Primary Sources, Black History

Join The Gist of Freedom and Host Shellie Gaines as we welcome Brooke Alford!!

"The Viosocalist" Brooke Alford is a contemporary national performer and recording Artist of the Violin. Brooke plays in styles including, but not limited to Contemporary Jazz,

Gospel, Pop and R&B. She has opened for national and international recording artists such as Najee, Will Downing, Paul Taylor, Eric Darius, and Rick Braun, and has shared the stage with James Ingram, Kenneth Edmonds (Better known as "Babyface") and Alex Bugnon. Brooke has also been featured on Trinity Broadcasting Network's (TBN).

Join The Gist of Freedom and Host Shellie Gaines we welcome Brooke Alford!

William H. Scott  (d. 1910), was a self  emancipated 12-year-old African American.  During the early years of the Civil War (1862), William attached himself to Union troops, served in the U.S. Army for 3 1/2 years, got an education, taught school and then became a Baptist minister in Washington, later in Boston.  He was the mentor to William Monroe Trotter, founder of the BOSTON GUARDIAN, and Scott was also one of the original 29 members of the Niagara Movement (predecessor organization to the NAACP).  Twelve years after escaping to freedom, he was lecturing on "The Black Man in History."

Dr. Mary Frances Berry Speaking at the ASALH Annual Luncehon!

Established on September 9, 1915 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, we are the Founders of Black History 

Month and carry forth the work of our founder, the Father of Black History.  We continue his legacy 

of speaking a fundamental truth to the world--that Africans and peoples of African descent are makers of 

history and co-workers in what W. E. B. Du Bois called, "The Kingdom of Culture."  ASALH's mission is to 

create and disseminate knowledge about Black History, to be, in short, the nexus between the Ivory Tower 

and the global public.  We labor in the service of Blacks and all humanity

Oberlin College In 1835 became the first predominately white collegiate institution to admit African American male students and two years later it opened its doors to all women, becoming the first coeducational college in the country.   In 1862, Mary J Patterson earned a B.A. becoming the first African American woman to earn a degree from an American college. Other black women had graduated earlier but did not receive the collegiate degree (BA). As part of the Underground Railroad, Oberlin’s intricate network of back road routes and safe houses, the college and town provided refuge for fugitive slaves bound for Canada.  In 1858, students, faculty, and residents of Oberlin and nearby Wellington, Ohio rescued a runaway slave John Price from U.S. marshals, and transported him to freedom in Canada.   One year later three African American residents of the town of Oberlin, Shields Green, Lewis Sheridan Leary, and John Anthony Copeland, participated in John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry.

Unfortunately recently, Classes were canceled after a report of someone wearing what looked like a Ku Klux Klan-type hooded robe on campus.

A police report has also detailed the defacement of Black History Month posters with the N-word, a "whites only" sign written above a water fountain, a swastika drawn on a science center window and a student knocked to the ground by a person making a derogatory comment about ethnicity. Two students are being investigated for possible involvement in the graffiti.

The students have responded by organizing rallies of solidarity to show their disdain for the cowards who committed the racists acts!

Click and Listen to  Kimberly Simmons, a descendant of Abolitionists Oberlin Graduates as she speaks on these disturbing incidents from a historical perspective with The Gist of Freedom host Preston Washington  www.BlogTalkRadio.com/BlackHistory

Mary, Free, Educated & A Spy! Disguise... Confederate White House Slave  Mary was the best as she was working right in The Confederate President's home.  She had a photographic mind. Everything Mary saw on the Rebel President’s desk she could repeat word for word.   

“Ellen Bond” was neither dim-witted, illiterate, nor a slave. In reality she was a free, well educated African American woman by the name of Mary Elizabeth Bowser. And she was a Union spy working right under Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s nose.

For months during the most crucial period of the Civil War, as General Ulysses S. Grant maneuvered to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital, Mary supplied critical military intelligence to the Union army. In recognition of her contributions to the Union war effort, she was inducted into the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Hall of Fame in 1995.

 

Elizabeth was able to arrange for a friend to take Mary with her as a servant to help at social functions held by Varina Davis in the Confederate White House. Mary performed her servant role so well she was eventually taken on full time as, presumably, a slave hired out by her master.

"Lincoln blames the Free Blacks for the war," Holzer explains. "[He] says, if it wasn't for your presence here this wouldn't be happening. Go where the ban is not upon you, he tells them. Go to the Caribbean, go to Africa." Watch the Video  On Aug. 14 1862, Abraham Lincoln hosted a “Deputation of Free Negroes” at the White House, led by the Rev. Joseph Mitchell, commissioner of emigration for the Interior Department. It was the first time African Americans had been invited to the White House on a policy matter. The five men were there to discuss a scheme that even a contemporary described as a “simply absurd” piece of “charlatanism”: resettling emancipated slaves on a 10,000-acre parcel of land in present-day Panama.   Edward M. Thomas, John F. Cook, Cornelius C. Clark, John T. Costin, and Benjamin McCoy—met with Lincoln in August 1862 to debate his proposal for a black colony in Central America Cook, Costin, and Clark were members of the Social Civil and Statistical Association, A black city-based organization. The SCSA had sought to "banish several emigration promoters from Washington" weeks before the delegation met with Lincoln. Many of the SCSA's members were connected with the prestigious Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church.

Black Emigrationists~ Book Reading, Black Abolitionists by Benjamin Quarles!

Black Emigrationists Newspaper

Black Abolitionists chp 9 Benjamin Quarles ~"Before the ship's owner could arrest them under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law, a group of 6 black women rushed into the state Supreme Court . While the attorney for Morris was addressing the judge, Someone in the spectator's section shouted, "Go, go." Whereupon A colored woman "of great size," who scrubbed floors for a living, threw her arms around the neck of one officer, Immobilizing him while the other colored people rushed to the bench and bore Eliza and Polly Ann down the courthouse steps and shoved them into a waiting carriage.

Eliza and Polly Ann were never recaptured, and their abettors went scot-free, although the Sheriff C.P. Sumner, father of Charles Sumner (movie Lincoln starring Tommie Lee Jones) was criticized for permitting such a breach of the peace.

Maya Angelou on Quilts & Slavery- Sunday, March 10 ~ Harriet Tubman Day! 

On July 15th the producer of The Gist of Freedom was blessed with the opportunity, by chance to call in and speak to Maya Angelou on The Rolonda Watts Blog Talk Radio Show.

 

Ten Days of Harriet Tubman Activities  Delaware Governor Markell officially proclaims March 10th as Harriet Tubman Day, the centennial of Harriet Tubman’s death!

 

This Scenic Byway features true stories and real sites associated with Harriet Tubman   The Inaugural Delaware Harriet Tubman Commemorative 2 mile walk, ride, run and race event