Central Pennsylvania's journey from slavery to freedom
Study Areas:
Resources:
Slavery
in
Pennsylvania
Community:
Events (come see us)
Map (Harrisburg anti-slavery tour in Google Maps)
Anti-Slavery,
Abolition
& Agitation
Free
Persons
of Color
Underground
Railroad
The
Violent
Decade
United
States
Colored Troops
Harrisburg's
Civil War
Year
of Jubilee
1863
Info | Begin Reading
News:
Reginald
F. Lewis Museum Family History Fridays. Feb 3 and March 2, 2012.
Click image
<<< at left for more details.
Couple depict anti-slavery work of 1800s in McConnellsburg church
Historian Judith Wellman on UGRR and Women's Rights in Upstate NY (audio link)
PBS Video: The William Still Story. Link to videos and upcoming PBS specials.
Underground Railroad Along the Champlain Canal (New York). Lakes to Locks project.
On
this date in local
African American history...
January events in local African American history (see the whole year)
January 1, 1826: African American preacher Jarena Lee preaches at the Methodist Episcopal Church on the southeast corner of Second and South streets in Harrisburg. While in town, she stayed with a Mr. Williams.
January 1, 1831: William Lloyd Garrison publishes his first issue of The Liberator. 1836: American Anti-Slavery Society lecturer Samuel L. Gould speaks at the Wesley Church in Judystown, addressing a mostly African American audience. His series of anti-slavery speeches inflames the local town council, which, fearing he is "exciting the colored population of this borough," issues an official resolution calling for him to "desist from his efforts."
January
1, 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation is issued. (text
here)
January 3, 1816: Stephen Smith becomes a free man
as he buys his freedom from Thomas Boude of Columbia with fifty dollars
borrowed from a friend. He would rise to become a leader in his community
and church, an Underground Railroad activist, and the wealthiest
African American businessman in America during his time.
January 9, 1861: Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from
the Union.
January 9, 1866: The first classes are held at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee. This historic African American college is named for General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedman’s Bureau. Graduates include W.E.B. DuBois and John Hope Franklin.
January 10, 1861: Florida becomes the third state to secede from the Union.
January
11, 1861: Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from
the Union.
January 13, 1863: Federal officials formally authorize
the raising of African American troops for the South Carolina Volunteer
Infantry.
January 14, 1836: Harrisburg Anti-Slavery Society is formed. Its president is Rev. Nathan Stem, of the Episcopal Church. Vice-presidents are William W. Rutherford and Mordecai McKinney. Other notable members are Alexander Graydon and Rev. John Winebrenner.
January 15, 1863: Harrisburg’s leading African American residents meet in the Bethel A.M.E. Church to form a response to the Emancipation Proclamation. Hailing a “new era in our country’s history,” they pledge to take up arms alongside white soldiers “if called upon.”
January 15, 1929: Civil rights leader and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King, Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia.
January
16, 1838: First statewide meeting of the Pennsylvania
Antislavery Society opens in Harrisburg’s Shakespeare Hall,
a year after its founding in the same place. The three days of
meetings are attended by Charles C. Rawn.
January 18, 1856: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams is born
in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Dr. Williams performed the first
open heart surgery in 1893 when he sutured a knife wound to the pericardium
of a stabbing victim.
January
19, 1861: Georgia becomes the fifth state to secede from
the Union.
January 20, 1838: At the state Constitutional
Convention in Harrisburg, delegates voted 77 to 45 to restrict
the vote in Pennsylvania to “white freemen.” African
American men would not regain the right to vote in Pennsylvania
until passage of the 15th Amendment, in 1870.
January 25, 1972: Shirley Chisholm
announces her candidacy for the presidency of the U.S.
January
26, 1861: Louisiana becomes the sixth state to secede
from the Union.
January 27, 1800: A public slave auction is held
in Lower Paxton Township, at the home of tanner Jacob Awl, to sell
slaves Peter and Grace, as well as other possessions.
January 28, 1838: Anti-slavery activist William H. Burleigh speaks in Harrisburg. Burleigh had attended a lecture by Dr. Booth of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society, held at a local church on the same day, and in a letter to The Liberator, denounced Booth as a "pro-slavery man" promoting colonization.
January
29, 1861: Kansas is admitted to the Union as a free state.
January 31, 1837: Shakespeare Hall in Harrisburg
is the site of a convention to form a state anti-slavery society.
Three hundred people attended and the proceedings were reported
to The Liberator by correspondent John Greenleaf Whittier.
January 31, 1845: Attempted kidnapping in Harrisburg of African American resident Peter Hawkins by the notorious slave catcher Thomas Finnegan.
The
Year of Jubilee,
by George F. Nagle
Find it at Civil War and More Books and at Midtown Scholar Books
On the web:
The
Lumenarium
The official Blog of the Afrolumens Project
Cumberland
County 150
The Civil War in the Cumberland Valley
Freedom
Lies Just North
People, places and tours of the Underground Railroad in Gettysburg and Adams
County.
John
Brown the Aboliltionist: a Biographer's Blog
Any time you spend reading about John Brown is time well spent.
Mason
and Dixon Line Preservation Partnership
Road trip to locate markers, anyone?
Sugar
Grove, PA
Underground Railroad history website