[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.
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