slave

status by

dressing as laborers
and pretended to be going to
work: women dressed in expensive clothing to avoid recognition
by slave hunters. It is believed

one conductor staged a mock
funeral procession of a caravan
of wagons to disguise the move-

ment
It is

of slaves.

clear slaves

and conductors

devised clever forms of communication and transportation. The

Underground Railroad needed
extensive planning to make it run
smoothly, but the patience and

perseverance of conductors and
those they helped made the planning worthwhile.
[Contributing

to

this

article

was

Christine Varner. For more information go

National Parks Service website
the
www.cr.nps.gov/ugrr/learn_b5.html

to

relayed specific messages, such

what tools to pack and when
was good time to escape, says
as

Jacqueline Tobin. author of Hidden in Plain \'iciv: The Secret
Story of Quilts and the Under-

ground

Railj'oad.

Blockson, however, disagrees.
"These escapees came from man>-

27

He was given 200 lashes,
which Allen called "medicine
that would cure him."
a post.

Willi iA\V.h
Heartbroken and desperate, a
slave ships himself to freedom
by Christine Varner
Brown, suffering great
injustice because of the
bondage of slavery, went
through great pain to achieve his
fi^eedom. In The Narrative of the
Life of Henry Box Brown, Written
by Himself (1851), he states that
his book win show "the beautiful
side of slavery." The irony behind
the statement that he was raised
"under the benign influence of [a]
blessed system" quickly becomes
evident as he details his sufferings.
Born about 1816 in Louisa
County, Virginia, Brown first
served a master in the Barrett
family, who treated him with rela-

Henry

tive kindness.

Richmond, Virginia. There, he
worked in the younger Barrett's
tobacco manufacturing plant.
Under orders from his deceased
father, Barrett was kind to Brown,
offering him food, clothing, and an
unspecified amount of spending
money. John F. Allen, the overseer of the plant, was not so kind.

Brown relates the story of a
who missed several days

slave

work because of illness. Allen
ordered some men to go to the
slave's house and bring him to
the plant. The man, terribly ill
and hardly able to stand, was
stripped to the waist and tied to
of

Brown complained that even
on days when overseers didn't
employ the whip, the fear of punishment was always present. He
wrote of Allen and other overseers: "These men hardly deserve
the name of men, for they are
lost to all regard for decency,
truth, justice and humanity, and
are so far gone in human depravity, that before they can be
saved, Jesus Christ, or some
other Savior, will have to die a
second time."
During his time in Richmond,
Brown came to know a young
slave woman named Nancy. In
1836, after seeking permission
from their masters, they were
married and had three children.
But in August 1848, his mother's words again returned. Brown
was at work when he received
word that his wife and children
were in the local jail, where they
were being held until they were
sold the next morning. This
shocked him since he paid his
master $50 every year so
she would not be sold.
Brown pleaded with his master

wife's

When Brown was

master became ill. When he
and his brother were summoned to
his master's deathbed, "we ran
with beating hearts, and highly
elated feelings, not doubting that
he was about to confer upon us the
boon of freedom, as we expected to
be set free when he died," he
wrote. Rather, the family was
13, his

willed to Barrett's four sons,

the family

and

was separated.

"My son, as yonder leaves are
stripped from off the trees of the
forest, so are the children of
slaves swept away from them by
the hands of cruel tyrants," wrote
Brown, recalling the warnings of
mother when he was a child.

his

He was sent to 've with his former master's son, V/illiam, in
28

Spectrum

to

purchase Nancy, "but no tears of

The box contained three small
was stamped
"This side up with care." The

but

it

seemed a comparatively
pay for the precious

all

mine made the least impression
upon his obdurate heart," he
wrote. He tried to convince two

holes for air and

light price to

workers were not concerned with

men he knew to purchase her, but
they refused, telling him they

this,

boon of Liberty."
Upon hearing of Brown's success. Smith attempted to mail two

didn't think it was right to own
slaves. A Christian minister from

North Carolina purchased Brown's
wife.

As she was

chained

saw

led

down the road,
Brown

and as a result. Brown spent
a considerable portion of the journey upside down. In his narrative, he writes that he expected
blood to flow from his burst veins
while trapped in this position.

other slaves to freedom.

These attempts were thwarted,
and "the heroic young fugitives
were captured in their boxes and
dragged back

to

hopeless bond-

to the other slaves,

her. "I seized hold of her hand,

intending to bid her farewell,"
he wrote, "but words failed me."

Immediately

ration of his family.

determined

to free

Brown was

try to outrun the slave hunters, so

he worked on a means of escape
no one had ever tried before.

"One day, while I was at work,
and my thoughts were eagerly
feasting upon the idea of freethe idea suddenly flashed
across my mind of shutting
myself up in a box, and getting
myself conveyed as dry good to a
free state," he wrote.
.

.

.

Brown poured

oil

of vitriol on

his finger to disable himself from

work. He burned himself through
to the bone, and the overseer had
no recourse but to grant him a
leave of absence. Taking his
remaining $166, Brown took his
leave and went in search of someone who might assist him in his
escape. Samuel A. Smith, a White
shoemaker, offered his help for
the price of $86.
Smith arranged to have Brown
shipped as freight along the rail
the office of the AntiSlavery Society in Philadelphia. A
carpenter constructed a box measlines

all

seemed a comparatively light price

to

pay for the precious boon of liberty,''

— Henry

himself from

slavery. "I had suffered enough
under its heavy weight, and I
determined I would endure it no
longer" he wrote.
He knew it would be too risky to

dom

'^It

following the sepa-

to

uring two feet high, eight inches
deep, two feet wide, and three feet
long. Brown spent 26 hours in the
box with nothing more than a
bladder of water to sustain him.

Winter/Spring 2004

Eventually, the workers set the
for use as a stool, granting Brown a slight degree of comfort. "One half hour longer and
my sufferings would have ended
in that fate, which I preferred to

box down

slavery,"

he

a day after his

departure from Richmond, Brown
arrived in Philadelphia. The box
was taken to the office of the
Anti-Slavery Society at 107 North
Fifth Street. There, Wilham Still,
along with his colleagues, finally
freed Brown.
"I

and shook myself from

arose,

the lethargy into which I had fallen," wrote Brown, "but exhausted

much

nature proved too

for

my

frame, and I swooned away."
recovered, and according to

HeWilliam

Still's

memoir. The

Underground Railroad, published
in 1872.

Brown proceeded

to sing

a hymn praising the Lord for
hearing his prayers. "He was then
christened Henry Box Brown."
wrote Still.

"O what

age," wrote Still.

on

trial,

Brown

Smith was put
and sentenced

convicted,

to eight years in prison.

Brown

remained

in

Philadel-

phia for a shoxt time, then
made his way to Massachusetts.
traveled throughout New
England and related his story at

He

said.

More than

"Box''

ecstatic

joy

thrilled

numerous

He

anti-slavery

meetings.

created a panorama. "MiiTor of

Slavery." that depicted his

life

as a

and his escape. He exhibited
the panorama in the free states
until he fled to England when the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was
passed, which requu-ed people to
slave

retm-n escapees to slavery.
In England, he continued to
speak against slavery. He was
known to be living in Wales in
1864. according to the African-

American Registry. No documents
of his life after 1864 exist:

it

is

unknown when he died. \\Tiile not
much is known about his death,
his

accomplishments while alive

are forever etched in history.

[For further details on

the

life

of

through every nerve and fiber of
my system." wrote Brown. "Long

slaves, see

had seemed my journey, and
ribly hazardous had been

Henry Box Brown. Written by Himself.
1851. and The Underground Railroad.

attempt

to

gain

my

ter-

my

birthright:

Henry

Bo.x

by William

Brown and efforts
The Narrative of the

to

free

Life of

Still.]

29

M^

In a small Pennsylvania town, the federal government

brought to

trial

38

men

for helping slaves escape

by Rachel Fiedler

What

began as a fight for
freedom by escaped slaves

the first armed
resistance against slavery. Edward
Gorsuch, a Quaker slave owner,
believed the world outside slavery
couldn't compare to the safety and
security he could yirovide. The
place was Christian. Pennsylvania; the time, September 1851.
escalated

into

,

ZQ

Two

years earlier, four slaves

had escaped from
in Maryland and

their plantation
fled to Pennsyl-

vania. In mid-September,

Edward

Gorsuch confronted his slaves in
an attempt to reclaim them, but
faced a bloody battle, one which
he wouldn't survive.
In 1850, Congress had passed a
law stating, "The judges of the

Superior Courts of the Territories
shall grant certificates to such
with authority to
claimants
take and remove such fugitives
from service or labor ... to the
State or Territory from which such
persons may have escaped or fled."
This was the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850, which bestowed the right to
all slave owners to recapture their
.

.

.

.

.

.

Spectrum

escaped slaves. The enactment of
this law provided Gorsuch with
the legal authority to hunt down
his escaped slaves and return

them

to his plantation.

In Parker's account of the
event, which appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly in February
1866, he claimed Gorsuch and
Kline threatened to burn down

farm, signaling other Blacks and
Whites to come to Parker's aid.
Parker insulted Gorsuch about
his religion, enraging Dickinson
and causing him to fire upon the

wasn't a sense of
ownership that prompted Gorsuch to find his
slaves, but a feeling of
betrayal, disrespect, and
It

loss of reputation.

As

a

practicing Quaker, Gor-

such had treated his
slaves well, and occasionally paid

them

for per-

sonal work; he believed
his slaves had better
lives than freed Blacks.
The four refugees had
sought aid at the home
of William Parker, a
leader in the Lancaster
Black Self-Protection
Society, after escaping

from Gorsuch's plantation. In his memoirs, The
Freedman's Story, Parker describes how he
freedom as a teenager after beating his

fled to

own master and began
work on a farm in
Christiana: "I was now
at the beginning of a
new and important era
in

my

life

...

I

Samuel Hopkins and Peter Woods, two of the survivors of the Christiana Riot
1851, returned in 1896 to the site where one died and two were wounded.

longed to cast

off

the chains of servitude, because
they chafed my free spirit." Parker rose to high status among
Blacks in the area by becoming
an avid, violent fighter against
slavery. His defiance of Gorsuch
and his party led to the outbreak
of the riot.
Two days before the riot, Gorsuch gathered his son, Dickinson, his nephew, Joshua, and three

other men, and went toward
Christiana. Once in Pennsylvania
the group received help from

Marshal Henry H. Kline
arrests of the slaves.

for the

Meanwhile

at Parker's farm, a spy informed

him

of a party coming to capture
the escaped slaves.

Winter/Spring 2004

the house and would begin to
shoot all those inside if Gorsuch's
slaves were not turned over immediately. The White men entered
Parker's home.

Kline and Gorsuch attempted to
climb the stairs to reach Parker
and a friend: according to Parker,
"a pitchfork with blunt prongs"
was thrown down at them.
It
hit no one. but caused
Gorsuch to retreat to the front
lawn. Parker blames Kline for flring the first shots while Gorsuch's party stood by its story
that the first shots came from
inside the house after they fled
to the front lawn.
Within moments of the first
shots,

an alarm sounded across the

in

Black man. Others began to shoot
Edward and Dickinson Gorsuch, wounding Dickinson: Edward Gorsuch, still able to fight,
headed toward the main house.
Armed men surrounded Edward Gorsuch. "They were too late:
the negroes rushed up. and the
firing began," recounted Parker
at

in his detailed account of the story.

The men encircled the slave
owner and violently beat him to
death, said W.U. Henel. author
of The Christiana Riot and the
Treaso?i Trials of 1S51.

The nearly fifty Black men who
fought against the seven White
men from Marx^land only suffered
minor wounds, including Parker
who was shot in the shoulder.
31

Hanway with five

specific charges,
including that, "He, with a large
number of armed persons forcibly
prevented the execution of the
United States Fugitive Slave Law
and levy treason against the
United States." A trial against
those assisting Parker began on

-,-«<?^~

November

24, 1851.

Prosecutor John W. Ashmead
appeared to have the court in his
favor due to the Fugitive Slave Act.
In the closing days, however, Judge
Grier addressed the jury and declared, "That the persons engaged
it are guilty of riot and murder
cannot be denied. But riot and

in
's.i^ *i^^l»

!•;

«

/\f

murder are offenses against the
State Government. It would be a
dangerous precedent for the Court
and jury in this case to extend the
crime of treason by construction
in doubtful cases." Fifteen minutes later, the jury returned with

f'ST»i^5:"-.
4-t^
"/>*
'

^

William Parker's

home, runaway slaves sought refuge. The fighting
in the death of a slave owner from Maryland.

unfolded and ended

Four

of Gorsuch's men, along
with Kline, fled during the outbreak of the riot and were unhurt,
but Edward Gorsuch lay dead on
the lawn; Dickinson, nearly dead,

to Gov.

had eighty shots that pierced

in the aftermath of the riot. Thirty-

his

William Johnson of Penn-

sylvania demanding justice for
the murder which took place in
his state.

The

issue of treason

still

lingered

a verdict of "not guilty."
Although the Christiana Riot
was the first recorded violent fight
against slavery there still had
been previous uprisings against
White slave owners. Twenty years
earlier on August 22, 1831 religious leader, Nat Turner led more
than fifty others in the murders of
fifty- eight Whites.
After seeing what he believed to
be a sign from God, Turner gath-

body. However, the son survived

When Henel interviewed friends who knew Dickhis wounds.

^^I

longed

to cast off the

chains of servitude^

inson in his later years, they described his still visible scars,
"Thirty-one years after he was
shot his body prepared for bur-

because they chafed

my free spirit/'

—William Parker

—

was 'pitted like a sponge' with
the marks of the 'Christiana
Riot.'" The Pownall family had
tended to him in the immediate
moments after the fighting and
most likely saved his life.
Mixed feelings ran through the
United States after word spread
ial

Black man's defiance of slave
owners and
law. Only seven
of a

l.

days after the
vania Freeman

32

•

.

i

the Pennsylblished a letter

't,

eight

men were

charged with treatwo of the White
came upon the farm,

son, including

men who

Castner Hanway and Elijah Lewis.
Parker and many other Black men
there on September 11 had already
fled to Canada fearing what would
result once people found out about
the Black resistance.

The U.S. and Maryland indicted

ered a group of men and killed his
master, Joseph Travis, and nearly
sixty other men, women, and children, reported the Richmond
Constitutional Whig a day after
the riot broke out. The Blacks'
revolt lasted thirty-six hours until
the militia came and the Whites'
side was able to over-power the
slaves.

The Richmond Enquirer

Spectrum

described the uprising as: "a parwolves rush-

cel of blood-thirsty

ing

down from the Alps." The milmore than one hundred

itia killed

Blacks, not all of whom were involved in the overthrow.
During the fighting. Turner
escaped, but was later captured
by a farmer, stated the American
Beacon of Norfolk. Turner was
charged with rebellion and was

hanged in November.
Decades before the Civil War,
slaves started to slowly rally
against their White slave owners
in order to achieve freedom. The
Christiana Riot and the Nat
Turner Rebellion signified turning points in American history;
they provided an example and a
following for other Blacks to unite
and fight against slavery.
information see The
Freedmans Story, by William Parker:
The Christiana Riot and the Treason
Trials of 1851, by W.U. Hensel. Contact
Moores Memorial Library at 610-593[For

further

6683 or visit their web
www.christinalibrary.org]

site

at

EO.WARO OQESmH'i

INOICTF.O FO»»TREAr;n>

US
^'^.'^''•"^C.N

CIRCUIT COURT
E 0. P^

ftUn T .IC^I
^ft<^TNER HANWAY

C0:RSUCH.
"

.Or --'BALTI'MORf CQ.-MD,;;^

JOSEPH SCAt^LET

*..n

.

\JAH LEVflB

'-JAMES JAf.KSnN
rrnRCE WILLIAMS

'

.lACOH MnnHv:

CFORHE PEED
aENJ/VMlM JOHNSON
1. DANIEL CAULSBERRY
in AL'^^QM

The United States
indicted 38 men
for treason under

HENRY CREEN
ELIJAH CL^RK
14. JOHN HQLLIDAY

12,

!3

the Fugitive Slave

Act

WILLIAM WILLIAM*;
lS.RENJ:P?> •7 JHHN MORP.A^I

'r^,

for assisting

slaves

in

what

became known as
the Christiana

-

"?,EZfKlEL THnMPSn-'
!3:

riot.

A monument,

PEPMSLEY

U.WILUIAW BP.0WM.2Nr

THOMAS

fJliTLtR

^D.-COLLISTE? '^-mSOM

about nine feet

22

and a state
historical marker
commemorate the

i^-

tall,

fight for

freedom.

S6:L-Vr!S C"'"
27. PT'^'"^

-^
"""

i
m

ON
Pennsylvania Quakers defied federal law

North

to help slaves escape into the
by Jonathan Gass

A

reverent hush pervades
the Society of Friends

during unprogrammed

meetings. Quakers silently contemplate their lives, speaking
only when driven by a powerful
conviction that the word of God
was granted to them to benefit
others. Their convictions prove
a powerful force as they speak
out to fulfill their duty to God
by confronting the abomination
of slavery.

Quakers settled in America,
and predominately Pennsylvania, in the late seventeenth

century,
fighting

and quickly began
slavery. William Penn

founded Pennsylvania as a
haven from the persecution
Friends faced in England, and

road to bring slaves from other
states to freedom.

made a

umbia

state.

In 1688, a group of Quakers in

Germantown became

the first
Americans to speak out against

in

Col-

of the Meetinghouse. Millville

they

wrote.

They

sinners,

and forced

sins

upon

others; they paid overseers to

whip disobedient
drove
wives,

slaves

to

slaves,

and

husbands and children

to

member Robert

Mosteller says
to the

no direct connection

separate owners.
The Quakers' struggle to abolish slavery continued until 1775,
when they officially organized
the Society for the Relief of Free

ville

Negroes Unlawfully Held in
Bondage, the first abolitionist

ground Railroad sites.
Mosteller says Pennsdale

gram

home

village

splitting apart families, selling

life?"

gion, or ethnicity.

tion of slavery in his

a

County

adultery by

his

believed that slave traders were

a place of free expression for all
people regardless of race, reli-

Penn, a slave owner, did little
advance the freedom
of Blacks, but the Quaker principles he embraced led the
Friends to protest the institu-

Millville,

founded by
Quakers in 1768, may have had
a connection to the Underground Railroad. Some current
members of the Millville Meeting claim slaves were hidden in
Quaker homes or the basement

slave for all the time in

group in America. Under pressure from abolitionists, the
Pennsylvania legislature enacted a gradual emancipation pro-

to directly

34

slavery. "Is there any that
would be done or handled in this
manner? [That is] to be sold, or

which prohibited
slave-owners from purchasing
slaves, and made all slaves born
before March 1, 1780 indentured
in 1780,

servants to be released at the

age of 28.
Victory in Pennsylvania didn't
calm the Quakers' passionate
opposition to slavery, and many
assisted the Underground Rail-

secret

can

Underground Railroad
determined, though

be

some history books cite Milland Berwick as Under-

Quakers assisted runaway
slaves.

Underground Railroad

activity started in the village

as early as the 1780s, continuing through the Civil War,
according to Pennsdale Friends

member Jane

Keller.

The Quakers'

belief in rigor-

ous honesty created difficulty
when slave hunters seeking to
return runaways for bounty
arrived. Keller explains that the
conductors provided clever justification

for

their

activities.

Spectrum

Online

B@nkmg
from

First

Columbia

Our Internet banking service offers
you downright neighborly service
and the convenience of
full-service

Betsy Doan

(right)

and

Sheila Lunger

members

(left),

of the

View account balances,
details, interest rates and

•

Search by check number,

Millville

Society of Friends Meeting, discuss Qual
and

need

defend the nation. Qual opposing slavery and in promoting peaceful resolutions to critical
problems. They participated in American wars, often on the front
lines as combat medics, but always as conscientious objectors.
the

to

"Blacks are equally precious

how many

and valuable, so when someone asked if they were hiding
any slaves here, they would

assisted

no slaves here.'
They didn't consider them
slaves, but free people," she
says. "They believed they

this day.

say, 'there are

weren't really lying."

In order to keep some of
the slave hunters at bay,
Pennsdale conductors never
contradicted a legend claiming the burial ground behind the Meetinghouse was
haunted. "A sheep got caught
in the fence, and was bleating all night," Keller says.
"Someone said it was a
ghost, and they just never
said it wasn't one. It helped
keep people away."
It is

impossible to speculate

Winter/Spring 2004

slaves the

Quakers

24-hour access.

•

recent transactions.

amount

or date range

•

Export to your personal
finance software

•

Transfer funds

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slavery; their fight to treat all

people equally continues to

In addition to combating
racial

and

religious

Log onto
www.firstcolumbiabank.com today
for

a free "test drive."

and

It's

safe,

easy

secure.

intoler-

ance, Keller says some Quakers have turned their attention to incarcerated convicts.
They demonstrate against
the death penalty, and pro-

prisoners" civil rights,
including the availability of
proper medical care. Lack of
public exposure for their
cause hasn't made it any less
valuable than their protests
against military aggression

And
you're
as

of course, at First Columbia,
still

many

alwa\'S

welcome

to

make

transactions in person

as you'd

like.

tect

and racism, she says.
"Quakers just love losing
battles," says Keller, "bvit

have

to

keep fighting."

FIRST
=
COLLMBL\
^M
KA.NK

i<,

1

Kr
(JO.

570-784-1660
wwvv.firstcolunibiabank.com

we
Catau-isKi

•

BucklMn

35

by Christine VariieK and

X

T^

\

\

\

he train pulled into Penn
Station,

New York

City,

about 6:30 p.m. on a hotter-thannormal day in May 1996. The baggage on the train included a
wooden crate, 24" x 28" x 30". A
cell phone, a small quilt, a water
bottle
and a man had been
packed and smuggled on board

—

—

the train about seven hours earlier in Philadelphia.

Anthony Cohen was soaked
with sweat; the temperature rose
to almost 100 degrees that day.

He had
its

just

VefroniElar-'Prenkel

J

from Maryland to Canada. This
particular adventure mimicked
how Henry "Box" Brown escaped
slavery 150 years earlier, when
Samuel A. Smith boxed up Brown
and mailed him from Richmond
to Philadelphia.

At one

two workers on

point,

the train used Cohen's crate as a
seat. "I couldn't clear

couldn't sneeze,

he says.

"It

gave

of the fear that

my throat,

me

a real sense

Brown had when

he made his escape."

purest sense

—fear

Anthony Cohen was
inspired to found the

understand and appreciate the
reward of freedom when the lid
was opened hours later.
"It was crazy," says Cohen, sit-

Menare Foundation

all so

ting in the comfort of his office at

the Menare Foundation, located
in the Water's House at Pleasant
Fields in Germantown, Mary-

was horrible and exciting
same time. I'm claustroand I forgot that until I

land. "It

phobic,

got into the box."

after completing a

journey

to

Canada

that

traced the routes of

escaped slaves when
they

made

their

escape from the
South. The word
"menare" was used as
a passcode on the
Underground Railroad.
Arnold Gragston, a

Cohen had wanted to know how
a runaway slave might feel dur-

when meeting and

ing his escape; his imprisonment
on Amtrak was ^ust one small
segment of an 80 mile journey

transporting slaves
from Kentucky across
the Ohio River.

36

In order to learn more

about his family's history, Cohen
researched his genealogy, and
traced 10 different lineages,
including one that dates back 500
years. He also found he might be
a descendent of a runaway slave,
Patrick Snead.
This project triggered an inter-

of being

he could better

at the

family.

endured captivity in

discovered; thirst; intense heat;

exhaustion;

I

couldn't move,"

I

Cohen, born in 1964, was raised
Montgomery County, Maryland. His paternal great-grandfather was born during the Civil
War and adopted by a Jewish
in

conductor,

used

it

Spectrum

which he later pursued as a major at American
University. "For one of my classest in history,

es,

we had

to research a part of

history that wasn't really docu-

mented," he says.

"I

chose the

Underground Railroad."

From that decision evolved two
lengthy expeditions northward
and a career. In college, he had
"no idea I would be doing the
things I'm doing

pre-arranged, but for the rest of
the journey he relied on people
reaching out to him. "I got a couple who had seen me on TV and
had started following in their car
until they found me on the road,"
he says. They introduced themselves and told him they wanted
to put him up for the night.
Cohen explained he had to walk
to their house; he couldn't accept

Douglass had used to escape, and
the Erie Canal towpath in northern

New

York.

While traveling through Pennsylvania, one of Cohen's stops
was the Pine Forge Academy near
Pottstown, which is run by Black
Seventh Day Adventists. The
campus sits on the former site of
the Pine Forge; at the edge of

campus

is

the old forge master's
house. This was a

safe house for escaped slaves travel-

today."

Cohen

pursued

the history of the

Underground Railroad in Montgomery County by delving into books and
archives, gathering

from
museums, historic

information

societies. Realtors,

^Wo matter how^kTspfnng^^tp^std.
the Underground Railroad is, i
about survival. You go to places
where history took place; thafs
you capture the nuance.^'
Anthony Cohen

ing the Undergi'ound
is a
place in the base-

Railroad. "There

ment where bricks
have been removed
and there is actually
little tunnel that
goes fi'om the house
to the center of campus to a little lid that

a

—

and

post offices,
finding and visiting old stations, and talking to

lifts off,"

a ride.

The woman walked with

anyone who may have any information or connection to the secret
operation. What Cohen found was

Cohen to the house while her
husband went ahead with the car.

a type of void in the

rest of the six-and-a-half weeks,

"there

is

In 1996, he expanded his inves-

"There is only so much
you can learn from books," Cohen
tigation.

says, noting, "This
to

was the best

primary sources; talk
descendents and get a feel for
to find

what

is

was

like."

idea to follow

Canada was

on, every night for the

except one night

information."

way

From then

With

the

this,

an old route

to

born.

There were community fundraisers and local media coverage.
The National Parks Conservation

when he checked

into a hotel in Rochester,

New

York, he had people putting him
up the entire time. "Word of
mouth, Internet, phone; it was
like the Underground Railroad

sometimes, lecturing

Winter 2003/Spring 2004

the house was being searched,
they could escape and get out."

if

Cohen

also

heard stories of

racism at the academy. One student kept asking him if he had
walked to the campus. She couldn't believe he walked through a
small village that sits two to
three miles

out.-;idi'

nf Pott,
for schools

as a stagecoach route to Baltimore, a train line that Frederick

was

says,

organizations. From Sandy
Spring, Maryland, through Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Cohen fol-

motorcycles."

night of lodging

Cohen

believed people,

A typical day in Cohen's journey involved covering between
10 and 25 miles, investigating
safe houses and tunnels, reading
through public records, and
or

first

"it's

just unfolding," he recalls.

Association set up a website,
which included his itinerary and
routes he would follow. A private
donor provided a cell phone.
"From Washington D.C. 1 used
foot, boat, rail, horse and buggy;
any methods that would have
been used during the time of slavery," says Cohen. "No cars, no

His

pointing out.

lowed various routes, trailing old
maps, sites, and paths. They
were as intricate as alleys from
house to house within a town,
and obvious thoroughfares such

Corn s hacker at the
Menare Foundation's,
plantation

^,

is-^'^'^

37

"She said, 'You didn't walk
through there, did you?'" says
Cohen. "'I told her I did, and she
said, 'Because that's where the
Klan is.'" Cohen asked the students
to explain, and that's when he
heard different stories of racism.
One girl explained how she
experienced
prejudice
while
Christmas shopping. She placed a
Santa Claus hat on her head,
intending to buy it when she got
done picking out some gifts.
When she got to the counter, the
cashier saw the hat on her head
and called security. The student
told Cohen the cashier said, "This
nigger's trying to steal this hat."
The police were summoned, but
the girl was cleared. They understood she wasn't trying to steal
the hat. Other students told of

how

they, too,

were called

"nig-

ger" while in the store.

In another instance, some of the
boys on campus were chased by
cars and had racial slurs shouted
at them. Cohen recalls hearing
how every night all the buildings
were locked down; it was the boys'
responsibility to do this. Several
times, he was told, there were
cars with their lights out and
engines running, parked on the
service road that runs through
campus. "When the boys would
come to close up," says Cohen,
"the cars would hit the gas and
try to run the students down."
The students were laughing at
these stories, and Cohen didn't
understand why. "We know we're
not 'niggers,"' they told him. They
also explained they study hard,
read the Bible, and know they are
good people. "They said, 'We're
not going to be distracted from
our mission to get an education,"'
says Cohen. "I thought that was
pretty powerful."

For the most part, Cohen didn't
experience racial hatred while
making his journey. "We got one
e-mail that said, 'Tell the Black

guy

38

to

come

to this address. We'll

put him up for the night,'" says
Cohen. "It wasn't signed by anybody, but it had an address. It
just didn't

one offer

I

seem healthy. That's
didn't take up. The

people who did this originally, I'm
sure, faced worse," he says.
While he didn't experience
much racial tension on his trip,
he did run into other obstacles.
Urban development had replaced

and

fields with shopping
highways, factories, and
private properties. "Old routes

forest

malls,

had

I

the story of the Underground
Railroad is, it's about survival,"

Cohen says. "You go to places
where history took place; that's
where you capture the nuance."
Two years later, Cohen was
again walking an Underground
Railroad trail, but this time he
followed a more western corridor,
starting in Mobile, Alabama, continuing through Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan to Windsor, Ontario. "A

good, good portion

we did on the
Mississippi River,

mapped

often dropped off
or

changed from

their 19th centu-

ry

origins,"

says.

"I

he

had

to

re-route often."

Sometimes
progress reverses the effect on the
original setting. Cohen explains
that most people in the 19th century were ignorant of the environment and the damage they
caused. Today, as more people are
concerned, one finds restored
green land and nature preserves
where, in a slave's time, there

was

industry.

While traveling through Birdin-Hand, Cohen met a Mennonite
man who offered a ride by horse
and buggy. "As a child, he knew
his great-grandfather, a
of the River Brethren,

member
who told

him

stories of transporting runaways," says Cohen. The man
showed Cohen the route his
great-grandfather took, which
today connects Bird-In-Hand and

Christiana.

Cohen reached Amherstburg,
six-and-a-half weeks

Ontario,

after he first started walking, but
understanding the cost of freedom overshadowed his sense of
accomplishment. Like a slave

who was

fortunate enough to
reach Canada, he was homesick,
exhausted, and alone in a strange
place. "No matter how inspiring

Above

The plantation house in the 1
house today. When the restor

left:

plantation

serve as a

living history

farm that

a lot by land," he says. He spent
16 hours in a box when he smuggled himself from Memphis to
Chicago.
At one point, his legs started
cramping. "I either had to open
the box and stretch my legs or
scream," Cohen says. "Either
way, I risked getting caught, but I
had to do something." He chose to
open the box and was lucky not to
be discovered.
After arriving in Chicago,

Cohen backtracked

to

Memphis

Spectrum

will hi

and continued the

By

trip

on

this time, Cohen's

foot.

Seneca Creek State Park. Menare

Menare

received a long-term lease through

Foundation, which works to document, preserve, and restore
Underground Railroad safe houses and environments, was well
under way. "Our work originated
from the 1996 walk to Canada,"
says Cohen. "Once we started,
I've never looked back."
In 1997, Cohen worked with
Oprah Winfrey to help her prepare for her role of Sethe in
Beloved, a movie based on Toni
Morrison's book of the same
name. For two days and nights,

the

Maryland Department

of

Natural Resources Curatorship
Program. In exchange for restoring the house and grounds, the
foundation gets to use the premises rent-free.

Volunteers have been a big help
restoring the house. "People

in

are excited to come and help,"
says Catrina Williams, director of
for the Menare
Foundation. "The kids don't want

demon-

educational programs. 'This isn't
going to be one of those museums

When Williams

started with the
tal-

web design and research.
we started this project. I'm

doing a

lot

more than

There are two
the

grounds;

their

way

fields for crops

on

some deer make

across with fawns on

their heels. "Look at that," says

Cohen. "That's beautiful."

Cohen explains that the

17-1/2

acre lot will be used to grow crops

that were grown in the 19th century. "We're going to

grow

flax,"

says Cohen. "From that, we'll

make

the interpreters' clothes.
Nothing will be store bought."
The other 22-1/2 acre lot will be
used as a "mai'ket garden" and
the products grown there will be
sold to help finance the operation
all

of the plantation.

"When people come, they'll till
the fields with plows pulled by
mules and horses. They'll harvest
tobacco, corn, everything by hand,
just the

way

it

where you

can't touch anything.
going to be hands-on," says
Cohen. "You get to play with stuff

It's all

and

was done back

then," he says. "We're going to

have cows, chickens, sheep, goats,
anything that would've been here
at that time."

Williams notes that Montgomery County kept excellent
agricultural records, and Cohen
agrees. "We know who was planting what, when," he says. And
with that information, the plantation will be as close to the real

get your

hands

Cohen plans

just design

and research," she says with a
wry smile.

Winter 2003/Spring 2004

will hold

strations at the site, as well as

to leave."

"Since

she lived on a plantation and was
given a taste of the hard life of a
fugitive slave. After experiencing
this, Winfrey was inspired to
change the format of her show.
"She was ready to call it quits
with the show, but after this, she
knew she couldn't give it up," says
Cohen. "People had worked too
hard in order for her to get where
she was and she realized she
couldn't just thi'ow that away."
Currently, the foundation is
restoring an old plantation in

home.

The foundation

host school groups and present

ents on

Os before restoration began. Above: The
work is completed, tiie plantation will
tours and educational programs.

their

development

foundation, she focused her

m

thing as possible.
Eventually, it will be a working
farm, a piece of living history. "I'll
be living here for the first year or
so," says Cohen, "just to make
sure ever>i;hing is up and running smoothly." Besides Cohen,
the interpreters who work there
will also call the plantation house

to

trip in the spring

dirty."

he says.

make a third
and summer of

2004. His starting point this time
Savannah, Georgia, and he
will attempt to follow the path of
fugitive slave Patrick Snead to
Canada. Snead left no record of
his route to freedom, and Cohen
knows it will be a challenge to
document. "I'll be talking to
white Sneads and black Sneads,
and anyone else with a story, just
is

to see

what

I

can find out." he says.

Cohen has accomplished what
few historians have been able to
do capture history as it transcends time. "History linked communities geographically." Cohen
says. "History lives with people,
basically in the heart and mind."

—

Until recently, the legacy of the

Underground Railroad was largely
overlooked. Station houses were
left to decay. People and their stories were lost in the fog of history.
Anthony Cohen has gone thousands of miles out of his way to
recover what time has forgotten,
and before he's done, he will have
gone thousands of miles more.
[For further information on the Menare

Foundation,

visit

www.menare.org or

its

web

call

301-601-8700.

Correspondence should be sent

site

to:

at

The

Menare Foundation. 12535 Milestone
Manor Lane. Germantown, MD, 20876.]

39

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•

ABOLITION'S

NEWSPAPERS
Anti-slavery advocates appealed to the public

through the media, but met resistance
by John

Elliott

and Christine Varner

residents of Alton, Illinois, were

The

furious.

They suiTOunded the ware-

house where the Rev. Elijah
Lovejoy kept his printing press.
With torches and guns, the men

moved toward the building, determined to
destroy Lovejoy and his press. On November 7, 1837, they succeeded. Lovejoy.
a graduate of the Princeton University

School of Theology, was dead at age 35.
Lovejoy's crusade began in 1833 when
he began publishing the St. Louis Observer.
Initially, his paper was devoted to
Christian politics, but its focus changed
after he witnessed the death of Francis
J. Mcintosh, a slave who was burned at

the stake.

He became an ardent

supporter of abo-

harsh editorials made him
an enemy of slaveholders and their sup-

lition,

and

porters.

his

Enraged

citizens believed the

rights of free speech didn't extend to those

who challenged

the public peace.

Anti-abolitionist committees

had been

July 1836, a
mob destroyed his first press. "Wliat a
comment on the freedoms of our institutions!" he wrote in a letter to his brother
dated July 30, 1836. "Though cast down.
I am not destroyed, nor in the least discouraged; and am now busily engaged in

formed

to stop Lovejoy; in

endeavouring to make arrangements for
starting the 'Observer" again," wrote
Lovejoy. Fearing further violence, he

moved to Alton. Illinois, and continued
publishing the Observer.
Soon, the citizens of Alton turned on
him. The warehouse containing his press
was attacked several times; each time
Lovejoy replaced a press, the mob came
back and destroyed it. but he refused to
be silenced.
In 1837. after his fourth printing press
arrived, a mob again descended on the
warehouse. In an attempt to burn Lovejoy
and his supporters out of the building, the
mob tried to set fire to the roof. This
attempt was thwarted when Lovejoy and
Royal Weller. one of his supporters crept
out of the building, pushed over the mob's
ladder, and ran back inside. The mob
again attempted to light the roof on fire:
Lovejoy and Weller again tried to knock
over the ladder, but this time they were
spotted and the mob fired upon them.
Both Weller and Lovejoy were wounded;
Lovejoy was shot five times. Weller survived; Lovejoy made it to the second floor
before he died. Lovejoy's supporters had
no choice but to abandon the building.
The mob rushed in, seized the press, and
threw it out the window, smashing it.
Fearing fin-ther violence, Lovejoy's supporters didn't retrieve his body until the
next day. His funeral wagon was jeered
as it made its way toward his house,
according to the Alton Observer.
Following his death, churches began

supporting the abolitionist movement. Today, Loveis regarded as the first martyr for both freedom
of the press and the aboHtion of slavery.
Lovejoy, and other abolitionists, realized newspapers were a weapon in the war against slavery.
"These newspapers were started as a reform
movement in the North and were made to expose
the ills of the society and to make a change," says

joy

Dr. Jeffrey Davis, associate professor of history at

Bloomsburg University.
Some people reacted negatively to Black
papers, explains Dr. Walter Howard, associate professor of history at Bloomsburg University, adding

^^I

am

—

in earnest

equivocate

—

I will

known

as one of the most radical abolitionists.
"Garrison had the power to reach intellectuals and
higher thinkers since he was White and expressing
his views to a different class," Davis says.
During the Jackson administration (1829-1837),
The Liberator was censored in the South. Each
paper that crossed into the South was considered to have committed a libel, according to U.S.
Postal regulations.
Through words. Garrison fought for the rights of
slaves and free Blacks and supported women's
rights. At one point. Garrison even burned a copy of
the Constitution to protest slavery. The Liberator
was published for three decades.
Perhaps the most famous

I will

and I

will

abolitionist newspaper was
The North Star. Founded in 1847
by Frederick Douglass, a former
slave. The North Star influenced
Whites and Blacks alike to join
the anti-slavery movement.
Douglass originally worked with
Garrison on The Liberator until

—
inch —

not excuse

will not retreat a single

/

not

be heard.

^^

—William Lloyd Garrison
that

many

abolitionist writers, especially Whites,

were scorned by their communities and considered
outcasts. Opposition was great in the North, where
some felt that compromise was needed to deal with
the issue of slavery. By the mid- 1830s, newspapers
in the South didn't even report on abolitionist issues.

Some

made

a capital offense for editors to
in some places, people faced
imprisonment for reading an abolitionist paper.
Rev. Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm
started the first Black-owned and operated
newspaper in 1827, Freedom's Journal. In the first
states

it

write about slavery,

and

The

Cornish and Russwurm declared, "We wish to
plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken
for us. Too long has the public been deceived by misrepresentation in things that concern us dearly."
The paper featured stories about successful Blacks
and was the first newspaper that listed marriage,
birth, and death announcements. While the life oi Freedom's Journal was only two years, it inspired others
to start abolitionist papers. By the start of the Civil
War, over 40 such papers were being published.
January 1, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison, a
White abolitionist, published the first issue of
The Liberator. He believed Blacks were the equals
of Whites and worked to provide freed slaves with
the means to return to Africa if they wished.
issue,

On

The Liberator's circulation averaged 1,500, but
sometimes ran as high as 3,000. Garrison became

42

they fell into a disagreement.
Douglass believed the Constitution
could be used to fight slavery, and
Garrison, who believed the Constitution supported
slavery, felt betrayed. Garrison attacked Douglass in
an article in The Liberator; Douglass retaliated by
starting his own paper and the two never reconciled.
The first issue of The North Star opened with a
dedication to his fellow Blacks: "To Our Oppressed
Countrymen: We solemnly dedicate The North Star
to the cause of our long oppressed and plundered
fellow countrymen."
Douglass exposed the horrors inflicted upon the
Blacks and brought the secrets of White men to light.
He sought to explain the destructiveness of slavery's
injustice to all people. In The North Star, he wrote,
"What you suffer, we suffer; what you endure; we
endure.

We

are indissolubly united, and

must

fall

or

flourish together."

While

his

peers

and

friends praised The North

was

^^We wish to plead

disturbed to find a paper
edited and written by an exslave. They didn't believe a
slave knew how to read and

others spoken fot

Star, the rest of society

and

incensed
many because the education
of Blacks was illegal.
The paper was popular,
but production costs were
high; Douglass often used
write,

been deceived by

this

concern us dearly

Spectrum

ur
s.

own

savings to fund the paper. In 1851, finanhardships led him to merge papers with
Gerrit Smith. The newspaper was renamed
Frederick Douglass' Paper and gave Blacks hope by
displaying the skills of Black writers, highlighting
the achievements of other Blacks, and providing
information about abolitionist rallies and meetings.
his

cial

,

^^

While the Right of Suffrage

notoriously ignorant^ vicious

is

White

conceded

to

and drunken

Constitutional denial to Black
freely secured to

workers' rights. The Tribune was the most influential
American newspaper during the antebellum and Ci\il
War eras. Greeley's forceful editorials and public
speeches were one of the main reasons why Abraham
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Men dominated many of the abolitionist papers,
but women also had a voice. Marv Ann Shadd Carv

thousands

[Wliites] a

men, of Political Rights

men is monstivusly unjust "

—Horace Greeley
The paper was published weekly until 1860, when
became a monthly for three years.

it

"Douglass' ongoing battle against slavery made
of the most powerful abolitionists during
that time," Davis says.

him one

James

G. Birney, a former slave-holder turned

founded the Philanthropist in
January 1836. Prior to publishing the paper, he
freed his slaves in 1834 and became vice-president
of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He was ostracized in Kentucky; his anti-slavery writings were
kept from the mail and he had a difficult time findabolitionist,

ing a printer for the Philanthropist. Frustrated, he
moved to Cincinnati. Despite opposition, the
Philanthropist became highly influential in the

Northwest.
Horace Greeley, editor and publisher of TJie New
York Tribune, used his position to speak out against
slavery and was an advocate for women's suffrage and

own

cause. Too long

have

Canada after the passage of the Fugitive
Slave Act of 1850, where she became the fu'st female
newspaper editor while working for T7?e Provincial
Freeman. She attacked many of the Black churches
in the United States and Canada for supporting
slavery and urged Blacks to move to Canada.
At the start of the Civil War, Gary came back to
the United States and recruited Blacks for the
Union army. She established a school for Blacks
in Washington, D.C. In 1870. she graduated from
Howard University with a degree in law, making
her the first female Black lawyer in the United
fled to

States.

These abolitionist newspapers angered many,
but at the same time showed the positive things
Blacks were doing for the world, gave Blacks motivation, and worked to change views of the Whites.
The cause for liberation created an environment
favorable to free expression. This sei'ved to preview, and perhaps to inspire,
social reforms in the future,
and to prove that free expression as a

means

of fighting for jus-

tice benefits all people.

Too long has the public

lisrepresentation in things that

—John Russwainn
Winter/Spring 2004

[Contributing to this article was Rosalie
For further information, see My
Bondage and M>- Freedom by Frederick
Douglas. John Brown Russwurm: The
Stoiy of Freedom's Journal. Freedom's
Yiirasits.

Journey by Mary Sagarin.

I

Will

Be

Heard: the Life of William Llov'd Garrison
by Doris Faber, and Horace Greely and the
Republican Pai-ty by Jeter Allen Isely.]

43

/OiiLeiTiporary voices
African- American pubiications emphasize Black interests
by Michelle Johnson Sorher

Newspapers,

just as in
the antebellum era, are
an essential part of the

Black community. Those historical

those civil liberties. We just want
to "inform the African-American
community of what's going on,"
says Carter.

aging editor of the Philadelphia
Tribune.

The two

of Pennsyl-

largest

vania's Black newspapers concen-

papers came into

trate

on issues that

direct-

existence to denounce

ly affect Blacks, including

slavery as well as to
give Black journal-

culture,

ists,

racism,

who were denied

tion,

police,

work on White-owned
established newspa-

ment,

pers, a place to prac-

"We cover

tice their craft.

Today,

African-American

per-

says Randolf,
"like how a presidential
candidate can affect our
spective,"

Supreme Court ordered
desegregation, only 60
all

entertainthe job

sports,

market, and city business.
[things] from an

a half-century after the

percent of

govern-

ment, business, educa-

community."
While both agree their
local papers report on
Black issues, those sto-

estab-

newsrooms have
at least one Black

lished

reporter, according to

a survey conducted by

ries

the American Society of

page news. The articles
on the second or third
pages of the Black newspapers usually end up at
the back of local White
newspapers, if at all. The

Newspaper Editors.
Today Black newspapers exist to communicate current news
through the eyes of the
average African-Ameri-

often

aren't

front-

general circulation

local

can.

"We just want to
make sure Blacks get

paper's yearly coverage of

our piece of the pie,"
says Ulish Carter, managing editor of the New
Pittsburgh Courier.
Four Black publications circulate in Penn-

in Black History

sylvania

—

^the

Black

concentrated

Month,

says Randolf, while the

Black newspapers "pay
Alfred A.

Edmond Jr.

is

editor-in-chief of B\ack Enterprise,

one of the most successful magazines

in

the country.

New Pitts-

burgh Courier, Philadelphia Tribune, The Black
Suburban Journal, and The
Lincolnian. The New Pittsburgh
Courier and Philadelphia Tribune were created to inform and
educate Blacks on their rights;
today they continue to support

44

life is

that much attention to
the Black community all
year long," Randolf says.
difference
in
"It's
a
emphasis. We give [Black

With a readership of 4.8 million
there are 222 Black newspapers

issues]

the
National Newspaper
Publishers Association. "In the
founding years of the paper [we]
had to deal with 'overt raw
racism'," says Irv Randolf, man-

featured in the Sunday Edition of
the Philadelphia Tribune. Of the

in

One

more

detail."

of those special details is

African-American

newspapers

nationwide, the Tribune is the
only one to produce a Sunday as

Spectrum

—
Soon

after, Emerge, which focused on college-educated Blacks
began publication. Also in
1970, Black Enterprise

well as a daily edition

In each week's Sunday edition one
African country

was established.
Today it is the

is featured.
Africa is

leading magazine concentrating on

Black business.

mentioned
by the other
papers, says Randolf, "is in

"We

focus

on entrepreneurship, personal finance, career corporate
success,
and
wealth building," says
Alfred A.

Edmond

Jr.,

sen-

ior vice-president/editor-in-chief.

Edmond
cans

attributes the success

magazine

of the

di'ive for

to Black Ameriknowledge. "Aliican-

Americans are hungiy for the same
thing [as whites]." he says.
With a circulation of half a million. Black Enterprise has proven
as a valuable source for
Black information. In November
2003, Black Enterprise along with
Center City Productions, launched
a television show called the "Black
Entertainment Report."
The Philadelphia Tribune, the
New Pittsburgh Courier, the
Black Suburban Journal, and the
Lincolnian as well as almost 220
other newspapers and dozens
of magazines continue the tradiitself

tion

begun

first

in

1827

b\-

Freedom's Journal.
[Contributing

to

this

article

was Beth

Krysztoforski.]

casualty

figures."

Pittburgh
The New
Courier has also been instrumental for Black rights. Wendell
Smith, who became the paper's

2004

CELEBRITY

sportswriter in 1938, used his col-

umn

to denounce segregation in
the major leagues. The Courier
led the fight to get Blacks, like

''Duke

Jackie Robinson, into Major
League Baseball, says Carter.
Black magazines also play a
major part in communicating
Black issues to their audience.
The first Black magazine was
published by W.E.B DuBois, who
founded and edited The Crisis in
1910 as the voice of the National

at the Holidays'^
Celebrity Artist Series
presents

Rh}thm

a pocket-sized magazine containing similar articles and photographs to those in Ebony.
Edward Lewis launched Essence
in 1970,

aimed

at Black

& Brass

A Holiday Show
Thursday, December

14

8 pni

Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP). In

1945 John Johnson founded
Ebony, similar to LIFE but for the
Black community. About the
same time he also introduced Jet.

and Louis

Mir rani
Tickets

SI5

Haas Center
-Group Rates Available-

I lull.

SIO

Call .\'ow for

Haas Center Box

Premium Seating!
Office:

Mon— Fri,

12

570.389.4409

— 4 pm
Blnisl>ui^
ffe
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women.

Winter 2003/Spring 2004

45

SING XLd:
Kim and
to

tell

Reggie Harris use music and theater

the stones oCjiusilllderp-round Railroac
By

When

Kim and Reggie

Harris take the stage,
people pay attention.
Through songs and stories, the
Harrises bring to life the saga of

some

Christine Varner

schools in Philadelphia.

They

chose the Underground Railroad.
"At that time, there was no way to
know that our half-hour presentation of songs and stories would so
greatly influence our

and uncover
such a vibrant treasure of material," says
Reggie Harris.
In 1984, they released their first
lives

recording,

Music and

Underground RailThe Harrises
expanded on that
first recording in
the

road.

1998,
Steal
the

and released
Away: Songs of

Underground Rail-

road. "[These] songs

summer camp and sharpened

that led

musical skills at Temple
University where they both were

dom," the Harrises state in the

enrolled.

They performed in coffeehouses, clubs, and other ven-

Recently, the Harrises completed the one-act opera Friends

ues in the Philadelphia area; in
1976 they married and took their
show on the road.
In 1982, the Harrises were
asked to present an assembly for

of Freedom: An Underground
Railroad Story. The opera is
based on life experiences and historical facts encompassing the

46

and commuimportant information

many

of

them

to free-

notes.

Underground Railroad and the

is

opera-

available for

They have performed

Kennedy Center

for

at

the

Performing Arts in Washington,
D.C., the Boston Folk Festival,
the
Keswick Theater near
Philadelphia, and at hundreds of
schools across the nation,

where

they entertain, enlighten, and
inform audiences.
Besides their show about the
Underground Raihoad, the Harrises
perform other programs, includ-

"Dream

Tubman and

their relationships,

album

acclaim.

the

their traditions, passion, and resources
express their faith, strengthen

and

production to opera companies.
In the past ten years, the
Harrises have averaged over 300
shows per year. Their presentation "Music and the Underground
Railroad" has taken them across
the country and has won critical

torical

to

their

who made such an

reveal the hope,
power, and ingenuity of an enslaved
people who used

the Underground Railroad.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, the Harrises met in 1974 at

nicate

people

tion possible

ing

Alive!

A

Celebration

which tells the
well-known Black his-

of Black History,"
stories of

King,

figures

Jr.,

such as Harriet

Dr. Martin Luther

as well as other Blacks
for equality and

who have worked
justice.

Through song,

poetry,

and

sto-

they convey the story of the
Underground Railroad and the
struggle for Civil Rights in a
unique fashion that leaves audiences with an experience they will
not soon forget.
ries,

[For more information, call
Entertainment at (303) 814-1500 or
the website www.kimandreggie.com].

VNI
visit

Spectrum

SLAVERY'S VIRTUAL

TOUR

by Michelle Johnson Sorber
National Underground
The
Railroad Freedom

Center,
overlooking the Ohio River in
Cincinnati, will open in the sum-

mer

2004.

exhibits,

hopes

to

With five permanent
the Freedom Center
"educate the public

about the historical struggle to
abolish human enslavement and
secure freedom for all people,"
according to Steve DeVillez,
public relations coordinator.

Exhibits will take visitors on
a journey of freedom, examining the conditions of slavery,
abolitionists, and slave owners. The site will also take
them on a virtual journey of
escaping slaves fleeing to

Canada, the "warehouses"
used to house them before
their trips further south, and

the evolution of slavery and
the journey to freedom from
the pre-colonial period through
the Civil War.
Also included in the tour is
the impact of the international
slave trade, following the journey of a slave seeking freedom
on the Underground Railroad,
the people involved in the abolitionist movement, and the
continuation of racism after
the abolition of slavery.
With the journey behind you
the Freedom Center hopes you
leave, "feeling uplifted

and

[Contributing

to

the

story

-

and the
Central

Susquehanna

Valley

Making

a difference
since 1966

was

Christine Varner. For more information
visit the

Freedom

Center's website at:

www.undergroundrailroad.org]

fiED tlEriPiirio
by Michael Hollinger

21,2003

Feb. 4

-

29,

2004

I'll

A

0,

nu^r.uKVi

ENSEMBLE

The Alexandria Carry-On

2003
Emporium

20,

At Phillips

Serving Northeast Pennsylvania

feel-

Santaland Diaries
Dec. 9

and Radio

www.wwia.org

ing [your] voice [s] does make a
difference," says DeVillez.

H Cljristiijas Carol
Nov. 24 -Dec.

Public Television

A World Premiere'

March 18-21, 2004

POURING THE SUN
By Jay O'Callahan
The World's Greatest Storyteller!
April

1

-4,

2004

By Michael Frayn
The

"Mt.

Everest of comedies!"

April 21

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23,

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season op: EXCIIIIINIG lllVl; IWIEAMPfl
Ensemble at the Alvlna Krause Theatre
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Office: (570)

Winter 2003/Spring 2004

226 Center St. Bloomsburg PA 17815
784-8181 or 800-282-0283 or visit us on the web

at

www.bte.org!

47

^Br ^Br

enlisted in
the United States
Army, William Cathay carried
within him a deep secret. Like the

W

hile

W

performed garrison duty. It was
only his secret that made him dif-

comrades in Company

first

William Cathay was
Cathay Williams, the
documented African-Amer-

A, 38th United States Infantry, he

ican

woman

awoke each morning

sound
of the bugle, carried his musket

United States Army.
Williams was born in a small

over his shoulder, marched in unison with his fellow soldiers and

cabin in 1844. "[M]y father was a
free man but my mother a slave

rest of his

48

at the

[and]

I

dence,

was born near IndepenJackson County, Miss-

Williams said. Little else is
of her parents.
William Johnson, a wealthy

ferent.

ouri,"

actually

known

plantation owner, owned Williams.
At a young age, the Johnson
family moved her from the planta-

to

serve

in

the

tion

to

their

City, Missouri.

home

in Jefferson

She described her-

Spectrum

self as the family's

"house

some point before the
William Johnson died.
In the

summer

At
War,

girl."

Civil

of 1861,

Union

soldiers occupied Jefferson City

and deemed Williams a free
woman. A few months later however, she was forced to become a
civilian

worker

Union

soldiers

Arkansas.
she later

"I

8th Indiana
Rock,

for the

in

Little

did not

want

to go,"

revealing that
[Colonel Thomas Benton] "wanted
me to cook for the officers, but I
said,

had always been a house
did not

know how

girl

to cook."

and
She

learned quickly and was present at
numerous battles, including the
Battle at Pea Ridge.
As her unit moved into parts
of Arkansas and Louisiana, she

watched the soldiers burn cotton
fields and was in Shreveport when
the Union captured Confederate
gunboats and burned them on
the Red River. After more than
two years with the 8th Indiana,
Williams was assigned to work for
Gen. Phil Sheridan at Army headquarters in Shenandoah, according
author
Cathy Williams: From Slave to

to historian Philip Tucker,

of

Female Buffalo

Soldier.

When

Sheridan raided the Shenandoah
Valley, Williams was the cook and

washperson for his staff
"By this time, she had become
thoroughly militarized as a person. After her years of faithful
service, Cathay was almost completely acclimated to military life
as any hardened veteran in the
ranks," Tucker wrote. "Plenty of
good reasons existed to explain
such a transformation since she

had been

first

forced into service

during the fall of 1861. One of the
foremost of these was that military service was better than the
life she had experienced under
slavery," wrote Tucker.

On November

15,

iams, disguised as a

1866,

Will-

man named

William Cathay, enJisted in the
Army at St. Louis and joined the

Winter/Spring 2004

38th U.S. Infantry,

commanded by

Company

A,

Capt. Charles E.

Clarke. According to the St. Louis
Daily Times of Jan. 2, 1876,
Williams said, "The regiment I
joined wore the Zouave uniform
and only two persons, a cousin and
a particular friend, members of the
regiment, knew that I was a
woman. They never 'blowed' on me.
They were partly the cause of my
joining the army.

Another reason was 1 want-

guard and other duties while

in the
army," said WiUiams in her interview with the St. Louis Daily
Times. Not only did she guard railroads and perform garrison duty,
she also trudged through marches,
including a 540-mile hike between Fort Harker. Kansas, and
Fort Union, New Mexico. Because
Williams wasn't singled out in the
documented muster roles, she probably endured the marches as well
as am' man in her unit.
Williams was medically dis-

ed to make

my

charged

own

and

"Finally

living

on

August 14. 1868.
and wanted to

got tired

I

off. I played sick, complained of
pains in my side, and rheumatism in my knees," she told
the St. Louis Daily Times.
"The post surgeon." she
notes, "found out I was a

not be depen-

get

woman and

got

I

my

dis-

charge." At the time of her disCivil

charge, she

War

cannon

her

balls

initial

She

dent on relations or fiiends." By
signing her enlistment papers,
Cathay Williams became the first
female Buffalo Soldier. Today's military checks the backgi'ound and

medial history of all soldiers.
Medical checks were not required
at the time of Cathay's enlistment,
according to Spc. Oneasha R.

had served two years

later

moved

Colorado, where she

to

Pueblo.

made

a li\'ing

by cooking and washing clothes.
She married, but her husband
robbed her and left with her horses
and wagon. She had him arrested,
then moved to Las Animas. Colorado. She worked as a laundress

moved to
The 1900 fed-

a year before she

for

Trinidad. Colorado.

Sublett at Fort Belvou- battalion

eral census for Trinidad doesn't

headquarters, in Fairfax. 'V^irgina.
Cathay stood 5-foot-9 and was 22
years old at her enlistment. She

her.

was described by the examining

man

with black complexion, black eyes, and black hair.
If the surgeon or recruiting officer
found out Williams was a woman,
they kept it to themselves. Because
of the consequences of falsifying
military documents, it is unHkel>they knew the truth.
There is no record oi' \\'illiani.-^
ever facing direct combat, but she
apparently was a good soldier. "1
was never put in the guard house;
no bayonet was ever put to my

surgeon as a

back.

I

carried

mv musket and

did

of

three-year enlistment.

She may have

left

list

Trinidad

or died prior to the arrival of the

census-takers.

"On her own and defying convenCathay Wilhams shattered
stereot\T3es of both sex and race

tion,

while embracing a sense of both
adventure and patriotism," wrote

Tucker. WiUiams was not tn-ing to
make a point: she was merely tiythe
for

make

a li\'ing. She sunived
man. and caned a place
herself in American histor\'.

ing to

life

of a

[Contributing to this article was Beth
Roberts. For further information on Cathay

Williams,

read Cathy Williams:

From

Slave to Female Buffalo Soldier, by Philip
Tucker.}

49

n

n£T jjT^nn

S ciilpti

Edmonia Lewis overcame color barriers

to prove herself as

an

artist

by Alexander Agard
he Black

artists'

quest for recognition met strong

opposition from the White estabhshment. Slaves

were viewed as unable

to

make

anythin:

an outlet, something that was colorblind and
didn't remind her of the

called her, needed

creative. "African-American writers were

struggle.

looked upon as an anomaly," says Dr. Betina
Entzminger, assistant professor of English
at Bloomsburg University. "There were
many well-known authors such as the slave
poet Phyllis Wheatley and journalist
Frederick Douglass, who had to have other
White writers attest to the fact that they
actually created their works," she says.
Edmonia Lewis refused to let color barriers stop her, becoming a pioneer for
Black sculptors and artists. She
desired to be seen as a person

The decision to become an artist was met
with hesitation. Even

girl,

with

little

skill,

those who believed in
her thought her dream
was impossible. Lewis
confided in the Rev.
Highland Garnet who,
according to the New
York Times of Dec. 29,
1878, told the young

a legitimate

one;

it is

my

better to

grandly than to succeed in a little way!"
Taking Garnet's advice, with financial
help from her brother,
she enrolled at Oberlin

and not just
a sculptor from
Black and Native

fail

artist,

American heritage.
She was well
aware of her

College in Ohio in 1859.

father's use of
the Underground
Railroad to escape
slavery and of her
mother's struggle
with being a Chip-

pewa woman

"God bless you

However, her time at
Oberlin would be short.
"Trouble came when
she was accused of poisoning two White classmates. Awaiting the
arraignment, she was
abducted by a white mob
and brutally beaten,"
wrote Stephen May in
1996
the September

in

a White society.
Wildfire, as her

Chippewa family

Smithsonian
issue
of
Magazine. With the help of
lawyer John Mercer Langston,
she was acquitted, but her troubles
end. A year later she was
accused of stealing art suppUes, and officials at Oberlin refused to let her graduate.
Lewis went to Boston at the urging of her
brother. She wasn't considered as gifted as her
White peers, but her talent was undeniable. There
she met abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and
didn't

'f>eu

The Death of
Cleopatra, 1876
Sculpted by Edmonia Lewis

50

Spectrum

^^

stantly reminded of my color,"
Lewis told the New York Times.
"The land of liberty had no room

fit

'bioomiDurg jnlvtriily

for a colored sculptor."

Rome

offered her freedom

equality. There, she

and

was judged on

her merit and not on her I'ace.
"They treat me kindly here," she
told the Times, "but it is with a
kind of reservation." She wanted to
do other things without the scrutiny of the uncompromising eye of
racism.
I

see the opera,

"I like to

^bur one-stop shopping t'xpericnce
on the campus of
Bloomsburg L'ni\crsit\.

and
Textbooks -New and Used

don't like to pointed out as a

General Books

Negress," she said.

Lewis achieved some claim in
America; her biggest recognition

came
nial

Poor Cupid, 1876
Sculpted by Edmonia Lewis
asked him for help. According to
the New York Times, Lewis "asked
for some clay and modeled a baby's
for
him." Garrison was
foot
impressed with her talent and
arranged for her to study under
sculptor

Edward

Lewis'

first

A. Brackett.

recognizable work

came upon the death

of Robert

Gould Shaw, a White colonel in the
Union army who led the all-Black
54th Massachusetts Regiment.
She made a bust of Col. Shaw from
memory, selling the plaster reproductions and using the funds to
help Black

soldiers.

With the money she earned from
sales of Shaw's bust and assistance from White families, Lewis
traveled to Rome and studied with
other artists and sculptors. Rome
was one of many European cities
of choice

for

artists,

especially

Exposition of 1876.

.

.

Personal Hygiene Items

Magazines
Phone Cards

In her

Computer Software and Supplic

Other Services
Gift Cenitlcates

Film Developing

Money Orders
Laminating

UPS
Western Union Pick-up

Fax

women

Copy Machine

sculptresses has graced the
American art scene," wrote Allan
Morrison in the August 1966
issue of Ebony Magazine. "In contributing

to

the

women have spoken

arts,

Many

of

Textbook Bu> Back
At the end

ot'

each

semester, the University
Store repurchases

these

textbooks that ha\c

for the entire

Negro race. Theirs is a contribution far greater than any
words could ever convey."
details

Supplie;

Convenience Foods and Drinks

.

succession of Negro

.Art

Insignia Clothing and Gifts

at the Philadelphia Centen-

interview with the New York
Times, she described the art panel
scrutinizing her work. "They
and then I heard
opened the box
the order given to place it in such
and such a position." Being accepted brought Lewis to tears following
years of struggle.
"Starting with Edmonia Lewis,
a

School. Office, and

Lewis's

life

remain unclear. The time, location and cause of her death
remain a mystery. What is clear is
that Lewis was a trailblazer for
both Blacks and women. Through
her struggle, Lewis not only
achieved her dream but also
helped countless others take a
step toward theirs.

been adopted for the
upcotning semester
price.

55°

at

o

of the

retail

Textbooks not needed for

iinentorv'

may be purchased by

Book Company

at

Missouri

the prevailing market

price.

Regular Semester Hours:
Mon-Thurs 7:45 .AM - 8 PM
7:45 .AM - 4:30 PM
Friday
Saturday
Sutida\

12
1

2

Summer
\1oii-Fri
Sat-Siiii

Noon
Noon

-

5

-

4

PM
PM

Hours:

S.AM -4:30 PM
riosod

Black artists trying to escape the
racial hatred in America after the
Civil
"I

War.

was

practically driven to

Rome

in order to obtain the opportunities
for art culture, and to find a social

atmosphere where

I

was not

Winter 2003/Spring 2004

con-

[Some of Lewis's works can be seen al the
Museum of American Art and

National

Howard

University Gallery of Art in
Washington. D.C.. and at Oberlin College

in Ohio.}

51

you

are cordially invited to

^n Evening of Stars
25^^' Anniversary Celebration
Tribute to JCqu

^

Stevie

Wonder

Yolanda Adams

^wls

Chaka Khan

Lou Rawls

Ashanti

Jaheim

Beyonce

Donnie McClurkin

A

Celebration Of Educational Excellence
Benefiting The United Negro College Fund
Wayne Brady

Also featuring:
Smokie Norpul

QuiNCY Jones

Mo'NiQUE

Patti LaBelle

MUSIQ

VrviAN Green

O'Jays

Fred

The

Hammond

Shirley Caesar

Debbie Allen

Marilyn

T^Line in

Shemar.

Moore

Ge)ij\ld

Leveri

An Evening

January 10.

OF Stars

AA

=AT8.T

special thanks to Minority A

52

1

\

^^PMorganChase

Spectrum magazine for promotional support.

local television listings.

800-^27-5222

Si?
'

Billy Davis, jr.

'and many more....

Check your

Pledge YOUR SUPPORT IN ADVANCE.

McCoo &

Jayne Kennedy

Prudential
Financial

UNCEORG

©TARGET

TOYOTA
92003

Spectrum

UNCF

Unlawful Minds
State policies denied education

enslaved and free Blacks

to

by Jonathan Gass
could be beaten
for attempting to learn to read during the
nineteenth century. White
teachers could be fined or
imprisoned. Dedicated educators instructed Blacks only in
secret meetings, usually at
odd hours, in an effort to
escape detection of their ille-

Blacks

and whipped

gal actions.

Crandall

I

I
-I

I
I
1
I

Quaker Prudence

won

a court appeal

Black
girls in free Connecticut, but
White mobs threatened her as
well as her students until the
school was shut down.

to establish a school for

Such resistance to educating Blacks was not unusual.
Slaves were regarded as chattel and unworthy of education
in the 1800s. William Goodell
in his 1853 study of the American slave code,
wrote on education that the government "takes
care to forbid it, as being inconsistent with the
condition of chattelhood." A South Carolina law
from 1740 explained, "suffering [slaves] to be
employed in writing may be attended with great
inconveniences."
These inconveniences included the threat of
insurrection by slaves made aware of their
basic human rights.
"The point is obvious. The true bondage was
mental enslavement," says Dr. S. Ekema Agbaw,
professor of English and director of the Frederick
Douglass Institute at Bloomsburg University. A
large population of ignorant slaves was more easily kept in bondage, he explains.
Free Blacks were included in the prohibition. A
Georgia law of 1829 declared that teachers of
free Blacks were to be fined or imprisoned, and
the students to be flogged or fined at the discretion of the court. Similar statutes were passed in
other Southern states. Slavery was not only
about maintaining the physical service of field

hands, Agbaw says.
Several institvitions were established in an
effort to provide Blacks with appropriate educations. While schools such as the Tuskegee
Institute, initially under the direction of former

Winter/Spring 2004

slave Booker T. Washington.
provided Blacks with vocational
training, they were not as
well-supported or respected as
White institutions. Many of
the institutions were established in an effort to keep
Blacks segregated out of White
schools.

The mental enslavement of
Blacks continued under the
guise of segregation until the
1950s in an attempt to prove

t-| "the

superiority of one race."

Agbaw says.
Substandard schooling still
i§
e-y
Oleads to some people's
|S

5? perception

of the inferiority of
Blacks. Agbaw says. InnerI I city schools with limited funding lead to underachievement.
a-|

Cyclical

arguments rationalize

the neglect of underachieving schools. Schools
"need equitable funding or inequities wall continue. Unequal funding leads to unequal education
which leads to unequal opportunity." says Agbaw.
Traditionally-Black universities, such as
Howard and Lincoln, established in the
1800s to provide Blacks with the opportunity to
gain employment and opportunity along with their
freedom, have suffered recently, he says. These
prestigious institutions have produced great
minds. Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison attended Howard University: Supreme Court Justice
Thurgood Marshall attended Lincoln University
in Pennsylvania. Agbaw says these colleges' reputations have diminished as top-tier Black students
have been lured from traditionally- Black schools

League institutions.
Cheyney University, founded

to Ivy

1837

to

provide

fi'ee

b>-

Quakers

in

Blacks with educational

opportunities, has also suffered. The university,
part of the State System of Higher Education,
remains largely segi'egated. with a 94.45 percent
Black student bod\-. Wliites "don't want to go
there.

"

More

Agbaw
effort

explains.

must be made

to equalize funding.

"The vast majority don't understand the problem."
Agbaw says. "It's a Nicious cycle. Less funding
leads to less performance."

53

—

Faith provided comfort and
strength to oppressed Blacks
by Johnetta Clarke

A

pitcher of ice water rests on the podium as the minister presents his ser-

the church performers' approach to existing
and newer songs. Some traveling preachers

mon

began to harmonize with

to the congregation.

Sweat

falls

from his face while members in the Goodwin
Memorial Baptist Church, Harrisburg, give
way to the holy spirit as it captures them.
Members praise Jesus while speaking in
"tongues," as people feeling close to God.
"As a child I didn't know what the people
were saying," says member Brandon Thomp-

me

watch
the spirit take over their body." Although
few Black or White churches speak in
tongues today, most Black congregations do
speak out during services.
Ministers in Black churches usually have
dedicated congregations who yell and praise
God. They are jubilant, excited, and they
talk back to the preacher when praising the
Lord. The sermon usually relates to their life
through a story or event that probably
son, noting

occurred

"my nana

recently.

just told

It's

like

a

to

call

and

response. If the preacher says, "Can I get a
witness?" the typical response would be
'Tes!" "Praise the Lord!" or "Amen!" In most
Black churches a pianist or organist with the
accompaniment of drums or congas will play

s-

"shout music," fast paced music in which
people move in the way they believe the Holy
Spirit leads them. The rock song "Shout!"
had its base in the Black churches.
Gospel music is the pure essence of expression; it has evolved since the days of the spirituals. Negro Spirituals were religious songs
sung by Blacks during days of enslavement.
Spirituals originally started with enslaved

music
ences,

especially the younger audirequire more 'bounce and gi-oove","

says Phil Petrie, managing editor of Gospel
Today magazine. "It seems that many [mod-

ern music lovers] are moved by urban contemporary sounds while others [younger
audiences], stomp to hip-hop." he says.

was an important
gave them a place to participate in the social, economic, and political
aspects of the community. And, it gave them
a place to keep a part of their religious and
The church

part of Black

historically

life. It

Most churches. South and
North, from antebellum and decades after
Emancipation, refused to allow Blacks to

cultural heritage.

in their White congregations.
Philadelphia and Lancaster were two of the
first places where freed Blacks could
attend church.
Richard Allen, a former slave and leader of
the Philadelphia Black community, founded

worship

AME in Philadelphia in 17S7.
Bethel .African Methodist Episcopal,
founded in ISIS, was one of the first .AME
churches for Blacks. "Little Bethel was started in the North back when slaves were hav-

Mother Bethel
Little

ing church in other people's homes," says
Addie Lee Jones, a current member of Little
Bethel AME Church in Cairo. Georgia.
"History tells us that a minister from up
North came down South and preached
to the slaves and Little
Bethel has been making history since." she
says. It was also a stop on the Undergi'ound

encouragement

that consumes their

Dr.

Gospel music has influenced blues and
and jazz then

jazz. In the early 1900s. blues

began to further influence gospel music. The
rhythms of ragtime firmly entered many of

Winter 'Spring 2004

and the pianos.

lovers,

Africans singing songs that they made up
using verses from the Bible that they heard
in church. When listening to spirituals members say they can hear the pain and strength
in the voice, the seriousness and passion
spirit.

guitai-s

early roots of gospel lead to some of the
contemporary music heard today. "Modern

The

Railroad.

"Slaves weren't allowed to be taught." says
Gene Gordon, a lay minister of First

Presbyterian Church in Shamokin. "Some
churches allowed slaves to go to their church
but they had to sit in the back," he says.
Gordon tells about a grandmother who never

55

wanted to hear anybody read anything written by the Apostle Paul.

When

the minister preached he
always said "Servants, be subject
to your master's with all fear,"
which comes from I Peter 2:18.
Often, White ministers gave
sermons and sometimes it was
taken as a way to mentally brainwash the enslaved African.
"Whiter than snow" is what the
southern White minister would
preach, indicating people are all
born into sin but will be made
whiter than snow and all sins
will be forgiven once they step
into those pearly gates. Enslaved
Africans thought they were sinful because they were Black.
They also believed they would
be free if they were baptized and
accepted Jesus into their life.
On May 19, 1868, Robert
Cathcart and his wife, along with

numerous

others,

bought land in Columbia County.
In 1870, after
having settled
into their

new

home, Cathcart,
with the help
of friends and
Bloomsburg min
isters, built

first

Black

the

church in Bloomsburg, Mary
Edgar African Methodist Episcopal Church, named after a

there most of her

woman who

remember setting out the communion cups and everything. I

helped support the

The church was located
at 155 West First Street near the
north side of Jefferson Street. The
first pastor was the Rev. John
Henson, a former slave. He
church.

received help from other churches
in the area to enable his congregation to reside in the original
a one-story, tin and

building,

wood structure with three bays.
There is a local legend that says
the White ministers were eager to
help the Blacks build and finance
their own church so they would
not integrate White services.
"My great-grandfather went to
that church," says Trudi Norce,
an employee of Columbia County
Registry Recorder of Deeds and
Wills. "He was White, but a lot of
his friends went there," she says.
"He had businesses over there, so
they always went to that church."
Dr. Ervene Gulley, Bloomsburg,
remembers that "the church was
lively and energetic," and that
her mother "could hear the music
outside of the door."

The church had

life. "My mother
would get the church ready for
the minister that day and I

stayed at the church most of my
recalls Jones. Assimilation
of the few Black families into the
town's White churches led to the
financial demise of the
church. The land was bought by
the Philadelphia Architects
and Buildings (PAB) Project,
made possible by a grant from
the William Penn Foundation.
Demolition of the church began
on November 10, 1980. Hawthorne Heights Townhouses, a
life,"

AME

housing project
families,

Danville,

age that housed a

number
dents.

of resi-

One

of

the residents,

Linda Jones,

now

residing

in

Harris-

burg, says

she lived

for

low-income

occupies the area.

in

had an

Montour County,

AME

church. This
church also helped support the
pastor that went to AME church
in Bloomsburg. On December 19,
1911, William H. James of Berwick purchased the land, a corner
on the south side of Walnut
Street, then erected a brick building. At that time the Immanuel
Baptist Church stood there, which
also

later

a parson-

now

became

AME

Church

Danville on April 10, 1914.
"I
never went to the

of

AME

church, but I do recall it being
segregated," says Jeff Willoughby, Danville. "As a child I

remember asking my mother if
we could go to that church, and
she said that the church was for
Negroes," he recalls. "I didn't
really understand what that
meant since I was so young," he
says. One of the early pastors was
Rev. W. T. Watson. The church
held bazaars, fairs, and other
forms of entertainment to help
raise money.
1875 there were 200
"In
Negroes in Danville. [By] 1936
there were only nine families,"

wrote Robert Phillip Bomboy,
author of Danville: The Bicentennial History. "Industries brought
Negroes to Danville, but always

Spectrum

Dr.

Gene Gordon

the

commissioned

leadership in Black churches was
a natural extension of their structure and function. The Black
church served not only as a place
of worship, but also as a community to solve disputes, a support

is

lay

pastor of the First
Presbyterian Church.

and

Shamoi
member of the

also a

group, and a center of political
activism.
The people, not the processes,
won the significant gains of the

First

Presbyterian Church,

Bloomsburg, both
predominately White
churches. Dr Gordon,
who grew up and
worshipped in a Black

movement. Against
and at great risk,
thousands of activists in the modern freedom struggle won victoCivil Rights

incredible odds

Church in Brooklyn,
says that the absence
of Black churches in
the region

is

ries that

because

The assimilation of Blacks has
reduced, but not eliminated, the
need for Black churches. But the

there are few Blacks
in

after the boom they moved away,"
he pointed out.
The church was located at 118
Walnut Street. The church was
sold by president. Rev. Arthur L.
Maura on September 12, 1990
for $12,500. Nancie H. Wagner,
owner/instructor of Studio Brick
for the

known

the area.

for its silhouettes,

bought

the land and has been open since
November 15, 1990.
Black churches had been a safe

haven during enslavement; more
than a century later, they created
the foundation during much of
the Civil Rights movement, with
Black preachers playing critical
roles to energize Blacks and
Whites to seek social justice.
Ministers were regarded as forces
that acted upon the mass consensus of their congregations. However, the Black

working class pro-

vided the real leadership of the
Civil Rights movement.
"The church, during the Civil
Rights movement is similar to
the South when slavery was a
part of America; the only thing
that slaves had was God," says
Presiding Elder Kristopher T.
Halsey of the Unity Temple

Winter/Spring 2004

church, whether in Montgomery.
Alabama, or Bloomsburg. Pennsylvania, was the base that
assured not only a cultural and

Worship Center, Philadelphia,
"so they would have meeting
places, and hum or sing songs
that only they knew, which would
keep their minds off of what they
were going through." The role of
These two

finer arts, the building

local

touched their own lives

as well as those of their neighbors
and future generations.

ethnic identity, but the foundation for social pi'otest to

awaken

Americans to the need
racial and religious tolerance.
all

for

Quaker communities

Greenwood Friends School
Since 1978

aild

Pre-primary

Millville Friends

to

Grade 8

Meeting

Since 1795
congratulate Spectrum Magazine for this issue on the
Underground Railroad, recognizing the struggles of people,
past and present, to live free.

For information about Greenwood Friends School:

570-458-5532
www.greenwood-friends.org
Greenwood Friends School

is

located in

3.5 miles east of Millville

Columbia County,

on Rt. 254.

Greenwood Friends School is accredited by the
Pennsvlvania Association of Private .Academic Schools.

mMSMSMSMSMSISMSMSMQMSMSMSM^M^MSM^MEMSMSJSMm\si
k
57

i

TheyV

Black hasehall players, segregated from

major leagues, played for love of the game
by Mark Ensminger
"Ready" Cash of
Philadelphia is full
of
fond
memories
from his playing days in
the Negro baseball leagues. He
says he remembers playing in
Birmingham, Alabama against a
team with a 16-year-old kid playing centerfield. "I was at second
when the batter hit a long fly ball
to dead center," says Cash. "I tug
up for third base when this kid
throws a bullet and nails me all
the way from the centerfield
wall." That kid was Willie Mays.
As a catcher for the Philadelphia Stars from 1943 to 1950,
lill

Cash competed against
of the Negro

many

League's biggest

some

stars,

of

future
major
league fame.
"I

remember

catching against
an
18-year-old
Hank Aaron,"

Cash

says.

^"^

He

says he called
for the pitcher
to throw a slider

i^fo,

193s

because he knew Aaron would be

gunning
bailed

fastball.

"He

away before the

ball

for

a

hooked and was called out on
strikes," recalls Cash.

Cash was born on February 21,
The following year, Andrew
"Rube" Foster founded the Negro
National League (NNL), the first

1919.

organized
league.

all-Black

baseball

The Philadelphia Stars

were members in the NNL
(1934-1948) then joined the
Negro American League (19491950).

Former

I

ranks of Major League

£

Baseball.

"

58

Leaguer

I

£

"^"

Negro

Jackie Robinson, a UCLA
graduate and Army officer in
World War II, was signed by
the Brooklyn Dodgers in
October 1945 and played
for their minor league
team, breaking the color
barrier in the White-only

^

BILL "R"1S°

fcfs

Robinson faced

His acceptance
by the players and fans was
hardly immediate.

"When

Jackie got to play in the

Major Leagues, we thought everybody had a chance," says Cash,
"but you'd be surprised at how

much prejudice was

still

going on."

Cash was signed by the Chicago
White Sox and played in their
minor league system in 1951,
but broke his leg in Evansville,
Indiana, and never made it back
on their roster.
"I made $500 a month. That
was idiot money to a major leaguer. That was what they were
given on a road trip as spending
money," Cash says.
In order for a Negro League
team's survival, heavy traveling

was required.
"We left Philadelphia
day road

trip.

We

for a 28only had two

and

had

opposition, including hate

drivers for the bus

mail and death threats.

drive from 2 to 7 a.m. the first

I

to

Spectrum

day. At 4 a.m., the dashboard
hght came on because of motor
problems," he recalls. "The Ford
Motor Company put a new motor
in twice and put it in wrong both
times," he says.
This 1949 road trip

took the Stars

from Philadelphia through
Indiana, four

Texas

cities,

Alabama, Memand Chicago,
ending with a
doubleheader in
Philadelphia. "Our
families met us at
the game because
there was no time to
stop home first," he
phis,

recalls.

J

i
I f

fj
I
I
I"

^^

"Road trips were difFor the whole

ficult.

trip,

we

only got a total
hours of 'bed
because in the

of four
sleep'

South staying in a hotel
wasn't an option," Cash
says. "The rest of the time
we slept on the bus."

He remembers that when
down South,

the teams went

"we caught hell." When players
went to change into their uniforms
in a dressing room, they were told,
"No niggers are allowed in this
dressing room." They had to
change under the stands, he says.

a

12-month

chance

paycheck

and a
where

to play in locations

baseball ability was cherished,
regardless of skin color.
"In Mexico, they treated us like
kings. They appreciated us," says
Cash.
Cash played against New York
Yankee great Don Larson on one
of the team's trips to Mexico. "I

throw
your fastball past these boys; they
can play.' He said, 'No nigger is
going to tell me how to pitch.' Then
we hit two homeruns off fastballs
to win the game," Cash recalls.
"Sometimes it was tough, with
the racism and all the traveling.
But we made the best of it,"
Cash says. "I played baseball
all day, and then worked as a
machinist at Westinghouse
from 12 till 8 a.m. I had a family
to support, but I loved the game."
Through it all, the Negro
persevered.
players
League
Today, memories of prejudice and
discrimination sit on the backburner of Bill Cash's mind,
told Larson, 'Don't try to

Tk

pushed aside for countless proud
tales from baseball's other league.
"Playing against Josh [Gibson]

was

a treat," says Cash. "At our

was 405
There was a
20-foot high fence, and about 25
rows of bleachers. Josh hit the
back of the bleachers at least
four times," he recalls. "He hit a
ball out of Yankee Stadium onehanded. That man could hit."
That man never made it to the
major leagues.

place, the left field fence
feet to the foul line.

[Justin Pelletier

contributed

and

Christine

Vomer

to this article.]

Costume Sliop

Fantasies by Rebecca

"Up North, it was different. We
stayed in hotels and ate at nice
restaurants," says Cash. "In the
South, the restaurant would tell
us to come around back if we
wanted something to eat. Gas stations would tell us that we coulduse their bathrooms. So we
would say we weren't going to buy
any gas, and they would tell us,
'Come in, just don't let anybody
see you,'" he says.

n't

In the winter, players "barnstormed," traveling into Mexico,
South America, and Puerto Rico
for

Jleftecca

&imhcfi

Designer
55 East Main Street
Bloomsburg, PA 17815
(570) 784-4436

games. This guaranteed them

Winter/Spring 2004

59

\Put

Some^ n
f

Souse meat and

chitterlings

—

the other white

meat

by Johnetta Clarke

\M If

hat do black-eyed peas,
chicken wings, shrimp,
crab legs, beef sausage and ham

"

shanks have in common? They

may be

dishes we've

all

eaten, but

together?

During the New Year, Southerners like to put it all together
and call it black-eyed pea gumbo.
The peas represent good luck, and
coUard greens represent money in
the New Year. It's just one of
many soul food dishes.
Soul food originated when
Black slaves were given food
scraps on the ships bringing them
to the Americas. Each region
soon began to develop its own
taste; each African dish took on
some of the qualities of the
region's native food.
Louisiana's Cajun, Creole foods,
and the Carolina's Spanish culture introduced dishes
that included tastes of L L
African culture.

nity

and perhaps

racism in

their recipes with them.

Chitterlings are one of the best-

known forms

of Soul Food. Most
people pronounce it as "chitlins."
Many cultures eat chitterlings;
the Mexicans eat them in a spicy,
tomato-based soup, the Hungarians use them as casing and stuffing for sausages, and Andouille

sausage

and

is

tripe.

made from

chitterlings

Chitterling sausages

are also a delicacy in France and

can be found in certain Asian
dishes.

How

do you describe a dish that
some but has

ham, macaroni & cheese, collard
greens and sweet potato pie, life
couldn't get any better! Chitterlings were served to slaves as the
discards of the pig after their

White masters took the best
parts.

and

Ham,

loins

bacon, pork chops,

were delicacies com-

pared to what the slaves received;
their portion usually consisted of
the ears, feet, and chitterlings.
Some people see them as offensive, since it

was

originally fed to

Southern Whites eat it
with all types of spicy juices with
side dishes of corn bread and
slaves.

tasty vegetables, like fried corn
orn or

tastes so good to

okra.

such a revolting aroma? It's hard
not to turn up your nose, for the
stench is powerful. Chitterlings
are the large intestines of a pig.

Another dish is "souse meat,"
[eat,"^^^P
the remainders of a pig that
people choose not to eat. The
pig feet, ears, tail, and head

Cleaning and soaking chitterlings

all

Soul food

As

less

the cities of the North taking

Js

combine

to

make

r

this

dish.

soiTiething that reinforces our identit

railroads expanded

the Civil War,
Black cooks could be found workafter

ing in train kitchens. Wealthy
and middle class Whites and
Blacks in large cities also hired
Black cooks. Many Blacks left the
South hoping for greater opportu-

are important. It's a food that most
people either love or hate, similar

When

it's

finished cooking,

it's

in

grayish-brown and solid. It's traditionally eaten on bread, sometimes toasted, with mustard.

Southern American culture.
When served with hot sauce,

feeding black-eyed peas to their

to liver.

However, chitterlings have

a huge role

in

history

and

While most Americans were

Spectrum

Blacks were boiling up the
inexpensive pea with a little rice
and a scrap of souse meat and
creating a soul food delicacy.
Soul food is now a celebration of
the culture in which people have
taken traditional means of cooking and seasoned it with the food

food,"

variety available today.

get all types of

he
then that

cattle,

'ith

"I

just

do what

I

do,"

recalls, noting, "it

was

knew that I wanted to
own my own restaurant, especially
I

since there weren't

any in Easton."

People from the tri-state area
dine on the sultry cuisine at
Warm Daddy's in Philadelphia.
"Young, old. White and Black, we

mixed crowds,"
says Bill Jones, the owner's

says

out of them, you can fry them, you
can cook them with a little butter

and sugar," the woman said. It
was then Grosvenor realized that
soul food truly has a history.
Grosvenor has written many
books and often writes introductions

about soul food for cook-

books.

"Soul food

recipes,

like

folk-

handed down by word of
mouth." says Kathy Starr author

tales, are

of

The Soul of Southern Cooking.

"My Aunt Zipporah never owned
a cookbook, but she could cook the
black off a skillet and the white
off rice."

At Columbia and Montour
County supermarkets, it's hard to
find a lot of southern dishes, especially

chitterlings.

"The closest

thing we have is pig feet in jars."
says Joanne Frank, manager of
the Bloomsburg Weis. "There is
no demand here, but if you need
it, we can order the food for you."

she says.

Although

demand

the

availability for soul food
ed, that doesn't

mean

and

is limit-

local soul

food eaters are missing out. "We
order some of our soul food

nephew. "Soul food is somethnig
that reinforces our identity with
race and culture." says Dr. Irvin

Thaddeus "Sugar" Howell,
head chef and owner of Sugar
Easton. "At my
restaurant I use my own blend of
spices, and we sell all of your typical southern, Caribbean, and
popular American dishes." Sugar
says that everybody comes in to
dine on the traditional foods like

Daddy's

in

Wright, Bloomsburg. "It will
always be a link to our past,
which is a part of our legacy."
Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, a
Southern cuisine writer and cook,
tells of being 20 years old in Paris

because we have always run
them, our market just doesn't
have the space to carry everything." says Tom Woodring. store

manager

JJ

—

Dr. Irvin

Wright

and seeing a yam in a
market on the Rue Monge. She
asked a Senegalese woman how

coUard greens and macaroni and
cheese. He says he also sells a lot
of Caribbean foods, including beef

in 1959,

and salt fish.
remember watching my grandmother in the house cooking soul

she prepared it. "Well, today I am
going to puree them, but you can
roast them, vou can make a tart

patties
"I

Winter/Spring 2004

the

Bloomsburg

Soul food is now recognized as
"good times" food. Black people

have reclaimed its origin and
with it can truly express creativity

with limited resources. Soul

food reveals a time

when

all

peo-

can come together and
embark on memories. Soul food is
a labor of love, which goes beyond
good old wholesome cooking.
ple

race and culture.

of

Giant.

Blackface and

White Eyes
The World of
Entertainment and Racism
barrooms
From
to 3,000 seat

on showboats
auditoriums,

burnt-cork actors and comedians, speaking with exaggerated
dialect, played for audiences in
both South and North, rural and
urban, although most performances were in the urban North.
In any given minstrel show,
White performers blackened their
faces with burnt cork, exaggerated their lips and eyes by spreading white greasepaint around
them, put a black sheep's wool
wig on their heads, dressed in
garish costumes and performed
skits that portrayed Blacks in
buffoonish stereotypes that led
audiences to believe Blacks perpetually sang, danced, stole
watermelons, didn't know "prop-

were essentially lazy
and stupid, and declared their
undying love for their "massuh."
The minstrel show was developed in the 1840s; by the Civil
War, it was known around the
world as a respected form of famer" English,

ily

entertainment.

American

minstrelsy, probably influenced
by similar shows in England,
influenced both burlesque in the
late 19th century

and vaudeville

in the 1920s.

For Whites, "the minstrel shows

62

provided a joyful release of tension, a chance to laugh at the
foibles of others," says Walter
Brasch, social issues journalist
and author of Black English and
the Mass Media. He says the
Whites could "laugh and enjoy
themselves and leave the performance secure in the belief that
although they had their own
problems, there were others who
looked, acted, and talked different than they did, who were even
more pretentious and stupid than
they could ever be." As long as
the Black was depicted in grotesque and distorted images, says
Brasch, "the Whites could be
secure in their own insecurity."
The first minstrel group was
probably the Virginia Minstrels;
the company included four members, who sang, acted and played
instruments. The banjo, tambourine, fiddle, and the "bones," a
musical instrument that was
designed to appear that it was
African in origin, were common
in minstrel shows. The fiddler was
a Northerner, Daniel Decatur

Emmett, who would

later write

song he claimed was
never meant to be any nation's
anthem, and which he said was
an "embarrassment." The Christy
"Dixie," a

and innumerable other
companies, expanded the show to
include solo and duet dances, oneact comedies, innumerable dialect
Minstrels,

songs, and humorous stump
speeches, in which the actors
would comment upon, "everything from the grossest absurdities to pseudoscientific explanations of the universe," says
Brasch. But, there were also "profound social comments about the
nation, its politics,

and

its

atti-

tudes toward slavery."
Several states prohibited Blacks

from

sharing the stage with
Whites, but some companies
secretly placed them into the
ensemble. Light-skinned Black men
regularly wore blackface

makeup

to look darker. In spite of these

demeaning setbacks, minstrelsy
provided Black performers their
first

professional stage outlet.

Minstrel shows continued to
be popular well into the film
age, with innumerable "Sambo"
and "Rastus" characters continuing the stereotypes. The first
two Uncle Tom's Cabin films,
based upon the Harriet Beecher
Stowe antebellum classic that
incited a nation, had no Black
actors; the third re-make, in
1914, finally

had

a Black.

Spectrum

While D.W. Griffith, the
medium's first great director, depicted the Ku Klux
Klan as heroes in the epic
Birth of a Nation (1915),
Black actors were struggling to get their films made.
From 1910 to 1955 there
were as many as 1,100 spetheatres that catered
to Black audiences. Segregation made a
cial

specifically

visible

market

made by

Blacks.

films

for

The budgets

these films were much
lower than the major studio
"B" pictures because of the
limited audience. But in
spite of these problems,
Black filmmakers, with limited financing, were allowed
the freedom to make the
kind of films they could
never make in Hollywood.
In 1929, as the film indusfor

try

began

"talkies,"

its

transition

Hallelujah!

to

and

Hearts of Dixie became the
first major features with allBlack casts.
Blacks weren't always segregated in cinema. Sometimes
they were dropped into mainstream films; if they weren't
playing slaves or servants,
they were usually relegated to
playing shuffling bug-eyed
stereotypes. Only a few were
able to transcend the stereotype.

Among them was

Hattie

McDaniel, who played the
nursemaid Mammy in Gone
With the Wind. McDaniel,
who would win the 1940

Academy Award

for best sup-

porting actress, didn't attend
the film's premiere in Atlanta.

The theater was segregated.

—MIKE SULLIVAN
with Jonathan Gass

and Christine Varner

Winter/Spring 2004

63

Disappointme
Former slaves expected
freedom and opportunity
North; instead^
they found intolerance
in the

by Karen Andzejewicz
he awakened aboard the boat that had carried her to
freedom. It was her first ghmpse of Philadelphia, the
City of Brotherly Love. She had finally made it to
the free states of the North. It had been the most
treacherous journey of her life, planned during her
seven years in hiding. Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) no
longer had to call herself a slave, but she would soon
face the reality that the North was not all she believed

would be.
Jacobs and other escaped slaves traveled North
expecting to find equality and support from their White
neighbors. Although they may have been against slavery, most Whites in Pennsylvania didn't want to associate with former slaves. They didn't want them to go to
their schools, work the same jobs, or shop at the same

it

places.

Most

of all, they didn't

want them

in their neigh-

borhoods.

After escaped slaves
still

had

made

it

to the North, they

fear of being recaptured. Pennsylvania's

location, close to the

Mason-Dixon Line, the bound-

ary of the Northern and Southern states, aroused
constant fear in ex-slaves.
Once the freedom seekers crossed the imaginary
Mason-Dixon Line, "there were some elements of
freedom, but they still weren't free," says Dr. Charles
Blockson, professor of history at Temple University and
author of The Underground Railroad of Pennsylvania.
"There were slave catchers, there were Black spies and
White spies that would turn them in," he says.
Many former slaves were forced into hiding because
of the Fugitive Slave Law stating escaped slaves were
still "property" of their White owners if they were to
be caught in the North by slave catchers. Harriet
Jacobs had to leave her home and her job several
times in fear of her former owners finding her.

64

In //)25,

w-ns nt
fz>i}i)r-:\]

v/hsn th-:) '\n KUn ! hniphi of jis nov/dr, tJi-i
^/^v^^^3^^fI//^v/£7^/ n ]\1nn

iht)

A»/:irj//n in

Wnshlm

Spectrum

nts of Liberty
"Again I was to be torn from a comfortable home, and all
plans for the welfare of my children were to be frustrated by that demon Slavery," Jacobs wrote.
Jacobs' relentless former master, "whose restless,
craving, vicious nurture roved about day and night,"
was constantly in search of Jacobs; it was impossible for
her to live in peace and freedom in the North. She was

my

forced to leave "the friendly
find security

and

rest,"

home where

I

had hoped

to

she wrote. Her fear of being

recaptured caused her to live, "in a state of anxiety.
I took the children out to breathe the air, I closely
observed the countenances of all I met," she wrote.
Jacobs' primary objective in writing her narrative, "was
to protest against the Fugitive Slave Act," says Dr. Betina
Entzminger, Associate Professor of English at Bloomsburg University. Jacobs was also "trying to stir them
[Northerners] to action, make them aware of the racism
and make them take action against what was going on in

When

the South," Entzminger explains.

Most

Pennsylvanians had ambivalent feelings about
"They didn't care about the institution one

slavery.

way

or the other," says Dr. Jeff Davis, associate professor of

Bloomsburg University. They viewed the economic standpoint of slavery rather than human rights. The
aristocratic South was getting moi'e control, scaring
Northerners, according to Davis. Racism has thrived in
Columbia and Montour counties for centuries. "In Columbia
County many citizens sympathized with Southern slave
owners
Paid slave catchers searched Columbia County,
not only for Fugitive Slaves, but also to kidnap free Blacks
who had been citizens of the county for years," wrote Charles
history at

.

.

.

Blockson.

Many Whites in Columbia County refused to serve in the
Union army because of their strong anti-abolitionist sentiments. "Taking into account Columbia County's war
weariness, and racist attitudes toward Blacks, it was not
surprising to see growing opposition to serving in the
war," says George Turner, BU professor emeritus of history and author of Civil War Dissent in Columbia County,
PA. Many people had sympathy for the Confederates here,
says Dr. Walter Howard, associate professor of history at

Bloomsburg University.
A Columbia County resident, writing a letter published in
the June 7, 1862, issue of the Columbia Democrat, noted he
was "pained to learn that Gen. Hunter has declared the
slaves free in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida: and
Winter/Spring 2004

65

that he

is

forming negro Brigades

The effect of
out of them
bringing negros into service will
not only give them rights of citizenship contrary to a decision of
the Supreme Court, but will have
a tendency to degrade our White
soldiers." It was reflective of the
.

.

.

anti-Union nature of the county.
letter also noted, "We cannot
acknowledge ourselves so weak as

The
to

need their assistance

... it gives

Blacks a fearful power, and the
end will be rebellion on their side
they are not fit for citizens, nor
the right stamp for soldiers."
ex-slave, J.W. Henson told of
his experiences in the county
with a speech at the Methodist
Church in Bloomsburg, printed in
TJie Columbia Democrat on Dec.

.

.

An

entering a different world where,
because it was a free state, they
would be entirely free," explains
Entzminger. She says, "A lot of
them were disappointed to discover
there was racism still going on in
the North."
Before arriving in Philadelphia,
Jacobs wrote, "I had heard that
the poor slave had many friends

However, soon after
landing she found that "those who
passed by looked at us with an
expression of curiosity," rather
than one of friendliness.
The first shock of discrimination came to Jacobs when she was
refused a train ticket for a first
class car out of Philadelphia. In
her autobiography, she wrote,
"Supposing I had not given him
in the North."

was a

they accidentally discovered a
fact they had never before suspected that he was colored!"
Inheriting his looks from his
white father made it difficult for
others to see any African features. However, once it was discovered that his mother was
Black, "this at once transformed

—

him

Slavery.

ember

13, 1895. "I

friends

in

have found kind

—

Bloomsburg

I

will

money enough,
no,'

never forget their kindness," he
wrote, but his experience was rare.
He noted many former slaves

for

weren't so lucky. "If a slave was
caught up North, they would take
him, chain him and send him back.

to

I

saw

seen

it

done

in Danville,

I

have

men and women chained

together, led on the turnpike to
Baltimore, where they were put in

a pen like cattle," Henson said.
her narrative. Incidents in
the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs
wrote, "We had escaped from slavery, and we supposed ourselves to
be safe from the hunters. But we

In

were alone in the world, and we left
dear ties behind us; ties cruelly
sundered by the demon Slavery."
Most escaped slaves, like Jacobs,
"imagined that it would be like

66

I

offered more. 'O,

had
any money. They don't allow
said he, 'they could not be

colored people to go in the
class cars.' This

my

first chill

enthusiasm about the Free

States ...

how

was the

first-

It

made me sad

to find

the North aped the customs

of slavery."

offensive to their dignity to have

a 'nigger'

The

New

England," according to
Douglas Harper, Chester County
historian. "This was because of a
lot of economic ties to the South,
as well as a lot of Irish in the city
for the

same

Harper says.
Jacobs wrote that her son,
Benny, who was learning a trade,
"was liked by the master, and

jobs,"

among them."

Irish considered free Blacks

be a threat. They competed for
same low-paying jobs. "The
Irish were the strongest antiBlack group of the time;
there were a lot of Irish in
this area, which is the

to

the

reason

many

were

there

so

anti-Union,

pro-

Confederate here," says
Howard.
ven Abraham Lincoln,
born in slave-owning

Ei

Kentucky, believed Blacks
were inferior to Whites.
Lincoln stated during his
debate with Stephen A. Douglas
a campaign for an Illinois

in

Senate seat in 1858 that he was
not, "nor have I ever been in favor
of

making voters

of the Negroes,

or jurors, or qualifying

hold

office,

or having

them
them

to

to

marry with white people
while they do remain together,
there must be a position of supe.

racism was evident
nearly everywhere Jacobs
went. However, "Racism was far
worse in Pennsylvania than in

Northern

who were competing

Some

apprentices were Americans, others American-born
Irish, Jacobs wrote, "and it was

'^

—Harriet Jacobs

into a different being."

of the

we were alone in the worlds
and we left dear ties behind us; ties
cruelly sundered by the demon
^^But

favorite with his fellow-

apprentices." However, "one day

rior

and

inferior, that

as any other

man am

I,

as

.

.

much

in favor of

the superior position being assigned to the white man."
Horace Greeley, influential
editor-publisher of The New
York Tribune, criticized Lincoln's administration and demanded that he emancipate the
country's slaves. Lincoln responded to Greeley's charges in a letter
dated August 22, 1862, stating

Spectrum

She wrote

when she

that he would do anything necessary to save the Union. "What I
do about slavery, and the colored
race, I do because I believe it

vacation.

helps to save the Union," Lincoln
wrote. Soon after, he enacted the

possible, 'Will

you please

the

in the chair,

Emancipation Proclamation. While
he may not have felt that Blacks
were equal to Whites, he consid-

stand behind it and feed her? After
they have done, you will be shown
to the kitchen where you will have
a good supper'." Jacobs didn't
believe she would experience such

ered the interests of the country.
Greeley's opposition to slavery

er to eat,

of

and moth"a young man came to me

down with the

and said
little

child

in the blandest

girl

was returned
and the issue was dropped.
Historically, hate was found

lar application fee

manner
to seat

and

largely in hate groups in addi-

crimination.

"When

the South

he

wanted

seceded

Originally formed as a gi'oup dur-

was

to

in Danville.

part of the country anymore, because the poli-

and
says.

to

remember

is

that

by today's standards, every White
person in America was probably a
racist," Harper says. "They didn't
have the word 'racism' because it
was believed that Whites were
naturally superior. Only a few
people, not including

Abe

Lincoln,

treatment in a society that was
anti-slavery. "This was the climax!" she wrote, "I found it hard
to preserve

However, I said nothing."
racism Jacobs and others
encountered didn't end when

tion.

Jobs offered to Blacks were lim-

The

Most Black women could

only find menial jobs as cooks or
nannies. Black men were usually
at "the lowest level" of laborers.
to the building.

and bricks
They worked in

dirt

non-skilled professions, anything

that wasn't organized," says
Harper. "There was actually less
exclusion of Blacks when slavery
existed in Pennsylvania" then
at least "they were skilled work-

Harper explains. Pay was
usually well below what Whites
earned for similar work.
When Harriet Jacobs worked as
a nanny for a wealthy Wliite fami-

ers,"

who cared for her deeply, she
wasn't permitted to eat with them
while accompanying them on
ly

Winter/Spring 2004

my self-control, when I

looked round and saw women who
were nurses, as I was, and only
one shade lighter in complexion,
eyeing me with a defiant look, as if
my presence were a contamina-

could get over that," says Harper.

They "carried

lost

much

about

a

of its power:

short

ten

run of

years,

the

gi'oup fell apart.

However,

it

wasn't

until a widespread
revival in the 1920s
that the gi'oup became
an influence in Pennsyl-

Klan members
were appearing all over
the country, this time with a
much more violent message. Klan
vania.

Howard

values,

ited.

saw it done

—J.W. Henson

South conwith his beliefs

"The thing

1

'^

of the

flicted

prevent Southerners from
being taken advantage
of. The group, however,

they would take him, chain him

and send him back.

Ku

didn't drasti-

ing Reconstruction, the gi'oup's goal

after

Howard. He didn't want
them to be considered

dis-

cally affect the rest of the country.

"//a slave was caught up North,

Lincoln to completely
let
them go," says

tics

The forming

Klux Klan originally

desire to preserve the

Union.

and
of the

tion to personal opinion

from

stem

not

did

sat

the Civil

War

ended.

According to The Columbia
Democrat of January 2, 1902, an
article noted how "John Jackson
was in love with a white woman
and has been taking electrical
treatment in an endeavor to
change the color of his skin." When
there were no results, Jackson
"drank carbolic acid and died in
great agony," the article stated.

In a letter dated May 8. 1936
from the Rescue Hose & Ladder
Co. No. 2, Bloomsburg, a Black
man, Ai'thur Rux, was denied
membership because, "There is a
motion on the books which pro-

activity

in

Columbia County

sparked a renewed racism. The
Klan in the 1920s besides being
anti-Black was anti-Semitic and
now anti-Catholic, says Howard.
"This is why it was very strong in
Pennsylvania because so many
new immigrants were Catholics,
it
was an acting out against
them," Howard says. It was ironic since the Catholics had once
been forceful in their opposition
to Black rights in the North.
Cross burnings in West Berwick were common until the late
1940s. "This was part of the antiimmigration prejudice." says
Howard. Those of the first immigration wave from Eastern and
Western Europe didn't want new
people to settle here and were not
very welcoming to newcomers.

[Contributing to this article were John
Elliot.JonathanGass.MattCaterinichia.
and Christine Varner. For further information, see:

Incidents in the Life of a Slave

hibits persons of the colored race

Girl 6v Harriet Jacobs (writing as

joining this company." His one-dol-

Brent).

Linda

67

It

may

he

subtle, hut

more

racism

still exists

in

Columbia and
Montour counties

by Karen Andzejewicz
sabel Tarr received a letter in
1997, filled with racist jokes,

I

and threatening her
life.
The letter was signed,
'White supremecy [sic] forever."
profanity,

Tarr, 61, recalls a long history of racism
She vividly remembers

in Bloomsburg.

the racism she and her family encountered during her childhood. She says she
had to go through back doors in restaurants
and wasn't allowed to swim in the public
pool. She had to go to the dentist and beauty
parlor after hours because of her race.
Tarr's first memory of racism was when she was
three years old; her mother took her and her older

cream

sis-

which used
to be on Iron Street in Bloomsburg. She says they
went in and sat down "the waitress came over and
told us, 'We don't serve niggers'." The young Isabel
didn't understand what had happened. "I knew something was wrong; my mother was very, very quiet and
she just held our hands really close. She then
explained to me how things were," she remembers.
The attitude in the area toward Blacks was, "As
long as you know your place there won't be any
problems," says Tarr. She wrote a letter to the
Chamber of Commerce in 1993 addressing the
town's problem with racism: "Any Black permanent
resident can tell of going to a store downtown or at
the mall and the salesclerk walks past you, waits on
a customer who came in after you, and when they
do wait on you, they question if you know how
ter to get ice

at Engle's Restaurant,

—

68

expensive the items you asked for are, and then
drop the change in your hand rather than touch
your skin."
Tarr's experience isn't isolated. A Black female
middle school student received similar letters in
1995, filled with references to the Ku Klux Klan,
threatening her and her family's safety, according to
Dr. Irvin Wright, director of the Equal Opportunity

Program

of

Bloomsburg University. One of the letters
your life on the line. So why

states, 'You're putting

don't

you just leave us alone. You're getting a

people irrational. I'm watching you.
protect your friends
since

moved out

and

family."

The

Be

lot of

careful

girl's

.

.

.

family has

of the area.

Unwelcome Signs
The Blacks, and most Whites, of Columbia
County were shocked when Klan leader Robert
Wilkinson planned a mass recruitment rally in the
Bloomsburg area in 1982. The Philadelphia
Tribune pointed out several incidents BU students
experienced on and off campus, including racial
slurs, harassment in public stores, and notes on
bulletin boards threatening their lives.
Marcella Woods, coordinator of minority affairs in
Residence Life at Bloomsburg University, says she
received a cold welcome her freshman year at
Bloomsburg University in 1981. She says as she
moved into her dorm room a man handed her father
a KKK business card and flyer telling people to support White Supremacy. She believes they were
using them as a "scare tactic." Instead of unpacking
her bags and returning home, Woods stayed to
show that racism couldn't prevent her from living
her life.
"Students still feel physically threatened here,"

Spectrum

says Woods. She has been a staff member at the uniand says racism still prevails in
the area. The Monster Truck Rally held at the
versity since 1991

Bloomsburg Fairgrounds every July is an example.
"People decorate their trucks in Confederate flags
and racist paraphernalia, she says. "If you are a
Black college student, you cannot go into town that
weekend. They spit on you, they terrorize you," she
says.

Woods says

since about five years ago

when

town banned the parade that took place each

the

year,

the incidents have lessened. However, she believes if
the town really wanted to put an end to racism, the
rally at the fairgrounds would be banned.

Bloomsburg Mayor Charles "Chip" Coffman says
this is the first time he has ever heard of such incidents taking place at the Monster Truck Rally. "It
depends on the way you look at the Confederate
flag," he says. Some people look at it and see it as a
symbol for racism, others look at it and see it as a
historic

part of the past.

If

people are getting

harassed then something needs to be done to make
a change," he says, noting he goes every year but
has "never seen anything like this happen. If it is
happening, I would not condone it and I know there
is no mayor who would have condoned it."
There is actually very little organized racism in
Columbia County, according to the Anti-Defamation
League. Because the Black population is so small,
there are not a lot of hate groups around to act
against it. "The fact that most people are ashamed
of their racist feelings is a big
difference.

The Klan and people

Johnstown. While he was there, he noticed many
Confederate flag license plates. "I found out that
those license plates were a membership symbol for
members of the KKK in the area," he recalls. "When
I see them in this area, they really bother me."
To many, the Confederate flag represents "White
domination over African Americans," according to the
Anti-Defamation League. "When I see symbols such
as the Confederate flag," says Woods, "I see all the
hard work done 40 years ago [in the Civil Rights era]
and see that we have only changed such a small pai't."

Tension at Bloomsburg University
In February 1992, a White male confronted a
Black female student on a street with racial slurs
and threats, according to an article in The Voice.
The following month, someone allegedly burned a
cross on the steps of the administration building at
Bloomsburg University. This incident may have
been in response to the hiring of a Black woman as
the university's director of police, according to Dr.

Mary

Harris, professor of educational studies at

Bloomsburg University and member of the
Bloomsburg University Community Task Force on
Racial Equity. The Black Cultural Society offered
escort services for students

the lunatic fringe now," says
Douglas Harper, a Chester

County historian.
Jerry Wemple, a bi-racial professor at Bloomsburg University,
was born and raised in the
Bloomsburg area. "When I was
young and growing up, most of
the Black people in the area
were migrant workers; therefore, that was the stereotype
back then," he remembers.
Wemple doesn't believe there is
anywhere in the United States
without racism. "Around this
area it is some level of ignorance
because there is not a high
African-American population.
People then rely on stereotypes,"

Winter/Spring 2004

didn't feel safe

The university now requires
students to take two diversity
covu'ses. "A lot of students who
come to Bloomsburg come from
rural locations where they
might not be exposed to diversity," says Kendra Branchick, student member of the Board of
Trustees. She says in the university setting students can
"broaden their horizons by exposure to diverse cultures." Some
believe that students do not use
the knowledge they acquire in

like that are considered to be

he says.
At the beginning of his teaching career, Wemple taught in

who

walking around at night after the incident occurred.
During that semester, the Klan sent letters to certain faculty members. "There has been a climate of
racism and prejudice lately," university president
Dr. Harry Ausprich told the student newspaper.

their diversity classes in every-

day life. These courses have
"some impact, but the outcome
would be better once people use
what they learn and share it
with others." says Johnetta
Isabel Tarn
sister.

6.

and her
9, in 1948

(left)

Elizabeth.

Clarke, president of the Black
Cultural Society. "We're not
hearing about it." she says, "if

69

we were you would have more

were "a lot of rumors in town about
them," recalls Walker. Harvey Andruss, the president of the university at the time, felt it was a good

people going to the

college, there

Bloomsburg University was slow to change into a
Although there were a
few Blacks and Jews in the student populations

idea to house

cultural diversity events."
racially diverse institution.

during the university's

first

century,

it

wasn't until

by President
Johnson in 1964, that more attempts were made to
bring Black students to campus. It wasn't until
after the Civil Rights Act, introduced

1971 that the university hired

its first

Black faculty

member, Dr. Walter Simon, as director of the
Education Opportunity Program and art professor.
The University was "one of the most segregated
schools in the country when I came here in 1965,"
remembers Anthony Sylvester, a retired Bloomsbui'g University history professor. In 1983, the fed-

eral Office of Civil Rights directed all 14 state col-

leges

and the university

to

desegregate or face

federal penalties.

People would try to justify the lack of minorities on
saying, "there are no Blacks in this area,"
Sylvester recalls. "It was very uncommon to find ethnic people in the faculty," says Sylvester. "I knew faculty who argued they were not racist, but saw no reason to get Blacks [and other minorities] on campus,"
he says. He remembers Black students sajdng that
they sensed racial attitudes, but that "the faculty
response was the students were hypersensitive."
Sylvester may have been the first Catholic and
Italian professor to come to the university. While he
says he experienced minor prejudices because of this,
he says it was very small in comparison to the discrimination of the Blacks. "They were scared," he
says of the Black students in the 1960s, "they had to
be tough to survive here." Sylvester recalls one experience when a Black student was downtown and a

campus by

man who had Nazi

symbols tattooed on his fists
did not want to go downtown anymore, it really upset her," he remembers.
John Walker, director of admissions at the time,
says the university tried numerous ways to bring
Black students to Bloomsburg. "We tried getting a
lot of advice from people of color, went to the inner
city and talked with the parents; however, sending
their sons and daughters to a predominantly White,
very conservative culture was scary to them," he

made comments to her. "She

says, "People would follow them around stores, and
think they were stealing."
Walker recalls how the Black students of the early
1960s were extremely patient. "We talked to them
about being pioneers. I remember one girl coming
up to me and saying, T don't want to be a pioneer, I

don't

want

ferred to

to

When more
70

ha

Howard

'e

to fight a battle."

She trans-

University.

Black students started coming

to the

them all on campus together, which
was a kind of subtle way of separating them and
keeping them out of the way for the White students,
says Walker.
Every year efforts were made to try to recruit
Black students to campus; however, every year
there would be incidents in town that discouraged
Black students from coming, says Walker who
retired in 1993 as vice-president for institutional

advancement.
"For a long time, we talked about a critical mass,
would be enough students of color for a
comfort level; however, we were never able to get
completely there by the time I left ten years ago,"
so there

Walker says.
Jim Percey, retired BU political science professor,
had come to the university in 1965. He recalls
numerous occasions when Black students were discriminated against in town. "When I came here, a
graduate student had been refused accommodations
in town because she was Black," he says. The
administration didn't do anything to help her out,
so Percey let her stay at his house. "She ended up
getting so disgusted that she went back home,"
Percey recalls. Black students would go downtown
to get their hair cut, and the barber would refuse,
saying he didn't know how to cut Black people's
hair; restaurants refused to
serve Black patrons.
Percey recalls one
incident where he
was sitting at a bar
waiting for a friend
in the late 1960s. "A
Black guy came into
the bar and the owner
wouldn't even look at
the man," he says. The
man left after not being
served. Percey says he
then asked the owner
about it and he replied,
"I don't serve niggers in
my living room." After

Percey told him this was
he was told never

illegal,

to

come back

to the bar.

"I'm coming back in

and you

better consult your lawyer,"

Percey says he told the
owner. Percey then rounded
up about 10 Black students

Spectrum

—
and they went back and sat down at the bar. The
owner "took one look at us and served us; he must
have spoken to his lawyer. We desegregated Frank
[the

owner] that day," he says.

In the late 1960s, the college started discussion
groups to improve relations with the Black students

an informal meeting in
faculty were not
relating to the Black students, according to a column
published in The Voice. "A problem arises when the
students are Black and White because a White teacher

and the

rest of the college. In

1968, the problem

was addressed; the

can't relate to the Black students, just as the Black

teacher can't relate to the White students," the article
states. The article showed the nature of the college
both Whites and Blacks viewed the other with suspicion, and both claimed segregationist attitudes.
In 1971, the Black Student Society formed to try
to improve the relationships between Black and
White students as well as faculty.
Glen Lang, Society

president, according to The Voice, "expressed concern over the failure of most college faculty members to present a realistic and true picture of the
racial problems that beset American societ}' in general and the Bloomsburg campus in particular."
By 1973, "there were only three Black faculty and
only eleven Black students and no Hispanics at
Bloomsburg University," according to Dr. Walter
Howard at Bloomsburg University.
At Bloomsburg University, few groups of friends
are racially integrated. Blacks tend to eat together
in the Scranton Commons; they tend to join an allBlack fraternity or sorority. Their actions, some say.
leads to the belief that Blacks not only are "clannish," but also foster the separation of races.
"If they [Blacks] sit together, people think they're
being separatists. It is just a comfort level, you sit
with people like you," says Marcella Woods. She
points out that White students wouldn't sit with
a group of Black students either. "If there is not
one other table open, and I am sitting at a table
by myself, White students will not sit down
with me," she says. She points out that many
students still feel, "If I don't have to why do it."
Currently the Black student population at
Bloomsburg University, is 309 students (3.77
percent), 120 Hispanic students (1.45 percent), 69 Asian students (0.83 percent), and
15 Native American students (0.18 percent)
according to the Office of Institutional
Research. Partially because of the lack of diversity on campus, the Frederick Douglass Institute
was formed. "Our goal was to use Frederick
Douglass, a man who taught himself to read and
write at age 12, in an environment where
enslaved African-Americans were not permitted to learn, as an example for our students to
aspire for academic learning." says Dr. Steven
Ekema Agbaw. professor of English and director of the Institute. He says the progi'am is for
"students who want to engage with others
from multi-racial, multi-ethnic backgi-ounds.
and who want to improve their chances of
succeeding at the university." The students
live together and take classes together. He
says every year about 38-40 students join
the progi'am.

Incidents in the Area
Josephine Brown Johnson, 85. valedictorian of
Bloomsburg High school in 1936, graduated from
the Bloomsburg State Teachers College in 1940
with degrees in biology and history. Wliile there
were only two Black students when she graduated,
she says, "Everyone got along very well." After she

Winter/Spring 2004

71

graduated she became a wife and mother. Once her
children were in high school, she applied for a job in
the laundry room at the Bloomsburg Hospital, even
though she had a degree. "There were no African-

American teachers at that time, so I never applied,"
she says. She doesn't know what would have happened if she had applied in the Bloomsburg area.
She applied down South, "but the opportunities
were so bad, I didn't follow it up," says Johnson.
"Sometimes when 1 look back, I think of how I could
have done something with my degree, I think my
race might have had something to do with it," she
says. The head of the hospital, once seeing that
Johnson had a degree, promoted her to executive

the college students because they felt more comfortable talking to them, because they looked like them.
This isn't a cafeteria where you sit with the people
you feel comfortable with; they are the authority and
can't behave that way," he says. All charges against
Hughes were dropped. The Town then brought an
additional charge, which was also dismissed. His
countercharge against the town police was settled
out of court for $100,000. There is no bias-motivated
violence and intimidation training required by law
for law enforcement and personnel in Pennsylvania,
according to the Anti-Defamation League.

housekeeper.
Isabel Tarr's sister, Elizabeth Tarr Demby upon
graduating from Bloomsburg University with a
degree in education in 1960, was told when she
applied at the Bloomsburg School District by the
superintendent, Jay Clare Patterson, "Bloomsburg
is not ready for a Black teacher." To this day the
school district still has not hired a Black teacher.
There are also no Black teachers in the Danville, Southern Columbia, Northwest, Millville, or
Benton school districts. In Central Columbia
School District there is one.
The population of Columbia County, as of the
2000 Census, was 64,151; the Black population of
the county was 514, about 0.8 percent; Montour
County, with 18,236 residents, had only 183 Black
residents about 1 percent. The national average is
13 percent.

John Walker says, "It's like the national scene;
while things have improved, we still haven't solved
all the problems."
In 1999, Bloomsburg Town Police were charged
with the use of excessive force, malicious prosecution, and racial discrimination in the arrest of
Thomas Hughes, a former Bloomsburg resident who
now lives in North Centre Twp. Hughes, a Black
male and a prison counselor, called the police to
report some college students who were leaving a
bar. He accused them of kicking over some trashcans
on his property. He got into an argument while waiting for the police to arrive; while trying to hold back
one of the students, he was punched in the face.
However, the police pinned down Hughes and
arrested him for disorderly conduct, mischief, and
harrassment. "Racism isn't only about hate, it's also
about assumptions. I think a lot of assumptions
were made that night. The police assumed that I
didn't own that house and assumed that we weren't
the ones who called them," says Hughes.
Hughes says the police weren't willing to listen to
him the night of tha incident. "The police believed
72

Dennis Coombe, Lehighton, sells clothing
accessories with Confederate flags on them at fairs
and flea markets throughout Pennsylvania. He has
been coming to the Bloomsburg Fair for 18 years.
"They are real popular, especially buckles and belts.
Nobody has ever been bothered by them, " he says.

Bloomsburg Chief of Police Leo Sokolowski would
comment on the Hughes case. He says only that

not

diversity training

is

required for certification as a

Bloomsburg apparently does not
require more than this. Of almost 800 hours of
required training by the state, only eight hours are
police

officer.

devoted to diversity issues; officers certified before
2001 didn't need to pass this requirement.
Some people in the community "have reached out
toward people of color, but on the other hand, we
still have a segment of the population that remain
resistant to the integration of people from different
backgrounds," says Irv Wright. Racism now, he
explains, is "kind of subtle, it happens in employment, in terms of denying people opportunities, it
happens in other subtle ways in that if you create
enough tension and stress a person will leave a job."

Racism

also

happens

"in the social setting,"

Wright

(Continued on page 74)

Spectrum

i

^teJl
Racists call for unity

Metzger,
Tom
White Aryan

director of
Resistance

(WAR), says he doesn't have
a problem with other races, he just
wants race separation.
"We beheve whole-heartily in
race separation, not just white
and black, but of all races,"

Metzger says.
Metzger, a television repairman from Fallbrook, California,
founded WAR in 1983.
He says he has been involved in
brawls and riots; he claims he has
survived a half dozen assassination attempts.

Metzger says he wasn't raised a
racist. "In the community I grew up
in, it was 99.9 percent white," he
says. 'There was no need to be
racist. I picked up my racism
through observation and especially

when

I was in the armed forces."
Metzger, who joined the Army in
1956 at age 18, says he was shocked
at the number of Blacks who were
in basic training with him.
"We weren't like these people,"
he said. "Black soldiers were
always trying to get the white
women into bed and that was
very offensive to me."
Despite Metzger's openly racist
views, in 1980. he won the California Democratic Primary in a
Southern California Congressional
District, but lost in the general
election. In 1992 he ran for U.S.
Senate, but received only 2.8 percent of the votes in the primary.
war's website, (www.resist.com),
is stocked with racist information
and numerous cartoons portrav-ing
Mexicans, Blacks and Jews as animals rather than human beings.

Winter/Spring 2004

among

all

"Those illustrations are meant
be brutal," he says, noting "not
every single Black is portrayed in
those pictures, but I have seen my
fair share of those that do look
to

like those cartoons."

Despite Metzger's claim to be
"The godfather of the skinheads,"
some Pennsylvania residents
believed there wasn't enough
"unity

and cooperation"

in

the

skinhead movement. In 2001, five
men from Harrisburg formed the
Keystone State Skinheads (KSS),
an organization that claims it is
"helping to preserve, advance,
and educate the White culture of
the state of Pennsylvania."
KSS has six chapters, which
together create a "brotherhood of
Skinheads that have the capability to answer the call for support
or to crush our enemies." It
describes itself as a "non-violent
group" that is "working to secure
an existence for people of Euro-

pean descent."

KSS

states

it is

"seeking moral

and responsible individuals to
counter the degenerate and decaying values that are sweeping
across America." Its website
(www.keystonestatesskinheads.com)
displays racist tattoos as well as
T-shirts that
spell "RACIST"
across the front.
Racist T-shii'ts, however, are
not for every White supi'emacist.

Some don't feel comfortable with
the term. "It's just a buzz word
that discourages people from expressing themselves." says Kirk
Weaver, 44, Shamokin. who has
been associated with skinheads
in the past.

As

a single father of

Whites

two,

Weaver says he no longer
for skinheads. Weaver

has time

prefers the term "separatist" over
"racist."
"I don't hate anyone because the
color of their skin, I'm just smart
enough to realize that we have

always been separated, and for a
reason." he says.
Unlike Metzger, an atheist.
Weaver's beliefs are routed in his
interpretation of the Bible. "I'm
commanded by God to enlighten
others that the separation of
races is inevitable and will come

about only through a higher
power," says Weaver.
"I'm willing to take the chance
that people will think I'm a fool."
says Weaver, who foresees Biblical chaos. "It may be next week
or five hundred years from now.
but if you are white, you wouldn't
want to be in Harlem, for example, or your throat will be one of
the first to be slit." he says.
'Violence against other races
prior to the arrival of the "higher
power" is not something that

Weaver advocates. He

says, "Vio-

lence just plays into the hands of
the media and allows them to
attach fangs and horns to us."
Weaver says he's interested in
sharing his message with anyone,
but his priority is his children.
"My duty as a Caucasian is to raise
my children properly." he says.
"I teach them the most important thing: to occupy, multiply

and

have

dominion

over

the

Earth," savs Weaver.

—Beth

Roberts

IConlributing to this article was Matt
Caterinicchia.]

73

(Continued from page 72)
male could be in a bar socializing
with a White female, and that could create a source
of tension." And in one case, George Carter, a Black
2003 gi'aduate of Bloomsburg University, and a
friend were walking down Lightstreet Road in
Bloomsburg when a truck passed and the driver and
several passengers yelled racist remarks. "There
wasn't anything I could do about it because they were
driving by in a truck," Carter says. "I was enraged."
Carter recalls numerous occasions where the local
townspeople of Bloomsburg had given him strange
looks. "Sometimes when you are around these
'townies', you receive weird looks because you are
Black. You know what they're thinking," he says.
says, "a Black

When LeighAnn Campbell came home

to

Sham-

okin with a Black boyfriend they "received a lot of
strange looks and a lot of whispers," she says. Few
interracial couples date in this area. "When we
went to places like Princeton, no one even gave us
a second glance, because it was accepted as normal," she recalls. Campbell was not immune to discrimination when going home to her boyfriend's

house in New Brunswick, New Jersey, either.
"There it was kind of reversed, because I was a
White girl going out with a Black man in a predominantly Black area. Again people were staring
at us," she says.

In the summer of 2003, concerns over a religious
summer camp aroused residents in Numidia, leaving some with the impression that racism was to
blame. Thomas and Corazon Castillo wanted to
turn their farm into a religious summer camp for
children from New York and New Jersey. They
met opposition filled with racist sentiments.
During a town meeting held in July one woman
asked if the camp would be for "inner-city" kids.
Many believed she was asking if they would be
minority children. In a letter to the editor in the
Press Enterprise, Bloomsburg University's Task
Force on Racial Equity wrote, "Those remarks
indicated ugly stereotypes and prejudices about all
inner-city residents."

In the "30 Seconds" column in which readers can
anonymously say anything they wish, were numerous examples of intolerance and racism regarding
the summer camp. "I think it's a great idea NOT to
let them come in the area, because we have enough
foreigners already in the area, and it would get way
out of hand of not being able to trust people you live
by. I live in that town and have these people coming
from New York, New Jersey, all over
steal things
and raise Cain," said a Slabtown man in response to
the summer camp.
,

.

A
74

Catawissa

man

.

.

called "30 Seconds" saying that

"way off base to call the people of Numidia
and bigots." However, he continues, "there's
a time and a place
they need to make guidelines
so that the people in the community are protected."
is

it

racists

.

It's

.

.

Not Only Blacks

Other groups also experience discrimination.
"Now we have the incidents of Hispanics coming to
the area, the comments that used to be made about
Black people are being directed to them," Tarr
points out.

When David J. Thompson Mailing, Bloomsburg,
hired several Hispanics in 2000, there was an antiHispanic backlash in the community. "There were
unhappy people, because they felt we were bringing
Hispanics to the county," an executive from the
company says, who asked not to be identified. "They
were mostly coming to their families," she says. She
indicates that the company is trying to put these
incidents in the past. In the Press Enterprise's "30
Seconds" column were calls to protest "illegal immiwas a "fear of the unknown" when
Hispanics started coming, "but now our employees
have assimilated very well," the executive at the
grants." There

company

says.

At Berwick High School in 2002, several students
wore white T-shirts to symbolize White supremacy,
according to Mary Harris. A group of White students had an argument with a group of Hispanic
students. A teacher heard that White students
planned to wear white T-shirts to represent hatred
against Hispanics, says Harris. Since then, the
Bloomsburg University Community Task Force on
Racial Equity has been working with a diverse
group of students to try to reduce racism. Harris
says the program has changed the tone of
the school; it has "reduced
name-calling
t

,

and

„

bullying."

'^
.,.

Every other
Friday

fifty stu-

K'

dents are chosen
to discuss diversity issues.
all

Now,

races at the

school are talking

H

and socializing with
one another, says

^^>i^'
c/i^-i-^

Harris.

Gays and lesbians
are

also

targets

of

discrimination and
prejudice prevalent
in this area and other

""^

areas across the coun-

Spectrum

try.

Dozens

of anti-gay

comments are

also published

in the Press Enterprise's letters to the editor

and

in

the "30 Seconds" column. In a September 11, 2003,
letter to the editor, Evy Lysk of Benton, a frequent
caller to "30 Seconds," wrote, "I don't think homosexuals should be getting special rights, marriage
isn't supposed to be for Adam and Steve, Mommy

Madonna

isn't supposed to be kissing girls on the
mouth, and homosexual bishops aren't supposed to
be leaders in churches, preaching to anyone about
sin ... I see this gay train coming and all it's going
to do is divide this country."
Dr. Terry Riley, professor of English and advisor
of Free Spirit at Bloomsburg University, says that
rural areas tend to change more slowly than urban
areas. "Small things like differences in race and sexual orientation become minor in big cities, but stick
out in rural areas like Columbia County," he says
"This area is coming around, but slowly; there are

positive signs."

In the past anti-Semitism has been seen around the
county. Today, however, incidents are less frequent.

"Occasionally there appear anti-Semitic letters in the
Press Enterprise, but that is the extent," says Dr.

David Greenwald, associate professor of sociology at
Bloomsburg University. He says that since he came to
the university in 1970, he cannot remember any
major incidents. "It's all done behind our backs," says
one prominent Jew, who asked not to be identified,
'Taut we still hear of comments, and attitudes are
slowly changing."

"Very often students are not willing to identify
themselves [religiously],
because they feel uncomfortable

comabout

about

made

ments

them," says Dr. Gloria
Cohen-Dion, associate
professor of political

science
to

and advisor

Hillel,

social

a

Jewish

and cultural

group at Bloomsburg University.
She mentions the
letters in the Press

—"we tiy

Enterprise
to

Letter sent to a

fifth

grade

student at Bloomsburg Middle

School on April

Winter/Spring 2004

5.

1995.

keep

it

very

directed to both the

"When
there

is

an awkwardness when they get thrown

together," says Dr. Christopher Ai-mstrong, professor of sociology at

Racism often stems from ignorance, says Ai-mHe points to people "who see the world in
terms of black and white, in terms of right and
wrong. I think that's what really perpetuates racism
the most. Whites and Blacks have been kept apart
for a long time. If you can live together with people,
you can find out that the,y're not too much different
than you are."
"When you have an all White police force, and all
White government, and most of the teachers are not
diverse in this area, you have the same people with
strong.

the

same

ideas," says Tarr.

Hope For the Future
What can
believes,

be done to

was

a change? Irv Wright
is to ensure that

our curriculum in the K-12 sector of education
includes people from diverse backgrounds."
Schools are set up to reinforce the identity of the
says Wright, "Once administrators and

majority,

teachers of the school district agi'ee to open up the curriculum and open up to be more sensitive to hu-e people from different backgi-ounds, then we will start
doing things that make a difference." says Wright.

Wright believes

to help stop the cycle of racism,

"hopefully our parents will be a

little

more open and

they will talk about treating people as indixiduals and

showing respect."

letter

make

"One thing we could do

that point.

The

stu-

Armstrong.

Anti-Defamation
League heard
about it and sent a
paper." she says.

Bloomsburg University. Some

dents may think, "I don't know who these people
are, but these people over here look like me, so I
want to spend time with them. And I don't think it's
conscious," Armstrong says. Class differences offer
one explanation. "A lot of our working class kids
come from families, with a fair amount of prejudice,
and there are a lot of lower-class Black kids from
the inner-city, so they don't have much in common."
says Armstrong. Another problem is provincialism.
"A lot of kids think the whole world is like the world
they come out of. They're limited by their class
background, so when they get to college they realize
everyone isn't just like me. The poor Black kid who
has rarely been out of his Black neighborhood may
also be among Whites for the first time," says

calm: however, the

letter to the news-

community and the newspaper.

races have been separated and kept apart.

to theii' children.

think we will go a long
difference in our society."
I

"Once we get

way

in

to

making a

to this article were Matt Caterinicchia. John
Jonathan Gass, and Christine Varner. For more informavisit wwu.adl.org or call (215)-568-2223.]

[Contributing
Elliot.

tion

75

he

Civil Rights

of the

Movement

1960s was the

turning point in the consciousness of the American people,"
says civil rights documentary

filmmaker Sean Devlin. "Many
people from the movement

work they had
done had taken hold in America," he says. "They moved onto
other things in their lives, and
many of them now regret not
doing more to keep the movement and the education alive,"
believed that the

Devlin says.
Today's students are only
being taught a short digest of
the movement, Devlin says.
Veterans from the civil rights
era are concerned that the significance of the

movement and

the people involved will be forgotten by future generations.
In 2001, Devlin decided to
address the situation. He left
NBC, where he had made 18

documentaries for
"Time and Again with Jane
Pauley," to found the Brooklynbased American Civil Rights
Education Services (ACRES)
which provides civil rights education programs for high school
students, who can earn college
credits. "I decided I wasn't
going to listen to anyone who
said I was crazy or a dreamer. 1
took a lesson from the movement, never take no for an
civil

rights

answer," says Devlin.
ACRES not only teaches students about civil rights, but
takes the participants on a 10day, five state expedition of the
South, where they not only visit
important historical sites from
the movement but also meet
with movement veterans who
Devlin says are "vital, vibrant,

they march across the same
Edmund Pettus Bridge, where
civil rights activists had once
been gassed and beaten during
the "Bloody Sunday" march in

and vertical."
While on the

of the "vital, vibrant

ACRES Freedom

students and teachers
meet James Meredith, the first
Black student at the University
of Mississippi. They take a
walking tour of Selma, Alabama, with voting rights veterans Joanne Bland, Lawrence
Huggins and Annie Lee Cooper.
They visit Mason Temple, the
Trail,

Martin Luther King's
"mountaintop" speech, and

site of Dr.

final

\Nh\\e

on the

Freedom
Trail in April

of 2003,

ACRES
participants
visited

James
Meredith's

place of
business in
Jackson,
Mississippi.

^^'•::i«*i»sJ5fci»^

1965.

ACRES Freedom

The

numerous Southern universities where the sitTrail also visits

in

movement

developed.

Dr. Bernard LaFayette

and

is

one

verti-

veterans who believes what
does is unique because
the students can see the U.S. in
cal"

ACRES

a different light.

an opportunity

"It

gives

them

to learn that in

our democracy, when conditions
exist, people can organize, use
the force in their souls, their
speech and their vote to make
changes," he says.

Denise

Hughes,
an
18,
from Brooklyn.

ACRES alumna

New

York, had the opportunity
meet with LaFayette at a
Southern diner in April 2002.

to

"We talked to Dr. LaFayette
about everything going on in the
world; violence, racism and how
to deal with our own personal
dilemmas," she says. "The discussion lasted so long they
closed the diner and kicked us
out." Then, LaFayette and the
ACRES students moved their
conversation to the parking lot.
"He was giving us everything
on his ideas, what he learned
from Martin Luther King Jr.
and what he wanted us to take
home with us. It was just a
beautiful thing to just be in a
parking lot with such an inspirational person,"
all

clicked

Hughes

LaFayette said

says. "It

me when

for

Dr.

it."

there
And
while on

a lot to be said
the Freedom
students' bus is
is

Trail.

The

equipped with a microphone
open for anyone. "We had
amazing discussions on the
bus, it was our forum to have
any kind of debate we wanted.
We talked about what it was like
being Black and the kinds of
racism that still exist," says
Hughes. "People got loud and
they dug into issues
and that was the fun of it. We
talked about how we wanted to
bring our experience back home
with us to share what we
learned," she says.
Hughes also finds the lack of
civil rights education in the
school system to be "rather sad,"
which is one of the reasons she is
majoring in Elementary Educa-

The civil rights education provided by ACRES is not just
about understanding the history, but also "about relationships between the changes that

^^People

from the

nation. Its motto

is

"an

ACKE m

every community."

Funding

for

ACRES

possible by donations

many

groups and organizations.

civil rights

have done things for us

is made
made by

movement

directly^

and they

fired up,

Susquehanna University.
young kids think hisisn't important. They don't

tion at

"A
tory

lot of

realize that the people from the
civil

rights

movement have done

things for them directly, and
that they are still alive and here
for us to learn from," she says.

RV ^Wjr.»f -V 75HV lig
vje&mi-^'

','?*'''

are

still

from.

alive

and here for us

^^

to learn

—Denise Hughes

took place and the changes that
still need to take place." says

some of which are ABC Inc..
AOL Time Warner Inc., the New

LaFayette.

York

ACRES

has provided scholarships for 320 students since its
founding in 2001. Three more
expeditions are currently being
planned for the spring and sumof 2004. The goal of ACRES,
says Devlin, is to create a civil
rights curriculum that will be
accessible to everv district in the

mer

City
Education.

Department

New York

of

State

Sony Music Inc..
and the United Federation of
Legislature.

Teachers.
[For more information about

ACRES

Scan Dalin or Reginald H.
Bowman. ACRES Board Secretary, at
563 8th St.. No.4R Brooklyn. NY 1121
or by phone at 71S-76S-1365.]
contact

ii«,-',;»«t' ,-».-^<.*.T*'.-w

tf--,

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Tough to be
A Black Hero

It's

They're Black detectives;
sex machines to the chicks.

Their names weren't only their business,
but also their pleasure.
They're

far

out chicks in wild dashikis that

blew our minds.
They're the heroes of Blaxploitation, urban
heroes who made their marks in movie theatres
and grind houses in the 1970s.

by Mike Sullivan

The

Blaxploitation genre

some kind

may seem

misguided

negligible,

but the films
were action-packed, exciting, and never took
themselves too seriously.
Fans of the genre disagree on when the movement
started. For some, it began in 1965 with the Sidney
Poitier thriller The Slender Thread. Others claim it
began in 1971 with Shaft, while still others say it
started in the late 1930s with jazzy all-black musicals, like Harlem on the Prairie. Considering that
most Blaxploitation films dealt with private detectives subverting "The Man's" world from within, it's
more than likely Shaft was the film that kicked off
like

of

fad,

the Blaxploitation craze.

Contrary to most social critics' opinions, the films
weren't just about action. The genre spanned everything from comedy {Car Wash) to horror (Blacula) to
heartfelt drama (Cornbread, Earl, and Me). The films
delivered exactly what their audience wanted.
"Blaxploitation" was coined by Junius Griffin,
former head of the Hollywood chapter of the
NAACP, who used the word to lambaste the films
he felt were "violent and simpleminded." Super
Fly was one of the films relentlessly targeted by
Griffin. His criticism of Blaxploitation smacks of
hypocrisy since he was a press agent who, weeks
before his accusation, failed to get the Super Fly
account from Warner Bros.
Many historians consider the films nothing more
than a footnote in film history, but the Blaxploitation

movement

is

more than

just unstoppable pri-

vate detectives or pimps with hearts of gold.
The soundtrack from Shaft influenced countless
film and television sco-es, not only in how the
score was arranged, but also in how the film was
marketed. Independent films like Melvin Van

78

Peebles' Sweet Sweethack's Badass Song influenced the dark, gritty style not only of urban
action thrillers, but also of Oscar-nominated fare
like Requiem for a Dream and mainstream successes like New Jack City.
The Blaxploitation movement finally gave Blacks
a chance to play leading characters instead of suffering through bit roles and token walk-ons. The
work of actors Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and
Jim Brown are still noted for their charismatic and
gutsy performances. Blaxploitation films also gave
Blacks an opportunity to write and direct, most

notably screenwriter Oscar Williams who was
behind the blockbuster hit Black Belt Jones.
Former Hogan's Heroes co-star Ivan Dixon directed the darkly satirical urban revolution film The
Spook Who Sat By the Door, a film that still has a
large fan-base today.
The Blaxploitation

movement came

to

an end

because of repetitive plot lines and increasingly
cheap production values. Pioneering blockbusters,
like Jaws and Star Wars, also contributed to
Blaxploitation's demise. Smaller pictures like Hell
Up in Harlem just couldn't compete with monster
sharks and Wookies. The urban action thrillers
didn't have the crossover appeal the studios were
looking

for.

Attempts

to revive the genre,

most recently John

Shaft remake and Malcolm D. Lee's
satirical Undercover Brother, have been unsuccessful. With Hollywood's love of empty demographically
approved snoozers it's possible that Blaxploitation
will never be revived, but thanks to the advent of
DVD, future generations will be able to view classics
like Coffy and Dolemite with a new sense of respect
Singleton's

and

titillation.

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5

A Bloomsbura snident Is
A

Learner
More than 30 percent of Bloomsburg students are

ranked
This

in the top

fall,

20 percent of their high school

class.

four freshmen were valedictorians and two

were salutatorians.

A Citizen
Last year

more than 3,000 students contributed 50,879 houis

of service to the community. Community service projects langed
from helping area children with their school work to pro\ idmg

food for the needy

at the

Bloomsburg Food Cupboard

A Leader
Sixty percent of incoming

Bloomsburg students

participated in student government, honors programs or

high school. Many participated

athletics while in

than one of these

Learn more about Bloomsburg:
Undergraduate Admi.ssion.s: (.570) 389-4316
Graduate Studies: (.570) 38'i-401
Continuing Education: (570j '9-4420
The World Wide Web: www.blomnu.edu

in

more

activities.

A

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