Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is best known for the raid by abolistionist John Brown on the federal armory.
But Harpers Ferry also played a prominent role in African American history outside of the Civil War.
Storer College was set up to educate the recently freed slaves after the Civil War. And 100 years ago this month, the Niagara Movement held its meeting there, an event commerated with events this weekend at by Harpers Ferry.
Here’s information about the [history ]:
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the outlook for full civil rights for African Americans was at a precarious crossroads. Failed Reconstruction, the Supreme Court’s separate but equal doctrine (Plessy v. Ferguson), coupled with Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist policies threatened to compromise any hope for full and equal rights under the law.
Harvard educated William Edward Burghardt Du Bois committed himself to a bolder course, moving well beyond the calculated appeal for limited civil rights. He acted in 1905 by drafting a “Call” to a few select people. The Call had two purposes; “organized determination and aggressive action on the part of men who believed in Negro freedom and growth,” and opposition to “present methods of strangling honest criticism.”
Du Bois gathered a group of men representing every region of the country except the West. They hoped to meet in Buffalo, New York. When refused accommodation, the members migrated across the border to Canada. Twenty-nine men met at the Erie Beach Hotel in Ontario. The Niagarites adopted a constitution and by-laws, established committees, and wrote the “Declaration of Principles” outlining the future for African Americans. After three days, they returned across the border with a renewed sense of resolve in the struggle for freedom and equality.
Thirteen months later, from August 15-19, 1906, the Niagara Movement held its first public meeting in the United States on the campus of Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Harpers Ferry was symbolic for a number of reasons. First and foremost was the connection to John Brown. It was at Harpers Ferry in 1859 that Brown’s raid against slavery struck a blow for freedom. Many felt it was John Brown who fired the first shot of the Civil War. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, John Brown’s Fort had become a shrine and a symbol of freedom to African Americans, Union soldiers, and the nation’s Abolitionists.
Harpers Ferry was also the home of Storer College. Freewill Baptists opened Storer in 1867 as a mission school to educate former slaves. For twenty-five years Storer was the only school in West Virginia that offered African Americans an education beyond the primary level.
Here’s the main story on this weekend’s events from our local newspaper, The Martinsburg Journal:
HARPERS FERRY — Picking up a colored ink marker, the 5-year-old girl from Philadelphia, Pa., wanted to make a statement rather than simply write a word.
But she needed a little help.
She turned to her mother.
“I think you should love each other,” Ebony Jade asked her mother to help her write on the small, smooth wooden block. A block which would be glued on to The Freedom House located at the J.R. Clifford Youth Discovery Tent.
Here’s a sidebar on one of the panels:
HARPERS FERRY — The Rev. Walter Fauntroy steadily fanned Juanita Abernathy as she spoke of little-known efforts by women that pre-dated the well-known history of the civil rights movement.
Abernathy said the scene during a panel discussion that was part of the Niagara Movement Centennial Commemoration in Harpers Ferry Saturday played out differently than it would have in the heyday of the civil rights movement.
Back then, black men spoke out for freedom, and the women served up the refreshments, Abernathy said.
The audience twittered with surprise when Abernathy told them local black women were negotiating with bus drivers well before Rosa Park’s defiance sparked the Montgomery bus boycott.
She continued later, “We opened doors, and we marched 381 days. There were women who had been pressing for civil rights before Martin Luther King came along. That was a time when a meeting started and the women were told to get the cookies or pour the coffee. It was a man’s world.”
Turning to more modern day concerns, Abernathy blasted religious leaders for leading voters astray during the last national election to the applause of the audience gathered on the campus of Storer College.
And here’s a story on who else showed up:
HARPERS FERRY — The audience barely missed a beat when about 20 members of the Ku Klux Klan showed up at the beginning of a Niagara Movement Centennial Commemoration event in Harpers Ferry Saturday afternoon.
Children, who were among the nearly 2,000 people of various races waiting to hear a panel discussion on racial issues, gawked in confusion. Most apparently knew little about the group.
“Could they bomb us here, mama,” asked one boy.
“Yes,” was the answer, and the boy looked mystified.
The adults, who remembered when the KKK wore white robes and hoods and terrorized blacks and others, seemed to stiffen as the black-clad group took their seats to the rear of the tent. Klan members were wearing an alternate uniform Saturday, consisting primarily of black clothing and Nazi regalia.
Another boy sized up the black jeans, T-shirts and red emblems the men, women and teenagers wore.
“Aw, we could take them, couldn’t we,” he said.
The crowd laughed and turned their attention to the stage as six black barrier breakers shared stories of overcoming racism and offered words of advice.
snip
Panelists included the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, the first District of Columbia delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives; Monte Irvin, a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame who was among the earliest black players in Major League Baseball; Eddie Henderson, the first black to compete in the National Figure Skating Championships; Cheryl White, the first black female professional jockey and Joseph Wilder, a musician who helped to integrate Broadway.
The KKK members left the panel discussion after Juanita Abernathy, widow of civil rights leader the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, spoke to the audience about the importance of education and responsible voting.
Their exit, under escort by several federal police officers as was their entrance, went unnoticed by most of the audience.
In all seriousness, the 20 probably represented their entire numbers. And my guess is nearly all of them came from Maryland, where they occasionally hold marches and cross burnings in Washington and Frederick counties.
The Rev. Otis James, who I’ve met and walked with during an MLK Jr. Day event, summed it up well:
“This is America, and this is an open event for this town, this state and the nation at large,” said the Rev. Otis C. James of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Charles Town following the panel discussion.” They have a right to come here as long as they are peaceful and non-destructive. I hope — I pray — that they leave having learned something from this discussion.”
But truthfully,” he added. “I don’t think they learned anything from what took place today, or enlarged their insight on humanity.”
I can’t say for certain, but if you look closely, the one Klansman might be Republican Virginia Sen. George Allen hiding behind a false beard and sunglasses.
I lived in Emmitsburg, Md. for three years back in the 90’s. It’s one town up Rt.15 from Thurmont, a home of sorts for a large membership of KKK. Something i didn’t initially knw, until I rode into town (Thurmont) one day and saw a KKK rally that included kids. They war military style getups too, instead of sheets.
Another far more jarring example of their presence came when a Ugandan woman that I dated briefly, while seperated from my wife, turned down an invitation to my home in Emmitsburg because of the KKK. At first I didn’t take her seriously. But she was deadly serious. She wanted no part of that place, no matter how much she trusted me. It was an eye opener. Even for someone who is pretty aware of the ongoing rascism in American society.
Just as there are places in Virginia I wouldn’t drive by myself at night, there are those places in Maryland as well.
I am not at all surprised. Not in the least.
:<(
Sometimes it seems like we haven’t learned much, doesn’t it?
My great-great grandfather, who fought for the Union, lived his remaining life married to a woman whose brothers and cousins rode with N.B. Forrest, founder of the Klan. Their tiny farm was in between those other relative’s family farms. My great grandfather owned a general store next to the other general store in their tiny town – and that other store was the Klan hang-out. My grandmother remembered there being places they could not go after dark for fear of being attacked, of having garbage thrown on her mother because her father did business with Black families but would not sell things he thought the Klan was going to use for bad purposes…
More recently, my fine, upstanding and wonderful doctoral student, got stopped, put in handcuffs, taken to jail, his car virtually dismantled (looking for drugs). My student was driving the speed limit, and had violated no laws of the state, though he was listed as resisting arrest. He was released, some 12 hours later – after about 10 hours wait to “find a phone that would work” for him to call a lawyer. Did I mention that my student is African American? Oh, I forgot. And the place he was stopped is virtually a sunset town, in a fine, upstanding and wonderful northern state that considers it has no problems with racial prejudice whatsoever, and no evidence of racial profiling. With public officials like that, the Klan hardly needs to bother.
How wonderful that the people attending the conference did not take the bait offered by the Klan.
By ignoring them, the participants took all the Klan’s power away and they maintained their own humanity and dignity.
I am glad that children witnessed this. So much of what they see and hear in the news, movies, music, is the justification of striking out at anyone who offends or frightens you.
My kids were with me at the time I saw the rally I described above. And as I said, the Klan had some of thier own children with them, as well as the Mothers of those children.
My kids naturally asked me questions about them, what were they doing there, and so on. I explained carefully (I hope) without getting too descriptive what the Klan stood for and who it stood against. It was difficult if impossible for them to look at those other kids and understand how they could feel that way about people different than them. But then, to my kids, kids are just kids. It hadn’t occured to them to see other kids differently. I doubt it ever occured to the Klan children either. At least until their parents taught them to see other kids and people as different and less.
It was striking and maddening to see those children standing there with haters.
How awful.
How many decades has it been since Rogers and Hammerstein wrote “South Pacific?” The lyrics to “You have to be Carefully Taught” are as true today as they were then.
Anyway, I’m sure you handled the situation as well as any parent could. You’re kids are lucky.
I respectfully disagree.
“You have to be Carefully Taught” was never true then, nor is it true now. Humans do not have to be taught to hate. They have to be taught not to.
Our primate legacy includes territoriality, rape, fear of the Other, and the lazy shorthand of bigotry. The job of humanity is to fight those natural feelings that once aided our individual survival, but which now threaten our whole planet’s existence.
To assume that hate only exists where it is taught encourages the passivity that conveniently ignores the benefits bigotry bestows on the privileged. To say that racism must be taught lets white people off the hook; to say that rape must be taught gives men a pass; to say war must be taught exonerates aggressors; all they have to say is, “Well, I don’t teach hate,” and wash their hands of responsibility for a culture of violence, greed, cruelty and death.
It will take hard work to rid the world of hate, and
Rogers and Hammerstein didn’t help.
I’ve never thought about it that way.
I’m not sure I agree that the tendency to hate is somehow inbred in all of us, but I agree that passivity in the face of hatred is unacceptable. I’m going to consider what you said. Ponder it a bit more.
Always good to be exposed to a different point of view. Thanks, SusanW.
I’ve learned so much from YOUR posts, Kahli. I love the pond because of the thoughtful people here.
Chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan and, unfortunately, human males use battering, rape and/or infantacide to control female sexuality, violently competing with one another within the group, but bonding together to defend against and attack “outsider” males. Chimps form war parties that attack and kill lone males on the periphery of rival territories.
Study of primate behavior indicates that only the bonobos, whose bonds between females are more powerful and consistent than the males, function successfully without ubiquitous male violence.