[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 23 (Monday, March 7, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 7, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               CELEBRATING AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH

                         HON. WILLIAM J. COYNE

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, March 7, 1994

  Mr. COYNE. Mr. Speaker, I want to join in celebrating African-
American History Month and express my support for the goal of 
empowering all members of the American community.
  Today there is welcomed focus on efforts to provide all Americans 
with an ability to work and provide a better life for themselves and 
their families. The current campaign to enact health care reform 
addresses a basic human need for affordable health insurance. Our 
country is also seeking ways to ensure that families will be safe in 
their neighborhoods and that schools are improved so that every 
American can benefit from a quality education.
  These goals of empowerment are especially important in the African-
American community which has historically had to struggle to attain 
justice on a range of social and economic fronts. The history of the 
African-American community offers many examples of individuals and 
communities confronting oppression and overcoming the forces of 
prejudice and racial hatred.
  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently published an article in its 
Sunday magazine, The Gazette, which covered one chapter of this 
historic struggle for African-American empowerment. This article dealt 
with the history of free African-American living in the Pittsburgh area 
who made Pittsburgh a major stop on the Underground Railroad. These 
Pittsburgh African-American members of the abolitionist movement and 
supporters from the white community helped slaves escape to freedom in 
the North by way of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania.
  The story of the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist work of 
individuals like the free African-Americans of Pittsburgh provides an 
excellent example of the struggle for empowerment. It is worthwhile to 
remember this story because it offers inspiration for those in our 
modern society who seek to empower all members of the American 
community. Mr. Speaker, I insert the following article to be printed in 
the Congressional Record.

                        Along the Freedom Trail

                           (By Sally Kalson)

       It was a dismal day in early October--damp and chilly, with 
     low-hanging clouds that sucked the color from the foliage and 
     left the hillsides looking gray as February. Not the greatest 
     weather for a bus tour, perhaps, but appropriate for the 
     subject, which was an abolitionist tour to four sites in 
     Pittsburgh and Washington County.
       A similar day 150 years ago would have provided good 
     conditions for escape, if you were a fugitive slave on the 
     uncertain tracks of the Underground Railroad. Dreary weather 
     made for good cover and kept other people home, lessening the 
     chances of discovery.
       Quite a few runaway slaves made their escapes through 
     Western Pennsylvania. The region was a hotbed of abolitionist 
     activity. And the Monongahela River was a convenient escape 
     route, being among the 10 percent of the world's rivers that 
     flow north.
       On this day in 1993, a group of time travelers tried to 
     recapture some of that history, much of it demolished, 
     neglected or forgotten. Their guide was John Burt, a 
     thoughtful narrator and ardent student of the region's anti-
     slavery past.
       Burt, 47, is a downtown lawyer and adjunct faculty member 
     at Carlow College, where he teaches history and law in the 
     sociology department. He has been studying 19th century 
     reform movements all his adult life. For the past decade, 
     he's concentrated on abolition from 1830 to the outbreak of 
     the Civil War in 1861.
       ``Philadelphia gets all the credit for abolition,'' Burt 
     said, ``mostly because they had better historians, especially 
     the Quakers. But Pittsburgh was just as important.''
       Bringing that past alive is Burt's idea of a good time. And 
     realizing how much of it has been lost to the dual wrecking 
     balls of demolition and indifference is his idea of a shame.
       Renewed interest will surely be sparked by a new school 
     curriculum, unveiled last month by the Western Pennsylvania 
     Historical Society, exploring local black history, including 
     some aspects of the Underground Railroad. The society's 
     future museum on Smallman Street will have similar displays.
       Recognition of the subject's importance is recent, and in 
     many cases there is no tangible record of the freedom trail. 
     Yet on Burt's tour, sponsored by the Pittsburgh Peace 
     Institute, the history takes shape.
       Burt paid homage to the late Rollo Turner, one of the 
     original members of the black studies department at the 
     University of Pittsburgh, who had died eight days earlier at 
     age 50. Turner was the city's recognized expert on the 
     Underground Railroad and often gave talks on the subject.
       ``Rollo told me that the anti-slavery movement had a rich 
     history here, but few people seemed to care about it. He said 
     if I studied it, I could become an expert pretty fast.''
       Most slaves who made it North, Burt said, were from the 
     northern-most part of the South. Once caught, they would be 
     resold into the deep South, where their chances of escape 
     were nil--unless they went way south into the Everglades, 
     where the Seminoles provided safe haven.
       ``Many people don't realize that resistance to slavery goes 
     hand-in-hand with the beginning of slavery,'' Burt said. 
     About the time railroad tracks were being laid for the first 
     steam locomotives (around 1820), slaves were disappearing 
     from Southern plantations almost as soon as they were brought 
     over. That led slaveholders to posit that there must be an 
     underground railroad assisting them.
       The French sheltered fugitive slaves in this territory even 
     before the British took control in 1758, according to Carter 
     Woodson, a black historian of the Reconstructionist era. And 
     Gen. John Forbes had blacks with him when he defeated the 
     French and named the area Pittsburgh. These people, Burt 
     said, formed the core of the first free black community in 
     the nation.
       This history made Pittsburgh a natural stop on the 
     Underground Railroad, a self-help system developed largely 
     among free blacks with the assistance of trustworthy whites.
       The railroad was by necessity amorphous and secretive. Once 
     a place developed a reputation as a safe house, it might not 
     be safe anymore. Furthermore, a hand that offered help on 
     Monday might take money for betrayal on Tuesday. Thus, much 
     of the network was never documented. The history is no less 
     real for that, but its mysterious nature has lent the 
     Underground Railroad an aura of legend and myth.
       The most prominent local abolitionist organization of free 
     blacks was the Pittsburgh Vigilance Committee, which had 
     among its members Lewis Woodson, Martin Delaney and John B. 
     Vashon.
       Lewis Woodson (no relation to the historian) was a 
     minister, educator, businessman and abolitionist three 
     decades before the Emancipation Proclamation. He saw to it 
     that his 14 children were educated and learned a trade, and 
     opened five barber shops in Pittsburgh, all run by his sons.
       Woodson became minister of the Bethel AME Church on Wylie 
     Avenue, a safe house on the Underground Railroad. He 
     established the Pittsburgh African Educational Society, a 
     critical institution because black children were barred from 
     the Pittsburgh schools until the 1850s. And under the pen 
     name Augustine, Woodson published abolitionist articles for 
     The Colored American, a black newspaper, from 1837 to 1841. 
     Some 75 to 100 Woodson descendants live in the Pittsburgh 
     area today.
       One of Woodson's students was Martin Delaney, who became a 
     physician, writer, scientist, army officer and explorer. He 
     found Pittsburgh's first black newspaper, The Mystery, 
     published from 1843 to 1847, and became known as the father 
     of black nationalism.
       Born in 1812 to free parents in Virginia, Delaney was 
     sought out by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, 
     himself an ex-slave, to become a partner in editing his 
     newspaper, the North Star.
       Delaney became famous for several distinctions. As a 
     doctor--he was one of the first blacks admitted to Harvard 
     Medical School--he fought the 1854 cholera epidemic in 
     Pittsburgh. During the Civil War, he was the first black 
     major in the U.S. Army. And after leading an expedition of 
     American-born blacks to the Niger River valley in 1859, 
     Delaney tried to encourage black Americans to colonize West 
     Africa.
       A historical marker honoring Delaney is at Third Avenue and 
     Market Street, believe to be near the site where The Mystery 
     was published. It was erected in 1991 by the Pennsylvania 
     Historical and Museum Commission.
       The third prominent member of the Vigilance Committee was 
     John B. Vashon, the richest black man in Pennsylvania. More 
     about him later.
       Burt noted that people in the anti-slavery movement used 
     secret knocks, code words and signals, especially when 
     communicating to and about fugitives. One such symbol was the 
     jockey ornament, reviled today as a racist artifact but in 
     its day a useful tool. When the lamp was lit, it meant the 
     house was safe and the coast was clear. When the lamp was 
     out, it meant stay away.
       Messages were also passed along in spirituals. For example, 
     Burt said, if a worker in the field started singing ``Steal 
     Away to Jesus,'' an escape attempt was probably coming. And 
     songs about the promised land of Canaan were often cryptic 
     references to Canada.
       The abolitionist movement was the public arm of the anti-
     slavery struggle. At its head were committed people in 
     positions of power or influence who denounced slavery as a 
     blight, excoriated its proponents, and worked against it 
     through political, religious, social and financial avenues.
       The anti-slavery movement, Burt stressed, joined American 
     blacks and whites together in a manner previously unknown. 
     Fugitive slaves, free blacks, everyday people of conscience, 
     clergymen and politicians and newspaper publishers who 
     preached abolition from their bully pulpits, wealthy citizens 
     who financed the fight, all were united in one belief: that 
     no nation founded on the principle that all men were created 
     equal could tolerate slavery without sacrificing its soul.
       Think of rich Pittsburgh industrialists and you'll probably 
     think of Carnegie, Frick, Phipps, Oliver, Thaw and Mellon. 
     The alternative view, however, has Charles Avery, a 
     pharmaceuticals tycoon who financed a great deal of 
     abolitionist activity across the country.
       Avery is buried at the crest of a hill in Allegheny 
     Cemetery. His grave is marked by an enormous memorial, 
     probably 35 feet high, including a large statute of the man.
       ``The struggle against slavery depended on rich people of 
     good will to donate money for newspapers and brochures,'' 
     Burst said at the foot of Avery's grave. ``Pittsburgh had two 
     such people, one black, one white.''
       The black man was the wealthy John B. Vashon.
       Born of mixed race in Carlisle, Cumberland County, Vashon 
     headed to the western frontier of Pittsburgh after serving in 
     the U.S. Army and quickly made money as a land developer. He 
     built the first public baths and a barber shop on Third 
     Street, Downtown, that became a safe station (just one 
     example of the many Underground Railroad sites in the region 
     that have no marker commemorating their significance).
       Vashon's barber shop was also a social center and gathering 
     place for members of the movement, local and national. Vashon 
     was instrumental in bringing Frederick Douglass to 
     Pittsburgh. He also got Henry Lloyd Garrison, known as the 
     conscience of the abolitionist movement, to come here. And 
     when Garrison needed money to publish his newspaper, The 
     Liberator, in 1831, Vashon came through for him.
       The white man of good will was Avery. Born in Westchester, 
     N.Y., he came here seeking his fortune and eventually 
     prospered in pharmaceuticals, textiles, copper and iron ore.
       As a young Methodist, Avery was influenced by the strong 
     anti-slavery stand of John Wesley that eventually split the 
     Methodists into Northern and Southern factions. At first, he 
     shared the belief that slaves should be returned to Africa. 
     But after coming in contact with blacks in Pittsburgh, he 
     realized that they were now American and began to advocate an 
     immediate end to slavery.
       His first big plunge into abolitionist waters came in 1837, 
     when he organized local rallies to support the widow and 
     children of an Illinois editor who was murdered for 
     publishing an anti-slavery newspaper.
       But Avery's biggest involvement revolved around the 1839 
     incident of the Amistad, a Spanish slave ship. The slaves had 
     rebelled, killing the captain and two crew members and 
     seizing the ship. They were picked up in Northern waters and 
     taken to Connecticut.
       Hundreds of activists rallied around the Amistad. 
     Southerners demanded the slaves be hung for murder and 
     piracy, but abolitionists saw them as heroes. In order to 
     raise funds for their defense, Avery and other evangelical 
     Christian abolitionists formed the American Missionary 
     Society (it still exists today).
       The lawyer they hired was none other than John Quincy 
     Adams, who argued for 10 hours before the U.S. Supreme Court. 
     The court found for the slaves, ordering them set free and 
     returned to West Africa. The decision fueled the abolitionist 
     forces and established the AMS as a force to be reckoned 
     with.
       Avery took particular interest in a 10-year-old girl from 
     the Amistad, later baptized as Sarah Kinsen. He kept in touch 
     with her in Africa, and when she turned 18 he sent her to 
     Oberlin College in Ohio, where she became the first 
     international student in the history of American higher 
     education.
       Avery was also known to transport escapees personally from 
     one site to the next. Once he dressed as his own carriageman, 
     pulled up to a safe house, picked up some escapees and 
     smuggled them to the next stop.
       Like many abolitionists, Avery was interested in other 
     reformist causes as well, including women's rights. As the 
     owner of a textile plant, he employed mostly young women, 
     ages 15 and 16. These workers became some of the earliest 
     union agitators, but they struck Avery's plant only once. 
     When his fellow plant-owners shut the women out, he met with 
     them and negotiated salary increases.
       When Avery died in 1856, his funeral was one of the largest 
     the city had ever seen. The procession included huge numbers 
     of working women and blacks, making it one of the first 
     integrated demonstrations in Pittsburgh history.
       On his grave are carvings, much the worse for age, 
     depicting the Amistad, the old U.S. Supreme Court building, 
     the fugitive slaves and John Quincy Adams.
       ``This next stop is for mental travelers,'' said Burt, 
     standing in front of the old Blue Cross building on the 
     corner of Smithfield Street and Fort Pitt Boulevard.
       ``A hundred and fifty years ago,'' Burt said, ``this was 
     the site of the Monongahela House, one of the finest hotels 
     in Pittsburgh and a center of anti-slavery activity.''
       The Monongahela House was owned by whites, but the staff 
     consisted of 300 free blacks. As a first-class hotel in an 
     emerging center of commerce, it was visited by many Southern 
     businessmen who arrived with their families and slaves--
     undoubtedly including cotton-growers who came to do business 
     with Charles Avery.
       While the slave-holders slept in first-class quarters 
     upstairs, the slaves slept in the basement or the barns out 
     back. What the whites didn't know was that three blocks away 
     was John Vashon's barbershop. The hotel's free staff members 
     would spirit the slaves away to Vashon's, where they received 
     a new appearance--hairstyle, clothes, shoes--and a start on 
     their journey to Canada.
       ``Rollo Turner was able to confirm that this was fact, not 
     legend,'' Burt said. ``Hotels used to list the names of their 
     prominent visitors in the newspapers of the day. Rollo 
     checked the lists against advertisements by people looking 
     for escaped slaves. In many cases, there was a correlation.''
       Burt also related the delicious story of a maid who, after 
     a visit to Vashon's barber shop, was dressed to look like a 
     hotel staff member. She was then had through the dining room 
     right past her owners on her way out of town. They never 
     noticed.
       The hotel's second-story balcony facing Smithfield Street 
     made an excellent platform from which to address a large 
     crowd, as President-elect Lincoln did in the spring of 1861. 
     And its proximity to the river gave it strategic value on the 
     Underground Railroad.
       Between Trinity Cathedral and the First Presbyterian 
     Church, Downtown, is the oldest graveyard in the city of 
     Pittsburgh. And in it are the remains of Charles P. Shiras, a 
     young abolitionist who died at the age of 30.
       The Shiras family, Burt said, established the first brewery 
     west of the Alleghenies, on the land that is now the Point. A 
     child of some wealth, Charlie Shiras toured Europe and worked 
     as a journalist for the Pittsburgh Commercial Journal. He was 
     concerned with social issues, particularly slavery, and was 
     outspoken on the subject--especially when it came to the 
     Fugitive Slave Bill, which was part of the 1850 Compromise.
       Escaped slaves who were caught in the North had always had 
     a right to trial. But the Compromise changed that, not only 
     suspending the right to trial but also giving slaveholders 
     the cooperation of federal officers in the slaves' capture. 
     The new law yanked the security out from under Pittsburgh's 
     black community and sent 600 people fleeing to Canada.
       When Daniel Webster spoke in favor of the Compromise, it 
     prompted John G. Whittier to write a scathing poem about him. 
     And when the Compromise became law, Charlie Shiras wrote his 
     own scathing poem, ``The Bloodhound Song,'' published in the 
     Anti-Slavery Bugle in Ohio.
       ``Charlie Shiras was Pittsburgh's Whittier,'' Burt said.
       Pittsburgh saw a series of public rallies against the 
     Compromise. At one of them, Avery said ministers who 
     supported it should be defrocked. Martin Delaney said he 
     would shoot dead any slave catcher who entered his home.
       Charlie Shiras was also a drinking buddy of the songwriter 
     Stephen Collins Foster. And while Foster's lyrics about 
     ``darkies'' seem condescending today, they were seen as 
     tolerant in their time. Any compassion Foster felt for black 
     people of the day was probably due to his friendship with 
     Shiras.
       While still in his 20s, Shiras founded The Albatross, an 
     abolitionist newspaper that called slavery a condemnation 
     around the neck of the American Republic, much as its 
     namesake was around the neck of the ancient mariner in Samuel 
     Coleridge's poem. But the paper lasted only three months and 
     then folded for lack of money. Shiras never had time to 
     resurrect it before his death.
       Pittsburgh's other white-published abolitionist paper was 
     the Pittsburgh Saturday Visitor, founded by Jane Grey 
     Swisshelm, one of the earliest woman journalists. Swisshelm 
     was the first woman to get a seat in the Congressional press 
     gallery, where she covered the debate on the Compromise of 
     1850.
       The Saturday Visitor entered the arena with a devastating 
     denouncement of a notorious case involving fugitive slaves 
     captured in Indiana, Pa., on the farm of a Dr. Mitchell 
     before the Compromise was passed. The slaves were brought to 
     Pittsburgh for trial and remanded to their owners by a judge 
     named Greer, who also fined Mitchell $10,000 for harboring 
     the runaways. Mitchell had to sell his farm to pay the fine, 
     but Avery and others promptly bought it back for him.
       When the first issue of the Saturday Visitor appeared, it 
     bore a front-page editorial by Swisshelm attacking Judge 
     Greer, calling him ``a legal luminary now fallen 60 degrees 
     below the moral horizon.'' The outraged Greer demanded an 
     apology and threatened to jail her. On her next front page, 
     Swisshelm published ``An Apology by the Editor'' that said, 
     in essence, ``I do not regret and I will not retract,'' and 
     went on to berate the judge even more severely.
       This running feud led to an incident related by Swisshelm 
     in her autobiography, ``Half A Century.'' She wrote that two 
     lawyers were speaking about a case one of them had before 
     Judge Greer. The other advised him to call Swisshelm as a 
     witness, whether she know anything about the case, because 
     ``Greer is more afraid of her than the devil.''
       LeMoyne House in Washington County is one of Western 
     Pennsylvania's best-preserved safe stations. From 1824 to 
     1879, it was occupied by Dr. F. Julius LeMoyne, a nationally 
     known abolitionist and three-time candidate for governor of 
     Pennsylvania.
       ``LeMoyne's political activities were very radical in his 
     own time,'' Burt said.
       LeMoyne financed many anti-slavery activities and 
     corresponded with every major figure in the movement, both 
     American and British.
       The house was built in 1812 by his father, Dr. John 
     LeMoyne, a physician who had fled the French Revolution.
       He settled first in Ohio and then Washington, where he 
     married. F. Julius, the couple's only child, followed his 
     father into medicine.
       LeMoyne ran for governor as the candidate of the Liberty 
     Party, which advocated abolition and equal education for 
     women. After the Civil War he became an advocate of 
     cremation, and in 1876 he built the nation's first 
     crematorium, almost getting himself expelled from the 
     Presbyterian church in the process.
       LaMoyne's house was both a safe station and a center of 
     anti-slavery activity. Burt said that when authorities came 
     looking for fugitive slaves who happened to be holed up in 
     her home, LeMoyne's wife, Medelaine, would feign illness and 
     take to her bed--under which she would hide the escapee in 
     question. The authorities never dared disturb the lady of the 
     house in her boudoir.
       LeMoyne kept bees on a rooftop garden. One popular story 
     has him stationing his young son on the roof with a long pole 
     during an important abolitionist meeting. Given a threat that 
     a pro-slavery mob would disrupt the gathering, LeMoyne 
     instructed his son to topple the beehives into the group. 
     Word apparently got out, because no one ever showed up.
       A wealthy man, LeMoyne donated $10,000 toward the town hall 
     on the condition that it include a public library for all 
     races. The hall was razed in 1990 to make room for the 
     Washington County Jail. He endowed LeMoyne College for free 
     blacks in Memphis, Tenn, known today as LeMoyne-Owen College, 
     as well as the Washington Female Seminary, which no longer 
     exists.
       LeMoyne House stayed in the family until the death of F. 
     Julius' youngest daughter, Madeleine LeMoyne Reed, in 1943. 
     She willed it to the Washington County Historical Society, 
     which preserves the house much as it was when occupied by her 
     father.

                          ____________________