The Unhidden Minute

After achieving freedom at the end of the Civil War, Booker Taliaferro Washington became one of the most famous Black American leaders, authors, and educators in the country. He was of the last generation born into slavery and lived through the Reconstruction Era as the freedoms gained during the War were systematical replaced with a regime of extreme political violence, racism, and legal discrimination. Booker T. Washington was an expert in political maneuvering and worked to help ‘uplift his race’ in the ways that he believed were best, education and economic development. He helped to establish more than 5000 schoolhouses for Black children across the South and in 1900 Washington established the National Negro Business League. He also wrote 14 influential books, including his autobiography, Up from Slavery. Perhaps Washington’s greatest legacy, is Alabama's historic university, the Tuskegee Institute, which he founded in 1882 and led until his death in 1915.

https://www.nps.gov/bowa/index.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Robert Smalls was a Black American politician, businessman, soldier and sailor. Born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, he freed himself, his crew, and their families during the American Civil War by commandeering a Confederate transport ship, called the CSS Planter, in Charleston harbor, on May 13, 1862. Smalls sailed the ship from Confederate-controlled waters to the U.S. blockade that surrounded it. He then delivered the ship to the Union-occupied area in the Beaufort–Port Royal–Hilton Head area, where it became a Union warship. Smalls would serve as an active combatant in more than 15 military engagements in both the U.S. Navy and the Army. After the Civil War he returned to Beaufort and ran successfully for public office as a Republican. Smalls was elected to the South Carolina Legislature and the United States House of Representatives during the era of Reconstruction . He was among the first Black Americans to serve in the U.S. Congress.

https://www.nps.gov/reer/index.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822[1] – March 10, 1913) was a Black American woman  who led enslaved people along the Underground Railroad to freedom.  Through this network of secret routes and safe houses she led 19 missions over 15 years from the slave-holding states of the Deep South to locations in the North that favored the cause of Abolition. Tubman emancipated hundreds of the enslaved and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman found new ways to fight slavery, working as a nurse, cook, laundress, and even a Union spy. She served with the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and treated soldiers wound at the Battle of Fort Wagner in 1863.   During the War, Tubman was the first woman to lead an armed expedition to conduct the raid at Combahee Ferry, South Carolina which liberated more than 700 enslaved people. After the war, she took up the cause of Woman’s Suffrage and advocated for the cause of voting rights.

https://www.nps.gov/people/harriet-tubman.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Become a paid subscriber to the Unhidden Minute Podcast for one year and receive a copy of The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors 10th Anniversary Edition by James Edward Mills.

Sgt. Major William Harvey Carney born February 29, 1840  was the first Black American whose acts of valor earned the Medal of Honor. During the Civil War as a member of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment, an all-Black unit of the Union Army, Carney was part of the 2nd failed attack on the Confederate stronghold that stood in defense of Charleston Harbor at Morris Island in South Carolina called Fort Wagner. Taking heavy casualties, the 54th lost more than 600 men. Badly wounded Carney carried the regimental colors and the American Flag back across the battle lines in their retreat leading the survivors to safety. As he lay near death in a field hospital only then did he release the banners. “Boys the old flag never once touched the ground,” he said. Despite the defeat at Fort Wagner, the heroism displayed by the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment inspired more than 180,000 Black men to take up arms to defeat the Confederacy.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-54th-massachusetts-and-the-second-battle-of-fort-wagner.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Become a paid subscriber to the Unhidden Minute Podcast for one year and receive a copy of The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors 10th Anniversary Edition by James Edward Mills.

Mary Smith Peake was an American teacher and humanitarian born in Hampton Virginia. Among a class of affluent free Black aristocrats during the Civil War she is best known for starting a school for the children of the formerly enslaved beginning in the fall of 1861.  Under what became known as the Emancipation Oak tree in present-day Hampton near Fort Monroe she helped to educate those who had escaped from Southern plantations to take refuge at Freedom's Fortress. Peake was the first Black teacher hired by the American Missionary Association. She was also credited with inspiring the establishment of Hampton College in 1868, which is now Hampton University, one of America's first Historically Black Colleges or Universities, an HBCU. The Emancipation Oak still stands today and  is designated as a national historic landmark by the Department of the Interior and one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society.

https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-smith-peake.htm

Illustration by Nate Taylor

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Become a paid subscriber to the Unhidden Minute Podcast for one year and receive a copy of The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors 10th Anniversary Edition by James Edward Mills.

Early in the Civil War on May 23, 1861, three men escaped enslavement and turned themselves over to the Union Army at Fort Monroe Virginia as refugees. Their names were Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker, and James Townsend. Rather than turn them back as required by the “Fugitive Slave Law” of 1850 the fort’s commander General Benjamin Butler, who just happened to be a lawyer, refused, siting that he was under no obligation to return “materials of war” back to the enemy. The three men were confiscated as “contraband” under the articles of war and given their freedom. The Contraband Decision of 1861 encouraged the enslaved to flee the plantations and farms of the South in the tens of thousands to cross over the Union lines and turn themselves in. Fort Monroe would earn the nickname “Freedom’s Fortress”.  By depriving the Confederacy of its primary labor force, it was this series of events that prompted Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st 1863.

https://www.nps.gov/fomr/index.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Become a paid subscriber to the Unhidden Minute Podcast for one year and receive a copy of The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors 10th Anniversary Edition by James Edward Mills.

Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; c. February 1818 was a Black American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping enslavement in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that people of African descent lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Douglass it seemed understood better than most people of his time the intrinsic value of personal freedom and dignity to a truly successful democracy. He once wrote

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/frederickdouglass.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates American history. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Original illustration by Nate Taylor

Become a paid subscriber to the Unhidden Minute Podcast for one year and receive a copy The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors 10th Anniversary Edition by James Edward Mills.

Mary Ellen Pleasant was a free Black entrepreneur and abolitionist at the height of the California gold rush. Born in 1814 Pleasant wrote that her mother was a "full-blooded Negress from Louisiana" and her father was Hawaiian. Though she identified personally as Black, she passed as white among the cultural elites of the day. As a hotelier and restauranteur in San Francisco Pleasant amassed a fortune worth more than $30 million. As part of the Underground Railroad she provided formerly enslaved with gainful employment in a variety of businesses throughout California. Dedicated to the cause of Black liberation Pleasant personally financed the raid on the armory at Harper’s Ferry West Virginia in 1859. When abolitionist John Brown was executed for murder and treason a note was found in his pocket that was attributed to Pleasant upon her death bed in 1904.  It read "The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help."

https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-ellen-pleasant.htm

https://www.nps.gov/hafe/index.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Become a paid subscriber to the Unhidden Minute Podcast for one year and receive a copy The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors 10th Anniversary Edition by James Edward Mills.

Dred Scott (c. 1799 – September 17, 1858) was an enslaved  Black American man who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court case of 1857, better known as the "Dred Scott decision". Scott claimed that he and his wife should be granted their freedom because they had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal. The laws of these areas also stipulated that slaveholders would lose their rights if the enslaved person retained residency for an extended period. But this Supreme Court ruling, decided 7–2 against Scott, found that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules, which adjudicate cases cross state lines and different nationalities. The Dred Scott Decision essentially deprived all Black people of their rights as citizens of the United States. This decision made it impossible for a person of African descent to receive fair treatment under the law anywhere in the country.

https://www.nps.gov/jeff/planyourvisit/dredscott.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute

Become a paid subscriber to the Unhidden Minute Podcast for one year and receive a copy The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors 10th Anniversary Edition by James Edward Mills.

As early as 1839 an enslaved Black man named Black man named Stephen Bishop lead many of the earliest explorations of Mammoth Cave in the state of Kentucky. One of the first tourist attractions in North America, this vast cavern spans more than 406 miles beneath the Earth’s surface. With a keen sense of direction and spacial acuity Bishop identified named and mapped many of the cave’s prominent features. Bishop was said to have guided the most prominent scientists, political figures and writers of the mid-19th century including the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was on a visit to Mammoth Cave guided by Bishop that Emerson was inspired to write the essay Illusions, based on a dazzling display called the Star Camber. With expertise as a talented storyteller Bishop became as well known as the cave itself. Four generations Black Americans would become guides in Mammoth Cave until it was designated as the 27th National Park in 1941. But due to racial segregation of federal service during the Jim Crow era, all Black guides including Bishop’s descendants were told to leave.

https://www.nps.gov/people/stephen-bishop.htm

The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.

#unhiddenblackhistory #NationalParkService #yourparkstory #NationalGeographic #unhiddenminute