James Varick was born to a slave mother and a free black man, Richard Varick.  He grew up with his parents in New York, where it is supposed that he attended the Free School for Negroes.  Varick served an apprentice shoemaker and for many years worked as a shoemaker and tobacco cutter to support himself and his family.

By 1766, Varick lived as a free man.  And, it was at this time that he joined the Methodist church, although he was baptized in the Dutch Church by his father.  He was one of the first Black men licensed to preach at John Street Church, however, but his eventual appointment to the pulpit, as the Church’s first black preacher, caused considerable racial tension and calls for racial segregation of the congregation.

In 1790, he married Aurelia Jones.  The couple had seven children, four boys and three girls, only four of whom survived into adulthood.

Although the A.M.E. Zion Church received its charter in 1801, led by Varick, they did not officially separate from the church until 1820.

[ Please see the 1852 North America article on James Jamison for a more detailed history of the church prior to the founding of the A.M.E. Zion Church]

Varick, a life-long activist, petioned the New York State Constitutional Convention, along with other black New York City leaders, to grant blacks the right to vote.  Six years later, Varick helped establish Freedom’s Journal, the first Black newspaper in the United States.

Charles Lenox Remond was one of the earliest black abolitionist speakers.  He was the first born of eight children of his free black parents, John and Nancy Remond. His parents were from the Caribbean, and both hairdressers and caterers.  He was from a large family of African entrepreneurs, including a sister, Caroline, who owned the largest wig factory in the state.

At the age of 17, he began his career as a public speaker on behalf of the antislavery movement, and was later joined by his sister, Sarah Parker Remond.

In 1838, he joined the Anti-Slavery Society, ran by William Lloyd Garrison and became its first African lecturer.  He was an outstanding orator and spoke a public meetings across the Northeast.  He also toured as an anti-slavery lecturer with Frederick Douglass.

In 1840, Remond traveled with William Lloyd Garrison to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London.  Instead of returning immediately to the United States, he went on a lecture tour throughout England, Scotland and Ireland delivering antislavery messages and drumming up financial support for abolitionist publications. 

Upon Redmond’s return to the United States, Remond suffered discriminatory Jim Crow practices.  In 1842, he was the first African American to address the Massachusetts state legislature to protest racial discrimination on railroads and steamboats.

1850: Marries Matilda (Williams) Cassey, the widow of wealthy Philadelphia barber Joseph Cassey, with whom she had eight children.  She died in 1856.

During this period, Remond and his sister, Sarah Parker Remond, joined forces on the lecture circuit.

1858: Marries Elizabeth Magee, with whom he had four children: Amy Matilda, Charles Lenox Jr, Wendell Phillips, and Ablert Ernest Remond.  Elizabeth died in 1871, followed by Remond in 1873.

1861: Civil War: Recruits for
All-Black Infantry
During the Civil War, Remond joined other black abolitionist men, including Frederick Douglass, in the recruitment Black soldiers for the all-black Masschusetts infantry of the Union Army.

1865: After the Civil War
After the war, Remond continued to deliver public lectures protesting racism. A staunch opponent of segregation of any kind, Remond joined the American Equal Rights Association in 1867.  He also worked as a Boston street light inspector and a clerk in the Boston Customs House.

During the period, after the civil war, he consistently pushed for civil rights for Africans, despite the fact that he suffered ill health until his death in 1873.

• No slaves could be imported into the state
• Pennsylvania slaveholders were required to register their slaves annually, and failure to comply would forfeit their rights to the slave(s), who would then be freed
• All  children born in Pennsylvania were born free persons, regardless of the condition or race of their parents.  
• Any person enslaved, prior to the law entering effect, were required to remain enslaved for life
• Any non-resident slaveholder, visiting Pennsylvania, was allowed to hold slaves in the state for up to six months before being bound by the provisions of the act
• Members of Congress were exempt and were allowed to own personal slaves
• No provisions of the law would be applied to fugitive slaves from other states or their children

• Slaveholders could not take pregnant slaves out-of-state so that the children would be born enslaved
• Husbands could not be separated from wives
• Children could not be separated from parents
• Slaveholders were required to register within 6 months of the birth of a child to an enslaved mother
• All Pennsylvanians were prohibited from participating in any acts that supported the slave trade, including the building or equipping ships

• Law-enforcement officials of all states in the United Sates have the duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a fugitive slave
• Any officer or official of the federal government, whether in a free or slave state, must actively assist with the return of escaped slaves to their masters, if the state from which the slave escaped permits slavery  -- and each will be paid a fee for their work
• Any officer or official of the federal government who does not arrest an alleged runaway slave is liable to a fine of $1,000 ($28,000 present-day value)
• If any person claims ownership of a man, woman, or child, and submits a sworn testimony, the officials and officers must ensure that the fugitive slave is returned to the person making the claim
• All citizens, including those in free states, have a patriotic duty to join a posse to assist in the capture and/or custody and/or transportation of any alleged escaped slave
• Any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter is subject to six months in prision and a $1,000 fine.  All officers capturing a fugitive slave would be paid a fee for their work.
• A suspected or alleged slaved may not request or be provided a jury trial, or testify on their own behalf 

In 1850, he moved with his wife Nancy and five children from Philadelphia to San Francisco.  He was appalled to find that slavery was still a fact of life in the free state of California.  In an attempt to do something about this, he made his home a safe place for African slaves and domestic workers to learn about their rights and to learn antislavery songs.

In 1851, Mr. Lester, who was making his living as a bootblack and boot maker, met Mifflin W. Gibbs in the early California gold rush days.  They became partners in the firm Lester & Gibbs, and opened up a successful store in 1851, bearing the name “Emporium for Fine Boots and Shoes, imported from Philadelphia, London and Paris.” This business saw wide success in both wholesale and retail, and the pair became very wealthy.

Despite this success, Africans were still treated poorly in California. Lester was involved in a personal incident when two white men assaulted him in his store with a cane and stole a pair of shoes.  Because the courts did not allow Africans to testify against whites, he could not press charges against the men.

Also, in 1858, Lester’s 15-year-old daughter, Sarah Lester, became part of a local uproar when the pro-slavery San Francisco Herald printed an anonymous letter demanding her removal from an otherwise all-white school. After several weeks of active debate on the matter, Peter removed his daughter from the school.

In response to these events, as well as a newly introduced measure by the California state legislature to ban any further immigration Africans to California, the Lesters participated in a mass emigration of Africans, led by his business partner, Mifflin Gibbs, from San Francisco to Victoria in Canada, where he resided until his death sometime after 1891.

John Jamison Moore was born a slave in the 1800s, in what is now West Virginia.  His mother, was born free, but was kidnapped at the age of 15 in Maryland and sold into slavery in West Virginia, where she married a man name Hodge.  A change of owners caused the family to adopt the surname of Moore. Before slaves were emancipated, his mother ran away from her master, carrying her child with her, to escape to freedom.

As a young man and member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Moore began traveling by day and preaching at night.  Traveling on foot, at about 30 miles per day, he preached the Gospel at night in the most remote areas.

African Americans had been a part of the John Street congregation since its founding in 1768, drawn by their dramatic preaching and their antislavery beliefs.  And, by 1793, Blacks constituted 40% of the church membership, a previously non-existent race prejudice began to manifest among New York Methodists, as Blacks increased in the congregation.   

Racism Arises in the Church
They began to tell Blacks where to sit, when to come to the Communion table (after the whites were finished), and which church positions they could hold.  The church also had licensed a number of Black men to preach, but prohibited them from preaching, except occasionally, only among Blacks and never among whites.  In addition, these “colored” preachers were prohibited from joining the annual M.E. conference, as their white counterparts. 

Forced Separation
In 1796, under such restrictions, the African American preachers and congregation began holding their own meetings.  Initially, they retained strong ties to the city’s Methodist Episcopal hierarchy, but their charter specified that only African Americans could be trustees or voting members of the Zion church.

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church received its official charter on February 16, 1801.


In the years after the initial charter, Methodist Episcopal connections weakened.  Real conflict arose in 1820, when the white Methodist hierarchy in New York attempted to centralize control of church properties through legal action.   

The Zion church's white pastoral overseer resigned in protest, leaving the African American congregation without a direct link to the city's other Methodists.  Zion church leaders, led by James Varick, responded by forming their own denomination, separate from the white Methodist Episcopal Church.  The new denomination held its first general conference in 1828. 

The A.M.E. Zion conference was referred to nationally as the "Freedom Church" for its vital role in the United States abolitionist movement, and was an "Underground Railway" refuge.  Sojourner Truth was a member of the congregation, and spoke out from the pulpit against slavery. Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass were members of the A.M.E. Zion conference at other congregations. Identification with the abolitionist movement led to attacks by an anti-black mob during a three-day riot in 1834. Church windows were smashed and several black and white churches were set ablaze.

The Zion church also became an important cultural center for the city's African-American community. Paul Robeson, brother of Pastor Dr. Benjamin C. Robeson, spoke from the pulpit. Dr. Robeson's activism for civil rights led him to work with prominent Harlem Renaissance members such as Langston Hughes and W. E. B. Du Bois.

In August 1852, Moore established the First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, on Stockton Street, between Broadway and Vallejo Streets, in San Francisco.  He also traveled throughout the Bay Area cities of Napa, San Jose, and Watsonville, ministering to African Americans.

Moore was a prominent citizen of San Francisco, who always took an active part in contending for the rights of his people.

In 1855, Moore organized San Francisco’s colored school, located in the basement of St. Cyprian’s Church on Jackson and Virginia Streets.  He was its first principal and teacher.

In addition, Moore was made chaplain at the first Colored Convention of California.

In 1862, Moore published the first black, short-lived periodical, the Lunar Visitor.

In the spring of 1868, Moore left San Francisco for Washington, DC, to accept an appointment as bishop.

By 1884, the AME Zion Church had grown to a membership of over 300,000.

Rev. Moore was married to Mrs. Frances Moore of Salisbury, North Carolina.  He died on December 9, 1893, on the train on his way home to Salisbury after closing the Western North Carolina Conference in Greensboro, having preached to within a few days of his death.

Today, the AME Zion church boasts a membership of 1.2 million.
===================

In the early 1800s, most of Manhattan, in New York State, was unsettled.  Most New Yorkers lived below 14th Street, where conditions were often crowded and unsanitary, especially for the city’s poor.  The land of uptown was open, rural, inexpensive, and available to people of any race or ethnicity.

During this period, there were two significant neighborhoods, primarily occupied by freed African-descended slaves and Irish immigrants fleeing the Great “Potato” Famine of the 1940s – Seneca Village, a sparsely settled and rural area above 59th Street, founded by former slaves, and The Five Points neighborhood, which grew to be the first urban slum in the United States, located in lower Manhattan.  Both neighborhoods owed their existence to the influx of freed slaves and poor Irish immigrants, along with a few German immigrants.  Seneca Village, founded by free Black people, was destroyed in 1857 in order to begin construction of Central Park, while The Five Points neighborhood simply descended into nothingness.


In 1824, white deliveryman, John Whitehead, and his wife, Elizabeth, purchased farmland on what is now Manhattan’s Upper West Side.  They soon subdivided the land into smaller lots to sell.  In September 1825, a young man of African heritage, Andrew Williams, purchased three lots from the Whiteheads for $125.  The same day, trustees for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church purchased six lots near 86th Street for use as a cemetery for “colored” people.  Among the trustees was Epiphany Davis, an African store clerk, who purchased twelve lots for $578. 

On July 4, 1827 slavery officially ended in New York. While the city’s approximately 12,000 African Americans (nearly all of them already free) welcomed this event, most saw little immediate improvement in their difficult lives. Racism and employment discrimination confined most of them to poorly paid work as day laborers, chimney sweeps, and hucksters (for men); and domestic servants, launderers, and rag pickers (for women). While a small number of African Americans earned decent livings as skilled artisans, most lived in poverty.

Between 1825 and 1832, real estate records show, the Whiteheads sold at least 24 land parcels to Black families.  And with New York State ending slavery on July 4, 1827, Seneca Village eventually spread across over five acres, becoming the first significant community of African-descended property owners on Manhattan.

African Americans also faced intensifying racism as the number of European immigrants (most from Ireland and Germany) in the city surged and the national debate over slavery intensified.  In the 1830s, incidents of violence against African Americans rose, including an 1834 attack against the congregation of a Black church by a white mob. 

Despite these types of incidents, the city’s African American community developed a wide range of institutions to strengthen their communities, including newspapers, schools, charitable societies, libraries, and churches.  In the rural area of Manhattan, Seneca Village develop into a thriving community, with several homes, three churches, two schools, and two cemeteries.

Social Activism
In addition, many also were active in the struggle against slavery, hiding fugitive slaves, raising funds for the abolitionist movement, and establishing antislavery newspapers like Frederick Douglass’s North Star (1847). On more than one occasion crowds of African Americans gathered at City Hall to protest the seizure of escaped slaves by civil authorities.

Along with African property owners, Seneca Village came to be inhabited by several minorities, including poorer white citizens displaced by government-enforced evictions, and Irish and German immigrants.  The Great “Potato” Famine in Ireland, in the 1840s, brought swelling numbers to the United States, and those that came to live in Seneca Village, increased its population by 30%.  Both African-descended former slaves and the majority Irish immigrants faced discrimination throughout the city.

Lower Manhattan, where most New Yorkers lived, had become overcrowded and unsanitary, and many affluent and civic-minded New Yorkers were concerned that commerce and industry were taking over the island. They were also displeased that communities of poor immigrants were changing the character of downtown.

From 1849 through 1853, inspired by the publication of Andrew Downing’s “A Talk about Public Parks and Gardens”, wealthy New Yorkers debated issues concerning the creation of a “grand”, centralized park.  Downing was a horticulturalist and landscape designer, who believed that creating public space would advance urban environments, and that Manhattan was the ideal location for a public park.   In the summer of 1853, the city government, despite public outcry and petition, authorized taking the land between 59th and 106th Streets, between Fifth and Eighth Avenues, to lay grounds for a public park, in upper Manhattan, where new neighborhoods for the wealthy could be created.


At the time of the 1855 New York State Census, most of the city’s population lived below 14th Street, in Lower Manhattan,, and most African American in the lower west side of Manhattan, Five Points, and Greenwhich Village. The region above 59th Street, where Seneca Village was located, was more rural and sparsely inhabited, with the population reported to be 264 by the 1855 census, 2/3 African American and 1/3 European immigrants, mostly Irish.


The city claimed the right of “eminent domain,” which permitted the state to take the private lands for public use.  Although landed owners were given some compensation, renters were not.  All residents of Seneca Village were forced to vacate beginning in 1856. Approximately 1,600 people, spread over 7,500 lots of land, were directly affected, with nearly 300 of them in Seneca Village.

Residents Slandered
in the Media Reports
Many residents fought for the right to keep their land and their community intact through the legal system.  For two years, residents resisted police as they petitioned the courts and filed objections to their forced removal and requesting higher compensation for their land.  In response, they were slandered in newspapers and magazines as “squatters”, “bloodsuckers,” and “insects” living in a “wasteland” of “shanties”.

The last Seneca Village holdouts were removed on October 1st, 1857.  The community of Seneca Village, with its deep spiritual and family ties, developed over 30 years, vanished without leaving much evidence of its past, and Central Park opened. There are few records of where residents went after their eviction.

In 1861, seven slave states in the Lower South region of the United States, led by South Carolina, united to withdraw from the union of the United States of America to form their own government --- the Confederate States of America (or Confederacy). This was brought about in response to the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, who campaigned on a platform opposed to slavery, as President.

Outraged by Lincoln’s election, South Carolina left he Union in December 20, 1860. And, because the economy of the Lower South region was fully dependent upon the plantation system and slave labor, six other states (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas ) joined South Carolina in succeeding from the Union, a month prior to Lincoln’s March inauguration.

Confederate Flag

Prior to other states joining the Confederacy, in January 1861, while James Buchanan was still in office, South Carolina embarked upon a major, armed campaign against the United States, Their victories allowed South Carolina authorities to seize all Federal property in Charleston South Carolina, except for the heavily fortified Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston. However, by March, the complete control over Charleston Harbor by the Confederacy, severely limited the supply of food, men, and arms to Fort Sumter. The resupply of Fort Sumter then became the first crisis of the administration of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

Beginning of Civil War

When Lincoln notified the Governor of South Carolina that he was sending supply ships to Fort Sumter, the Confederate government issued a “surrender or die” ultimatum. Because there was no surrender, on April 12, the Confederates, surrounding the harbor, bombarded the fort, outgunning the Union stronghold. After which, the Union army chose to evacuate the fort, in surrender, without any loss of life.

In response, Lincoln immediately called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion. And in response to this, the slave states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined the Confederacy.

Order of Succession

South Carolina	12.20.1860
Mississippi	01.09.1861
Florida	01.10.1861
Alabama	01.11.1861
Georgia	01.19.1861
Louisiana	01.26.1861
Texas	02.23.1861
Virginia	04.17.1861
Arkansas	05.06.1861
Tennessee	05.07.1861
North Carolina	05.20.1861

On May 20, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Acts into law.  This legislation consisted of several United States federal laws that gave an applicant ownership of 160 acres of land, typically called a “homestead”, at little or no cost.   Most of the land offered was flat and treeless prairie land. 

People came from all over the world to take advantage of this opportunity.  The settlers and immigrants experienced extremely hot summers, long and cold winters. They were challenged by droughts, blizzards, rainstorms, tornadoes, grasshopper swarms, and strong winds. 

Bridget Mason, known to everyone as “Biddy”, was born a slave in Mississippi in 1818.  As a child, she was separated from her parents and sold several times, working on plantations in Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina.   She spent most of her childhood working on John Smithson’s plantation in South Carolina, where she assisted the house servants and midwives.

In 1836, Smithson gave the 18-year old Biddy to his cousins Robert Marion Smith and Rebecca Crosby Smith, as a wedding present and sent her to live in Logtown, Mississippi.  While working for the Smiths, Biddy gave birth to three daughters: Ellen, Ann and Harriet, all supposedly fathered by Smith.

In 1847, Robert Smith became a Mormon convert, and followed the call of church leaders to settle in the West, where Brigham Young was starting a Mormon community.


Biddy and her three young daughters, the youngest on her back, joined other slaves on Smith’s religious pilgrimage to establish a new Mormon community, in what would become Salt Lake City, Utah.  At the time, Utah was still part of Mexico.

This trek required the 30-year-old Biddy to walk 1,700 miles, for seven months, behind a 300-wagon caravan to the Salt Lake Valley. Along the route west her responsibilities included setting up and breaking camp, cooking the meals, herding the cattle, and serving as a midwife as well as taking care of her three young daughters aged ten, four, and an infant.

In 1851, Robert Mario Smith and his family and slaves set out in a 150-wagon caravan for San Bernardino, California to establish yet another Mormon community, despite the fact that slavery was illegal in California at this time.

On this journey, Biddy met Charles H. and Elizabeth Flake Rowan, free blacks, who urged her to legally contest her slave status once she reached California, a free state.  She received additional encouragement by free black friends whom she met in California, Robert and Minnie Owens. 

By 1855, anti-slavery sentiment was growing stronger in California, and Robert Smith feared losing his slaves and decided to move with them to Texas, a slave state.  However, the free black, Robert Owens reported to the L.A. County Sheriff that slaves were being illegally held, and Smith’s wagon train was apprehended in Cajon Pass, California, and he was prevented from leaving the state.  It just so happened that the Owens family had a vested interest in Biddy’s family, as one of their sons was romantically involved with her 17-year-old daughter. 

On January 19, 1856, after five years of living in the free state of California, and with help from Robert Owens, Biddy initiated her landmark case by petitioning the court for freedom for herself and her extended family of 13 women and children.  Los Angeles District Judge Benjamin Hayes took three days before handing down his ruling in favor Biddy and her extended family, citing California’s 1850 constitution which prohibited slavery.   

Biddy had no legal last name as a slave, and after being freed, she chose to be known as Biddy Mason, because Mason was the middle name of Amasa Lyman, Mormon Apostle and mayor of San Bernardino. She had spent many years in the company of the Amasa Lyman household.

Biddy and her family moved to Los Angeles, where her daughter married the son of Robert and Minnie Owens.  She found employment as a nurse and midwife.  Hard work and her nursing skills allowed her to become economically independent. She became a domestic to Dr. John S. Griffin, a Los Angeles physician who served most of the Los Angeles area, and who had become interested in her court case.  She quickly became well regarded as a nurse and midwife, assisting in hundreds of births to mothers of all races and social classes. She also gained a reputation for her herbal remedies. 


Biddy earned $2.50 a day, a good wage for an African woman at that time. In addition, she was very frugal and saved a great deal of her earnings.  And, only after ten years of having gained her freedom, she began investing in real estate by buying  a site located in the heart of what is now downtown Los Angeles (Spring Street) for $250,  becoming one of the first black women to own land in Los Angeles.

On one parcel of her property she built a clapboard house, which she occupied until her death. 

In 1884, she sold a parcel of the land for $1500 and built a commercial building with spaces for rental on the remaining land.  

Over the ensuing years, she acquired several more lots in Los Angeles. As the town developed, most of her early investments became prime urban real estate and formed the basis of her considerable wealth.

Her financial fortunes continued to increase until she accumulated a fortune of almost $300,000. 

Her neighborhood developed quickly, and by the early 1890s the main financial district of Los Angeles was one block from Mason's property. Due to her shrewd investments, Mason was the wealthiest African woman in Los Angeles by the late 1800s. She spoke fluent Spanish and was a well-known figure downtown, and dined on occasion at the home of Pio Pico, a wealthy Los Angeles land owner.

Her grandson, Robert Curry Owens, a real estate developer and politician, was the richest African in Los Angeles at one time.


With her wealth, Biddy educated her children and became a well-known philanthropist to the entire Los Angeles community, making generous contributions to various charities and providing food and shelter for the poor of all races, and she never forgot the jail inmates whom she visited often.


She and her son-in-law, Charles Owens, founded and financed the Los Angeles branch of the First African Methodist Episcopal church, L. A.'s first black church, built upon land that she donated.

Jonathan Gibbs was a Presbyterian minister and a prominent African officeholder during Reconstruction. He served as the first black Secretary of State and Superintendent of Public Instruction of Florida, and along with Josiah Thomas Walls, US Congressman from Florida, was among the most powerful black officeholders in the state during Reconstruction.


Gibbs was born free in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1821. His father was Reverend Jonathan Gibbs I, a Methodist minister, and his mother was Maria Jackson. Jonathan C. Gibbs II was the oldest of four children born to the couple. He grew up in Philadelphia during of strong anti-black sentiment and discrimination by whites who thought themselves superior, and a series of anti-black riots.  Gibbs and his brother, Mifflin, attended the local Free School in Philadelphia.

After his father dies in 1831, Gibbs and his brother left school to support the family, at which time he became a carpenter’s apprentice.  As a new convert and member, he impressed his Presbyterian congregation so much that they provided financial backing for him to attend Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire.  Gibbs graduated from Kimball Union in 1848.

Gibbs went on to become the 3rd African to graduate from Dartmouth College, and the 2nd black man in the nation to deliver a commencement address at a college.

From 1853 to 1854, he studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, but did not graduate because of financial constraints, but became an ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1856.


As a young minister, Gibbs married Anna Amelia Harris, the daughter of a well-to-do black New York merchant and his wife.  Together, they had three children: Thomas Van Renssalaer Gibbs, Julia Pennington Gibbs, and Josephine Haywood Gibbs.

Because of his growing involvement in the abolitionist movement, low income, and frequent separations from his wife, his marriage ended in a lengthy and bitter divorce, where Gibbs considered leaving the United States to work in Africa as a missionary.

Several years later, while doing missionary work in the South, Gibbs met and married his second wife, Elizabeth.  They had at least one child, who died in infancy.

Gibbs became active in the abolitionist movement.  He attended a series of black conventions where he worked with Frederick Douglass and served on committees. He gradually became known nationally for his work in the movement. Gibbs was featured in anti-slavery publications including The Liberator and the The National Anti-Slavery Standard. His rising fame was indicative of Gibbs' own ambitions as well his skills as an orator and rising abolitionist minister.

After his divorce, he served as pastor of the First African Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, from 1859 – 1865.  He also continued in abolitionist work and became a key figure in the local underground railroad and writing articles for the Anglo-African Magazine.  He also fought for equal accommodations and transportation in city rail cars.

After the Civil War, he went south to work as a missionary in North Carolina, to help rebuild the former Confederate states and to educate the ex-slaves and poor whites who were left destitute after the war.

At the age of 46, in 1867, Gibbs move to Florida and started a private school I Jacksonville.  He, however, rapidly shifted from missionary work to political involvement.  He was elected to the State Constitutional Convention of 1868.  He was appointed Florida’s Secretary of State by Republican governor, Harrison Reed, serving from 1868 to 1872.  He proved to be a powerful man in office.

During Reconstruction more blacks served in the essentially ceremonial office of secretary of state than any other post, and by and large, the most important political decisions in every state were made by whites.

He was appointed Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1873.  He was responsible for introducing legislation creating the State Normal College for Colored Students, the forerunner of Florida A&M University.

He died of a stroke in 1874.

The Ku Klux Klan Act is formerly known as the  “Enforcement Act of 1871”, a law passed by the 42nd United States Congress, and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant.  It is also referred to by several other names:

Philadelphia had long been a free black community, even before slavery was abolished, with free blacks finding work there and flourishing.  And, in 1823, Mifflin Wistar Gibbs was born in this free state, as the second of four siblings, the eldest being brother Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, who would become the first black Secretary of State. Their father was a Methodist minister.

As a young adult, Gibbs became active in the abolitionist movement in Philadelphia and performed some work for Frederick Douglass.

Like tens of thousands of other men, Gibbs moved to California during the Gold Rush years.  There, he started work as a bootblack (shoeshine boy), but soon became a successful merchant.

In 1851, Gibbs met Peter Lester, who was making his living as a bootblack and boot maker. They became partners in the firm Lester & Gibbs, and opened up a successful store bearing the name “Emporium for Fine Boots and Shoes, imported from Philadelphia, London and Paris.” This business saw wide success in both wholesale and retail, and the pair became very wealthy.

Mifflin then went on to become founder of the Mirror of the Times, the state’s first and only African newspaper.

In 1858, the California legislature passed discriminatory laws intended to discourage blacks from entering or staying in the state: they were deprived of the right to own property and were disqualified from giving evidence against a white person in court. In addition, all black people in California were required to wear distinctive badges.


Gibbs and many other Africans were angered by the discriminatory laws of California, and he and two other African men went to British Columbia to meet with Sir James Douglas, governor of the province, to learn about how blacks were treated and regarded in Canada.  Douglas assured them that they would be treated like other residents in this frontier area.

Following this visit, Gibbs led an estimated 600 to 800 Africans, many with families, from California to the Victoria area, were some settled on Vancouver Island.

Gibbs became a naturalized British citizen in 1861, along with 52 other Africans from the emigrant group.  He worked first as a merchant, then property developer and contractor, and eventually became involved in politics.  He was elected to Victoria City Council in 1867, five years after his failed, first attempt to win a seat.



While living in Victoria, British Columbia, Gibbs married his wife, Maria Ann (Alexander), whom he met and courted during a brief return to the United States in 1859. Maria Ann was a schoolteacher and graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio. Together, they had two daughters.  After their separation in the late 1860s, Maria Ann moved back to Ohio with her daughters, Ida Alexander Gibbs (1862-1957) earned both a bachelor’s and master’s in English from Oberlin College, and her sister, Harriet Gibbs (1868-1941) who went to the Oberlin Music Conservatory to earn a bachelor’s in music in 1889, becoming an accomplished musician and teacher, and eventual founder and director of the Washington Conservatory of Music. 

After about 10 years in Canada, Gibbs returned to the United States to settle in Little Rock, Arkansas.  He read the law to become an attorney, passing the bar in 1870.  He was appointed to a number of judicial and government positions, as a member of the Republican Party.

In 1873 Gibbs was elected to the Office of the City Judge as a Republican, the first black judge elected in the United States.


In 1901, after serving as American consul to Madagascar, under President William McKinley, Gibbs returned to the United States, where he proceeded to become wealthy from his law practice and his real estate investments.   

He was selected president of a largely African-American Capital City Savings Bank, founded in Little Rock.  He also became partner in the Little Rock Electric Light Company.  He grew his wealth in real estate by gaining control of several pieces of local real estate.

In 1902, Gibbs purchased a property at 902 T Street, NW in Washington, D.C. for his daughter, Mrs. Harriet Gibbs Marshall. She ran the Washington Conservatory of Music there, which was one of the most successful women-owned businesses in the United States at the turn of the century.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Joseph E. Lee was one of the most influential African men and the most prominent black Republican in Florida.  For over four decades, he worked as a public servant, acting as a state legislator, lawyer, federal customs collector and educator.

Lee was born in Philadelphia in 1849, and graduated from Howard University with a law degree in 1873.  He moved to Florida that same year and was admitted to the bar, making him the first African-American lawyer in Jacksonville, and one of the first in the state.

He served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1875 to 1879, and in the State Senate from 1881 to 1882. In April 1888, Lee was elected Municipal Judge of Jacksonville, the first African-American to have this honor.

Around this time he also served as the dean of the law department of Edward Waters College, an African-American institute of higher learning formed in 1866 to educate freed former slaves. Lee would remain a trustee of the college for over thirty years.

Although in his era, legal restrictions kept many Africans from voting, Joseph Lee also participated in state and local politics, serving as Chairman of the Duval County Republican Party and secretary of the party’s statewide organization for nearly forty years.


Joseph E. Lee died March 25, 1920.  Civil rights leaders James Weldon Johnson and A. Phillip Randolph both remembered Lee as having been a memorable influence on their lives, and to this day a Joseph E. Lee Republican Club still operates in Jacksonville.

In reviewing Pace v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court affirmed that Alabama's anti-miscegenation statute was constitutional.

Tony Pace, a Black man, and Mary Cox, a white woman, living in Alabama. They were arrested and sentenced to two years in state prison for maintaining an (misdemeanor) interracial relationship. Marriage between races was a felony in Alabama, while sex was a misdemeanor.

The couple first appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, and on further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

One of the best known, most influential ministers in the State of Arkansas, and the pastor of its largest church, First Baptist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas.  He emerged as one of the leading ministers in the Baptist denomination.

In the late 1850s, J.P. Robinson was born on a farm in Mississippi, and remained on the farm, performing hard labor, until he was about twenty-five years of age, although he was never made certain of the exact date of his birth. 

Although he was anxious to learn, he had only a primitive, hit-and-miss educational opportunities.  He, however, took every opportunity to strengthen his mental powers.   He was always studious and determined to master his books, and excelled farther than many others with far better opportunities.

In 1881, Robinson left Mississippi and emigrated to the State of Arkansas, settling near Alexander.  In 1881, thousands of people emigrated from Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and other Southern States to the State of Arkansas, where the vast acres of government land were made available for settlement at a very nominal cost, to those who were willing to comply with the requirements of the government.

The very year that Robinson moved to Arkansas, he passed the required examination to teach in public schools, and began teaching in Pulaski County, Arkansas for the next several years, normally six months out of the year.

Robinson did not formally train as a minister, and wasn’t licensed as such.  However, by vote of his church of attendance, he was permitted to preach the Word, which started his career in the ministry.  His first sermon, “You must be born again”, was delivered in a log cabin at a prayer meeting.

In 1884, he was ordained to the ministry, while still teaching school as a profession.

While teaching school in Pulaski County, he received a letter from the board of deacons of the First Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas.  In October 1886 began serving as pastor there.  And, after three months as trial pastor, the church called for him to take the position as their pastor, permanently, in January 1887.  He had proved to be wise, insightful, logical, adaptable, convincing, and humorous – he was known for making his congregation convulse with laughter.

When he took charge of the First Baptist Church, the church was heavily in debt, and there were only about 300 members of the church, with very few young people.  Under his pastorate the membership of the church increased by leaps and bounds, until it reached about 1,800, debt was dissolved, and a church constructed and valued at $75,000.  It had one of the largest Sunday Schools in the South, with 400 pupils and 32 teachers.  In addition, he attracted a great number of intelligent and aggressive young people.


It has been said that J.P. Robinson was able to do with his congregation what few other ministers could do, that he  “knew both the weakness and the strong points of Africans, and that he was able to take advantage of every opportunity to put members in the direction of progress, prosperity and happiness”.

He exhorted them along the lines that would best promote their interest as Africans, creating incentives for them to buy homes, patronize each other in business life, respect themselves and their families, educate their children, be law-abiding, be truly religious, and inherit the whole earth and the fullness thereof.

Although ministering to a large flock, Robinson successfully pursued studies to cultivate his mind, and in 1899 graduated from Arkansas Baptist College with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

In 1902, State University in Louisville, Kentucky, all white university, conferred an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree upon him.

In 1909, his alma mater, Arkansas Baptist College, conferred an honorary Master of Arts degree upon him.

Robinson was the author of several books, but began to gain a name and fame for himself after writing the book “Sermons and Sermonettes”, which became very popular and soared in sales.  It was widely circulated and entered its third edition by 1907.

In addition to being Vice-President of Capital City Savings Bank, Robinson practiced the very doctrine that he preached to his congregation to build wealth and become self-reliant, and entered ventures to generate income and gain property throughout Arkansas.

Wife, Amanda Robinson,
Makes her Mark as  a
Successful Businesswoman
His wife, Amanda (Talley), whom he married in 1893, was also a business woman.  She was a graduate of Spellman Seminary and Roger Williams University.  She was a capable musician and a leading music teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas.

She was also known to be an expert specialist of hair and skin.  She developed and sold preparations for the improvement of the skin, hair, and female body.  She manufactured hair dressings, face lotions, and skin preparations.

Between 1890 and 1910, to enforce racial segregation,  ten of the eleven former Confederate states, starting with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments to disenfranchise (or deprive the right to vote to) most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. 

Mary Fields was born a slave in Tennessee and following the Civil War, she moved to the pioneer community of Cascade, Montana.

In 1895, when she was around 60 years old, Fields became the second woman and first African American carrier for the US Postal Service. Despite her age, she never missed a day of work in the ten years she carried the mail and earned the nickname “Stagecoach” for her reliability.

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The collaboration of Bob Cole and Billy Johnson produced "A Trip to Coontown", the first full length New York musical written, produced, and performed by black entertainers in America. 

Both Johnson and Cole played starring roles. The performance was peppered with expressions like "Coon" and "Darkey". The show ran three years, after which Cole and Johnson parted ways, but continued to write, perform, and produce.

Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson

 

Cole later partnered with brothers J. Rosamond Johnson, pianist and singer, and James Weldon Johnson, pianist, guitarist and lawyer, which resulted in over 200 songs.

Cole committed suicide after a nervous breakdown and period of clinical depression.

In a period of increasing disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, George White was the last of five African Americans who were elected and served in Congress during the Jim Crow era of the late 1800s.  After them, no African would be elected from the South until 1972, after federal civil rights legislation was passed in 1965 to enforce constitutional voting and civil rights for citizens. No Africans were elected to Congress from North Carolina until 1992.

George White was born in North Carolina, to a slave mother and a free, mixed-race father, Wiley Franklin White, who worked as a laborer in a turpentine camp.  He had one older brother, John.

In 1857, with his two sons in tows, George White’s father married Mary Anna Spaulding, a woman of mixed race.  Mary Spaulding’s grandfather, Benjamin Spaulding, was born into slavery, of a white plantation owner and African slave woman, however, his father freed him when he became a young man.  At the time George married his granddaughter, Benjamin Spaulding had acquired more than 2300 acres of pine woods land.  George and Mary White had produced several children.

In 1874, White entered Howard University, a historically black college, in Washington, DC, and became certified as a schoolteacher.  After college, he was hired as a principal at a North Carolina school.  And, as a legal apprentice under former Superior Court Judge William J. Clarke, he began to read and study the law.  In 1879, at the age of 27, White was admitted to the North Carolina bar.

1879: Married Fannie B. Randolph who died in 1880 soon after giving birth to their daughter Della.
1882: Married Nancy J. Scott, who died that same year.
1886: Married Cora Lena Cherry, with whom he had three children, Mary Adelyne, Beatrice Odessa (who died young), and George Henry White Jr.  Cora Lena died in 1905.
1915: Married Ellen Avant MacDonald of North Carolina, who survived him.

All of his children died (including Della) died before reaching adulthood, except for Mary Adelyne, who died in 1974.

1880: Elected to a single term in the North Carolina House of Representatives, where he helped to pass a law creating four state schools for Africans, in order to train more teachers, and then went on to develop one of the schools in its early years, acting as principal and encouraging students to go into teaching.

1884: Won election to the North Carolina Senate.
1886: Elected prosecuting attorney for the 2nd judicial district of North Carolina.
1896: Elected to the U.S. Congress, representing the predominantly black 2nd District
1898: Re-elected to Congress

White used the power of his office to appoint several African postmasters across his district.  He also worked for African civil rights, consistently highlighting issues of justice, and relating discussions on the economy, foreign policy and colonization to the treatment of black in the South. 

1900: Introduced the First
Bill In Congress to Make Lynching a Federal Crime
On January 20, 1900, White introduced the first bill in Congress to make lynching a federal crime to be prosecuted by federal courts; it died in committee, opposed by southern white Democrats.  A month later, as the House was debating issues of territorial expansion internationally, White defended his bill by giving examples of crimes in the South. He said that conditions in the region had to "provoke questions about ...national and international policy.  He said,

"Should not a nation be just to all her citizens, protect them alike in all their rights, on every foot of her soil, in a word, show herself capable of governing all within her domain before she undertakes to exercise sovereign authority over those of a foreign land—with foreign notions and habits not at all in harmony with our American system of government? Or, to be more explicit, should not charity first begin at home?"

White chose not to seek a third term, telling the Chicago Tribute, “I cannot live in North Carolina and be a man and be treated as a man.”  He delivered his final speech in the House on January 29, 1901:

"This is perhaps the Negroes' temporary farewell to the American Congress, but let me say,Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people – full of potential force.

On September 26, 2009, President Barack Obama referred to White's farewell speech in his remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Awards Dinner in Washington, DC.

George went on to become primary investor in the purchase of over 2,000 acres for building a town exclusively for Blacks, without the pressures of racism.  Shares were sold and the town of Whitesboro, named in his honor, was built and developed by the African community.

Whitesboro was founded about 1901 by a prominent group of black American investors, known as the African-American Equitable Industrial Association, founded by Rev. J.W. Fishburn and four other members of the Cape May City’s AME Zion Church.   During this period, there was a “Black Town” movement, where black Americans in the South and North attempted to carve out a place in American where they could live on their own terms, in a world in which they were surrounded by racism and a push for racial separation.  Most of those early settlements survive only in memories.


White people in Cape May City were creating havoc for Blacks within the city, including introducing some KKK activity.  Inspired by the self-help philosophy of Booker T. Washington, an investment group was formed to purchase 2,000 acres of land approximately ten miles north of Cape May City, exclusively for Blacks, at a cost of $14,000. 


The group investors included Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, and George Henry White, the town’s namesake and principle investor. 
 
George White and the other investors wanted to create a self-reliant community for blacks, without the discrimination faced the southern states. Four months after the purchase was finalized, they began selling shares to the planned community to African Americans from North and South Carolina and Virginia.

Requirements
Prospective colonists had to be of good character, and in the spirit of Washington needed to possess steady and industrious habits. Once approved, a colonist would receive a number of lots, each 50 feet by 150 feet (about a sixth of an acre) for a down payment of $5 per lot and a promise to till the land.

In addition to purchasing the initial land for the town, the George H. White Land Improvement Company reinvested its profits back into the community. Although most of the town’s residents were preoccupied with farming the land, many residents were employed by the Improvement Company to construct the first buildings and roads in the community.

Whitesboro's population grew steadily, reaching 100 residents by 1906. By 1909 Whitesboro boasted two churches, an industrial school for children, a railroad station, a post office and a hotel, all built by residents.  The town was also on three railroad lines including one that went east to the Atlantic Coast. The slow steady growth in population continued until the Great Depression. Nonetheless, the town survived and continues to exist today with approximately 1,000 residents.

_

William J. Seymour was one of the most influential individuals in the revival movement that grew into the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, along with other figures such as Charles Parham, Howard A. Goss, and Frank Bartleman.

Seymour emphasized racial equality, which drew many historically disenfranchised people to the movement, and due to his influence the revival grew very quickly.

His revivals were characterized by ecstatic spiritual experiences accompanied by amazing physical healing miracles, dramatic worship services, speaking in tongues, and inter-racial mingling. The participants were criticized by the secular media and Christian theologians for behaviors considered to be outrageous and unorthodox, especially at the time. Today, the revival is considered by historians to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century.

During a time when Louisiana had the highest lynching rates in the nation, William Seymour was born to former slaves, Simon and Phyllis Salabar Seymour, in Centerville, Louisiana.  He was baptized as Catholic, while his family attended a Baptist church throughout his early life.

At the age of 20 years, Seymour left the South to travel around states in the north, escaping the horrific violence aimed at Africans in the south during this period.  He continued to face racial prejudice in the north, but it was not as violent as faced in the South.

1895:  At the age of 25 years, Seymour became a born-again Christian, while attending the Simpson Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, where he had moved.

During his travels, Seymour was influenced by D.S. Warner’s holiness group dedicated to racial equality.  His views about the equality of all mankind influenced Seymour’s entire theology.

1901: At the age of 31 years, Seymour moved to Cincinnati, where his views on holiness and racial integration continued to be shaped by attending a Bible college.  During this time, he contracted smallpox and subsequently went blind in his left eye.

After overcoming smallpox, Seymour traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, where he visited Charles Price Jones, the founder of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A.  – faith healing and speaking in tongues. Seymour left the South with a very firm commitment to his beliefs.

1906: At the age of 36 years, Seymour attended a newly formed Bible school founded by Charles Parham in Houston, Texas.  Parham’s teachings on the baptism of the Holy Spirit stuck with Seymour and influenced his later doctrine and theology.  However, Seymour did not agree with Parham’s more radical views.

He developed a belief in speaking in tongues as confirmation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  He believed that this proved that the person was born-again and could go to Heaven.

After only six weeks at Parham’s school, Seymour left, against Parham’s wishes, to accept an offer to pastor a church in Los Angeles.


Seymour arrived in Los Angeles and began preaching at Julia Hutchins’ Holiness Church, in late February.  Within two weeks, Julia Hutchins threw him out of her church and padlocked the church door, outraged over Seymour’s claims on tongue-speech.


After a short while, Seymour began holding prayer group meetings at the home where he stayed.  The group quickly grew too large for his friend’s home, and was moved to another friend’s home. 

During the course of one of the prayer meetings, Seymour laid hands on the friend in whose house his was staying and the friend began speaking in tongues.  Seymour received the Holy Spirt baptism three days later.  Soon the group grew too large for the second house as well, and the Azusa Street Revival was born, after the group moved to an old African Methodist Episcopal church building on Azusa Street.

In the beginning, Africans and whites worshipped together at the same alter, against the normal segregations of the day.  Seymour rejected existing racial barriers in favor of unity in Christ, as well as barriers to women in church leadership.  Soon the membership included Africans, whites, and Latinos.

Troubles Brewing
From Azusa Street, Seymour began preaching his doctrinal beliefs, which from 1906 to 1909 became known as the Azusa Street Revival.

Seymour fell under intense scrutiny of mainstream Protestants, some felt that his views were heresy, or violated standard religious teachings, while others accepted his teachings and preached them to their own congregations.  Seymour’s revival came to be widely known as “Pentecostalism”.  Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the revival.

1906.October
Charles Parham Denounces
The Azusa Revival as False
Charles Parham came to Los Angeles and preached at the Azusa revival several times, but became disgusted with the ecstatic practices and racial mixing in worship.  He then began to preach that God was disgusted with the state of the revival, and was eventually removed by force.

Parham followed up by attacking Seymour and Azusa as being from the devil.  He claimed that speaking in tongues had to be a recognizable human language, and that Seymour had corrupted the teaching by allowing for a “divine” language that could not be understood by human ears.  Parham denounced Seymour’s doctrine as unscriptural and the racial mixing as an abomination.

1908: Seymour’s Authority
and Influence Gradually Undermined
Africans Claim Favoritism Shown White Pastors. By 1908, race issues started to become divisive.  Seymour often chose white pastors instead of black pastors in charge whenever he left Los Angeles, causing black members to fear the mission was in danger of being taken over.  Racial segregation became continually came into focus and became a larger issue as time went on.

Charges of Embezzlement.  Although eventually unfounded, Seymour was accused of embezzling funds from the Azusa Revival mission.

Rival Ministers.  Ministers formally affiliated with Azusa began to open their own missions and drew people away from the main revival.

Worshippers Do Not
Approve of His Marriage
In May 1908, Seymour married Jennie Moore Evans, but the church saw it as a violation of sanctification, which resulted in a loss of membership. 

Newsletter: Apostolic Faith
Can No Longer be Published
The coeditor of his newsletter, Apostolic Faith, used for spreading his ideas, abruptly left with the newsletter and mailing lists, and moved to Portland, and refused to give control of the paper back to Seymour.

Close Friend Turns Against Him.  William Durham was a close friend and fellow Pentecostal preacher of Seymour.  While on a revival tour, Seymour asked Durham to serve as visiting preacher.  Durham’s views on sanctification were so extreme and shocking, that Seymour’s wife felt forced to padlock him out of the church, until Seymour returned.

Durham began to attack Seymour publicly, claiming Seymour was no longer following the will of God and was not fit to be a leader, devastating Seymour and causing a big split in the Pentecostal community.  Durham’s death within a year did little to heal the split.

1922.September.28 Death
On September 28, 1922, Seymour suffered two heart attacks, and died in his wife Jennie's arms.  Jennie Seymour died on July 2, 1936, and was buried next to him.

On September 22, 1906, whites began rampaging through Atlanta’s downtown streets and continued for three days.  When it was over, as many as 40 Africans were dead, while only two whites died, one of whom was a woman who died of a heart attack after seeing the mob outside her home.  This incident made national and international headlines, and impacted the course of civil and human rights in the United States.

Racial tensions had been building in Atlanta for some time, as whites began to develop a strong resentment for the wealth of industrious African citizens working and running their businesses in and near the business district.  Competition for jobs between white wage-workers and Africans was also a source of troubles for whites.


Meanwhile, rival white newspapers, working as operatives of the two primary candidates for governor of the state, entered into competition to see which of them could print the most sensational accusation of alleged assaults of white women by African males, and report other sensationalized accounts of the vices of Africans, coined with the term “negrophobia”. 

Because sensationalized accounts sold newspapers, Atlanta newspapers had been publishing lurid and dramatic accounts of Africans attacking white women for over two months, prior to the riots, suggesting that eleven assaults of white women being attacked in their homes occurred within the two month period.   

“The Evening News” newspaper went so far as to send out an emotional call , "Men of Fulton, what will you do to stop these outrages against the women? ... Shall these black devils be permitted to assault and almost kill our women, and go unpunished?"


In addition, there was a popular anti-black play, “The Clansman”, produced by Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr., a segregationist, and supporter of the KKK, that served to further increase fears and tension.


There were a number of saloons and bars that lined downtown’s Decatur Street, where Africans and whites mingled, and this concerned many Atlantans.  The whites of Atlanta feared that the city’s segregation and separation of the races was breaking down.

Politics
During the course of the election, the gubernatorial candidates of 1906, Hoke Smith and Clark Howell, two of Atlanta’s most prosperous citizens, chose to appeal to racial fears and manipulate racial images, as part of their campaigns.  The two went so far as to jointly propose that over 200,000 African males, of voting age, be removed and entirely disenfranchised from politics, because as reported in the “Journal” newspaper, working in the interest of Hoke Smith, “We are the superior race and do not intend to be ruled by our semi-barbaric inferiors”.  And the “Constitution” newspaper, serving as mouthpiece for Clark Howell, then accused Hoke Smith of appointing Africans to federal positions while a member of Grover Cleveland’s cabinet (which he strongly denied).  Meanwhile, Hoke Smith had one of his supporters, publish the following headlines in the magazine that he owned, “What does Civilization owe to the negro? Nothing! Nothing! NOTHING!


On September 22, 1906, mobs of whites roamed the city’s downtown streets, destroying the property of Africans, beating and shooting them, pulling them from street cars to murder them.  The first incident recorded was the murder of an African bootblack who was chased down and beaten to death with fists and clubs by a drunken white mob.  And, from that point on, the mobs chased down and killed every African that they saw in the street, yelling “Save our women!”  “Kill the Niggers!”

With the actions by whites, rumors began to spread that Africans were planning an uprising.  Meanwhile, in African communities, horrifying tales were told of widespread lynchings by crazed whites, and seeking strength in number, several hundred Africans stood against the white mobs in silent protest, near Decatur Street.  For their trouble, several thousand white men, armed with iron bars, hatchets, knives and an assortment of other weapon, attacked the group of protesting Africans, who attempted to fight back, but were forced to flee.

Soon, the white mobs ruled the streets of Atlanta, and stalked the streets for Africans after dark.  Policemen did little to stop their violent rampage, and in several instances aided the rioters. 

The cut streetcar lines and pulled several African from the cars and clubbed them to death, including women.  The shattered plate glass windows of African businesses all along Decatur. 

Africans Flee City
Blacks began to flee the city at night.  Presidents of Clark University and the Gammon Theological Seminary sheltered frightened black women and children and gave them refuge on campus.  White families sheltered their African servants.  The Aragon Hotel and Silvermans restaurant locked up their African workers overnight to keep them from harm.


Many peoples’ lives were forever changed by witnessing these events, and it became a galvanizing and defining moment in the African community. Most notably, Walter White, who would eventually lead the NAACP for almost 25 years and direct a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement., witnessed the riots at the age of 13 years, and W.E.B DuBois was a professor at Atlanta University, both pointed to the riots as being a pivotal point.

What White witnessed, standing in the window of his family’s downtown home, frightened and horrified him. Du Bois secured himself and his wife in their apartment and later did what was completely out of character for him: he purchased a gun that he fully expected to use if his family was threatened. After the riot, Du Bois penned a poem, “The Litany of Atlanta,” a searing and powerful statement.  And Walter White detailed his family’s experience during the riot, in his 1948 memoir, “A Man Called White”.


The riot convinced Du Bois that the best protection for African Americans in the South as well as the North was an organization dedicated to promoting social justice and protection of legal rights. He helped found the NAACP in 1909. Walter White, who did not know Du Bois at the time, later attended Atlanta University and, after graduating, was recruited by the NAACP in 1918 to work in their New York office. Du Bois at the time worked as the founding editor of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis.


In the years after the riot, African were most likely to live in settled black communities, which were most likely found to the west of the city near Atlanta University or in eastern downtown. Black businesses were moved to the east, where the thriving black business district Sweet Auburn soon developed.  There was also an increase in the interest in voting.

Some Africans modified their opinions on the necessity of armed self-defense, even though they were often warned and discouraged from considering an armed political struggle.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

In the 1910 census, Forsyth County was recorded as having more than 10,000 whites, 858 blacks and 440 mulattoes (or mixed race), until the largest racial cleansing event in American history.

A 22-year old white woman, Ellen Grice, married to a highly respected farmer accused two African men, Toney Howell and Isaiah Pirkle, of attempting to rape her, until they were interrupted and frightened away by her mother.

Within days, the Sheriff of Forsyth County, William Reid, had arrested and jailed the two men accused, as well as three other African men – Fate Chester, Johnny Bates, and Joe Rodgers.

As the news spread, an African preacher of a local church was overheard to say that the 22-year old woman probably lied about what happened, after she was caught in a consensual act with an African man.  Upon his words spreading to the white community, they took the preacher and nearly horse-whipped him to death in front of the courthouse, before the sheriff rescued him and locked him inside of large courthouse vault, saving his life.

One of the accused men, Toney Howell had an alibi and the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, but they were all still detained in jail.

Rumors began to flow that blacks were planning to dynamite the town, and armed white men patrolled the town to prevent such action.  Fearing a race riot, Governor Joseph Mackey Brown declared martial law, activating the National Guard as peace keepers.

With the five original suspects still under arrest, the sheriff moved the men from Cummings, Georgia to Marietta, Georgia for safety.  However, the Governor intervened and moved the men to the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, for greater protection, but the men were held for trial.

Although it was recorded that Howell had a solid alibi on the day that he was accused of rape, the police reported that Toney Howell eventually confessed to assaulting and raping Ellen Grice.  They also said that he implicated Isaiah Pirkle as his accomplice.  After his confession, he was convicted by an all white jury.

An 18-year old white woman, Sleety Mae Crow, accused 16-year old Earnest Cox of rape.  Cox was accused of attacking her from behind, dragging her into bushes, raping her, and beating her head in with a stone, crushing her skull.

Apparently, Earnest Cox had indeed committed this crime, because he brought his older sister and two neighborhood friends to the spot where Crow lay.  Together, they discussed taking her body to the Chattahoochee River, but decided that was too risky, and left her in the woods.

However, the young woman was found the next morning, lying half naked, face down in a pool of dry blood. 

Earnest Cox was immediately arrested and taken to Gainesville, Georgia county jail to avoid white mobs, and then further away to Atlanta.  Police reported Cox freely confessed to the attack. 

Earnest Cox’s sister, Jane, and the two men who reportedly accompanied her with Earnest back to the injured girl, were also arrested.

A crowd of 2,000 whites formed at the county jail in Cumming, where they were held.  Later that day, a lynch mob of about 4,000 whites attacked the jail, shot and killed one of the men in his cell, then dragged his body through the streets and hung his completely mutilated body from a telephone pole.  The other two were hidden from the mob.

Because Cox’s sister entered a plea bargain and testified against her brother and Earnest Knox, both Knox and Oscar Daniel were convicted of rape and murder at trial.  A crowd between 5,000 and 8,000 gather to watch the public hanging of the two young African men.

In the following months, a small group of men called “Night Riders” terrorized black citizens of Forsyth County Georgia, threatening them to leave in 24 hours or be killed. Those who resisted were subjected to further harassment, including shots fired into their homes, or livestock killed. Some white residents tried to stop the Night Riders, but were unsuccessful. An estimated 98% of black residents of Forsyth County left. 

The Africans owned over 1,900 acres of farmland, and some property owners were able to sell, likely at a loss. The renters and sharecroppers left to seek safer places. Those who abandoned property, and failed to continue paying property tax, eventually lost it, and whites took it over. Many black properties ended up in white hands without a sale and without a legal transfer of title. The anti-black campaign or racial cleansing spread across Northern Georgia, engulfing a half dozen surrounding counties with similar results of whites terrorizing and expelling blacks.

A mob of 125 gun-toating mob of white men stormed through Corbin, Kentucky announcing their mission to run the blacks out of town. They proceded to round up all the Africans in town and march them to the railroad depot.

Oral histories of the event were collected in Corbin during the 1970s as part of the country's bicentennial celebration. These interviews were supplemented by an unusually large number of documents at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. For example, after Steve Rogers, one of the ringleaders of the mob, went to prison, he twice petitioned the governor -- once for a pardon and once to have his sentence commuted. In his petition for a pardon, which is now in the sate archives, he explains what he did and tries to justify his role. File with it are the petitions of others who supported or opposed Rogers; the petitioners also describe what they saw the night of the cleansing.

The railroad was Corbin's lifeblood, and the railroad brought Africans to Corbin. Although Corbin had some sixty long-time African residents according to the 1910 census, in 1919 the railroad had brought in a black work crew estimated at between 200 and 400 men. For a town of 2,800 peple, this was a substantial increase. These laborers ate and slept on trains parked in the rail yard only a short distance from where they were building new facilities. In addition a paving contractor, hired to upgrade the town's dirt streets, had imported his own black work crew.

The townspeople were unnerved by the sudden appearance of so many Africans in town, and began to complain that they were responsible for a crime wave. As one of the town's lawyers describe it, the African population "was a menancing and floating one, very gregarious in habits, and lawless in acts." Oscar Little said that the expulsion occurred because "colored folks were trying to force themselves on the white people here and they just wouldn't stand for it."

After this, there are a multitude of story variations, usually focused on some waywardness of the African workers, as to what actually occurred to parcipitate the start of the mob riot.

The white mob proceeded to throw rocks at houses and kick in the front doors of African residents who had established themselves in Corbin, their homes were ransacked, and they were led at gunpoint to the Colored Waiting Rom of the train station and ordered to leave town. They went from home to home, until all African residents were corralled into the train station. They hunted down blacks throughout the town, until they felt that they had discovered all of them.

The white surrounded the ever growing crowd of black in the Colored Waiting Room, until the blacks were finally loaded on to a least two different trains, one group headed for Knoville and the other to Louisville.

In the first few weeks after the cleansing, a few blacks tried to return, and attempted to return to their work. However, none stayed longer that the day they arrived, out of fear for their safety.
By 1920, there were only three blacks living in Corbin: Emma Woods and her sixty-five-year old boarder, Steve Stansbury and the affectionately nicknamed "Nigger", Dennis.

The one-of-a-kind designs made by Ann Cole Lowe were very popular among high society for about 40 years.  In 1953, she designed Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress and gowns for her bridal party. Her designs are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the early 1900s, the Bronzeville neighborhood -- of the Douglas community, on the South Side Chicago Illinois--- was known as the “Black Metropolis”, after developing into one of the most significant areas of African American.

Within the first three decades of the 1900s, after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, thousands of African Americans, escaping from the oppression of the South, emigrated to major cities like New York City, Detroit, and Chicago.  In the midst of these waves of migration, the Bronzeville neighborhood in the South Side became home to many African Americans, including many well-noted and highly esteemed black Americans of the time.

In 1928, it also became home to the Regal Theater, built in the heart of Bronzeville. The $1.5 million structure opened new doors for African Americans in the entertainment business, and hired black managers, ushers, dancers (light-skinned only), and coat checkers, which at the time was unheard of.

It was lavishly and elegantly decorated with large pillars, plush carpeting, velvet drapes, and plush seating for  3,000, making it the first large-scale theater hall built specifically for the African American community.  It created a new nightlife and perfect atmosphere for African American families to go out and have a good time in the city, as  not only music performers, but motion pictures and stage plays were featured there.

Some of the most celebrated Black entertainers in America performed there frequently, including Nat "King" Cole, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Dinah Washington,Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, The Jackson 5, and Gladys Knight & The Pips.  In addition, several artists recorded live performances there, including B.B. King and Motown artists Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Smokey Robinson.

Eventually, with developments in technology, business began to decline.  Another factor that affected the Regals high unemployment and suffering during the long lasting Great Depression of 1929 to 1939.  Losing more and more business, the owner was eventually forced to file bankruptcy and close down the theater in 1968.  The building was later demolished in 1973.

Nearly 100 years after the upcropping of free states  in the United States, African-descended people were still primarily persona non grata, held under ridicule and regarded as unwelcomed

In 1931, the popular song writing team of Ray Henderson and Lew Brown (Louis Brownstein), wrote “That’s Why Darkies Were Born”.  Based upon all accounts, the song was not written as an expression of racism, but was intended as conciliatory satire.  It was a mainstream effort, which became a “number one” hit for Kate Smith, one of the most popular singers of the time.  And later, it was also recorded by Paul Robeson, a notoriously popular ‘Black’ singer, actor, and social activist.

The Writers:

Ray Henderson 1896 - 1970

Ray Henderson 1896 - 1970

Ray Henderson was a popular composer in Tin Pan Alley, an area Manhattan, New York where music publishers and songwriters gravitated and set up business. Working with many lyricists, and primarily with Lew Brown and Buddy De Sylva, he compiled a long list of popular hits. Lew Brown (Louis Brownstein) wrote songs for many of the top artists of the day and wrote or co-wrote several Broadway shows. Together, some of their most popular songs include: Bye Bye Blackbird, It All Depends on You, The Best Things in Life Are Free, You're The Cream in my Coffee, Button Up Your Overcoat, You Are My Lucky Star, Keep Your Sunny Side Up, If I Had A Talking Picture of You

Jesse B. Blayton was an Atlanta businessman, accountant, and professor at Morehouse College.   In 1925, he was one of a group of 15 Black businessmen who founded the Mutual Federal Savings and Loan Association, of which later he would become president.  This organization made millions of dollars in loans to Black businesses over the years.

In 1928, he became the first Certified Public Accountant in Georgia.  He started his own accounting firm, which later evolved into a business college.  And in 1949, he overcame decades of obstacles faced by Black Americans throughout the period of segregation and purchased a white owned radio station losing money ---WERD.  He installed his son, Jesse Jr. as manager

WERD had only 1000 watts and was a “daytimer,” on the air only from sunrise to sunset.  But it became the home of some of black radio’s most famous radio announcers, most notably “Jockey Jack” Gibson.  Not only did WERD serve a 14 county area, providing news, music, and community service to Atlanta’s black population, but as Blayton had thought it would, the station made money

WERD played a mix of the popular black music of that era:  some jazz, rhythm-and-blues, and gospel. When black recording artists came to town, they would stop by the station to say hello and do an interview.  WERD also offered public service programs, educational shows, church services for shut-ins, radio plays, and news the black audience couldn’t get anywhere else.  The public admired the station’s announcers and regarded them as friends.

The WERD venture was so successful that in June of 1954, the Blaytons purchased a second AM radio station, KREL in Baytown TX, part of the Houston market.  During the turbulent times of the Civil Rights era, black radio stations like the Blaytons kept the community informed in a way that southern white stations often did not.  In fact, during the 60s, WERD’s offices were in the same building as the Southern Christian Leadership Council, and speakers from that group were able to communicate with a very large audience thanks to the Blaytons’ on-going commitment to racial equality.

In 1995, Jesse B. Blayton Sr., the first African-American to own a radio station, was posthumously inducted into Museum of Broadcasting’s Radio Hall of Fame.

Hazel Scott was a singer and a jazz and classical pianist. She was very prominent in the 1930s and 1940s. She often played herself in films. In 1950, she became the first Black woman to have her own TV show --- The Hazel Scott Show, which featured a variety of entertainment.

In 1949, she brought a lawsuit against the owners of Pasco, a Washington restaurant, when a waitress refused to serve her and a companion because “they were Negroes.” She publicly opposed racial segregation throughout her career.

To evade oppression in the United States, Scott moved to Paris in the late 1950s, and did not return to the United States until 1967.

James Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.

1953 marked the 1st Published

Novel by James Baldwin

Black-Owned Buses Illegal

On June 15, 1950, the city council of Scotlandville, the largest of many neighborhoods in the state capitol of Baton Rouge, Lousiana, outlawed the operation of all independent Black-owned public bus services. Instead, all routes which they serviced became the monopoly of the white-owned Baton Rouge Bus Company.

By 1953, Black Americans made up 70%-80% of the ridership of the Baton Rouge Bus Co, but were restricted to a limited numbers of seats in the designated "colored" section of the buses. Seats reserved for white passengers were required to remain unoccupied, even if no white passengers boarded the buses. On the other hand, if a white passenger chose to sit in the "colored" section, it was required that all Black passengers stand in honor.

T.J. Jemison was a minister of a large Baptist church in Baton Rouge. He came from a family of prominent ministers and church going women. He was born in Alabama and attended segregated schools there. He earned a bachelor's degree from Alabama State University, a historically black college in the state capital of Montgomery.

In 1945, at the age of 27, T.J. Jemison married Celestine Catlett of Virginia, his wife of 61 years. Celestine received her degree from Virginia Union University and was a high school English teacher for many years. Together, they had three children, (1) Diane Jemison Pollard, (2) Bettye Wagner and (3) Ted Jemison.

In February of 1953, at the age of 35, T.J. Jemison went before the Baton Rouge City Council to make an appeal on behalf of Black bus riders, who were forced to stand on buses filled with empty seats.

Within a couple of weeks of his appeal, the city council issued Ordinance 222, which established a first come- first served service policy for the bus system.

The provisions of Oridnance 222 state that whites were to board buses from the front, and Blacks at the back, and each were to take any empty seats available. However, there was no change, as bus drivers refused to comply with the ordinance.

In June of 1953, T.J. Jemison decided to push the issue, and bus drivers went on strike after two drivers were suspended for not complying with the ordinance.

During this time, the bus company was also making its appeals, and by the end of the strike, state Attorney General, Fred S. LeBlanc declared city Ordinance 222 unconstitutional, on the grounds that it violated the state's compulsory segregation laws.

In response to the revocation of Ordinance 222, in June of 1953, Jemison and a group of churches formed the United Defense League, and by holding several mass meetings, organized a bus boycott. To support the boycott, they established a free-ride network to transport Blacks to and from their destinations. The official boycott lasted only two weeks, but the Black community was inspired to continue the boycott under their own efforts and refusal to ride buses.

Meanwhile, Jemison and other black leaders negotiated with the city council to eventually reinstate Ordinance 222.

T.J. Jemison was diligent in documenting the Baton Rouge experience, and his records and insight proved invaluable to the civil rights leaders that would follow.

In 1951, Linda Brown Smith was a 9 years old, 3rd grade student when her father started a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. She had been denied admission to her local elementary school because she was Black. Combined with several other cases, her suit reached the Supreme Court.

Oliver Brown, father of Linda Brown, was convinced by a childhood friend to join a lawsuit against the Board of Education. He was a welder by trade, and minister by profession. His daughter had to walk six blocks to catch a school bus to ride to her school, one mile away, because she was prohibited from attending an all white school seven blocks from her home.

The Supreme Court broke with long tradition and unanimously overrule the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. The recently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warrant wrote an opinion that de jure (upheld by law) segregation in public schools violated the principle of equal protection under the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And in response to arguments presented by NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court further stressed that the “badge of inferiority” stamped on minority children by segregation hindered their full development no matter how “equal” physical facilities might be.

The decision by the Supreme Court, however, did not succeed in fully desegregating public schools, but placed the law on the side of racial equality.

_

Maulana Karenga was a major figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and in 1965 co-founded US, a black nationalist organization, with Hakim Jamal.

Karenga was born in Parsonsburg, Maryland, the 14th child and 7th son in his family.  His father was a tenant farmer and Baptist minister, who hired out his family to work as sharecroppers.

At the age of 18 years, he moved to Los Angeles to live with his older brother, who was a teacher, and immediately enrolled in Los Angeles City College.  As a young man, he became active with the civil rights organizations CORE and SNCC, and developed an interest in African studies.  He became the first African student elected president of Los Angeles City College.

After earning his associate degree, he earned BA and MA degrees, from UCLA, in political science.  During the course of his education, he studied Swahili, Arabic, and other African-related subjects.  During this period, he took the name Karenga (Swahili for “keeper of tradition”) and the title Maulani (Swahili-Arabic for “master teacher”).

While pursuing his PhD. at UCLA, he taught African culture classes for local African community members and joined a study group called the Circle of Seven.

After the Watts Riots, Karenga and the Circle of Seven established a community organization called US (meaning “Us black people”).  Karenga cited Malcom X’s Afro-American Unity program as an influence on the US organization’s work.  The US organization joined in several community revival programs.

As racial disturbances spread across the country, Karenga appeared at a series of Black Power Conferences, joining other groups in urging establishment of a separate political structure for Africans.  US developed a youth component with para-military aspects called the Simba Wachanga, which advocated and practiced community self-defense and service to the masses.

Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966 to be the first Pan-African holiday.  He said Kwanzaa was created to “give [Africans] an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.”

The rituals of the holiday promote African traditions and Nguzo Saba, the seven principles of African Heritage.

Umoja

Unity

Strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

Kujichagulia

Self-Determination

Define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Ujima

Collective Work & Responsibility

Build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and solve them together.

Ujamaa

Cooperative Economics

Build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and profit from them together.

Nia

Purpose

Make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba

Creativity

Always do as much as we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Imani

Faith

Believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

The United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, invalidates laws prohibiting interracial marriage as unconstitutional, overturning Pace v Alabama (1883).

In 1969, Della Reese began hosting a syndicated talk show, The Della Reese Show, to become the first African American woman to host a TV show in America.  Her show lasted on air for one year.

She was born in 1931, as Delloreese Early, to a Cherokee mother and a black father.  At the age of 13 years, she began touring with famed gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson.  After leaving the gospel tour, five years later, at the age of 18, she began an independent career as a gospel, jazz, and R&B artist.

Della Reese had a big, boisterous personality and was a natural conversationalist.  In 1969, while nearing the age of 40 years, and after over two decades in the entertainment filed, she was offered the opportunity to host her own syndicated talk show.  She enjoyed successful ratings for several months, even in the most racist southern states, but based upon her own account, she was terminated because her "gums were too dark", instead of pink, and America could not adjust to her wide smile.

In 1979, surviving an aneurysm that burst in her brain while appearing on the Tonight Show, Della began studying spirtuality and eventually became an ordained minister, to found the nondemoninational Christian church called "Understanding Principles for Better Living" (or UP), where she preached every Sunday.  During the course of her ministry, she also authored several books on spirituality, including  "Metaphysically Speaking" and "Angels Along the Way".



In her senior years, Della Reese became more famously known for her role as Tess, the wise angel, on the long-running TV show, "Touched by an Angel".


Della Reese remained active and involved throughout her long life.  She died at the age of 86 in November 2017.

Oprah Winfrey's talk show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show", was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011.