Landmarks of African American History (American Landmarks)

209 Pages·2005·25.86 MB·English

by  James Oliver Horton

L A N D M A R KS OF
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

American Landmarks
JAMES OLIVER HORTON
General Editor
L A N D M A R KS OF
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
James Oliver Horton
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published in consultation with the
National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service, the National Park Foundation
and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
To the National Park Service and its chief historian.
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © 2005 by James Oliver Horton
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Horton, James Oliver.
Landmarks of African American history / James Oliver Horton.
p. cm. — (American landmarks)
"Published in association with the National Register of Historic Places,
National Park Service, and the National Parks Foundation"-T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514118-4
ISBN-10: 0-19-514118-0 (alk. paper)
1. African Americans—History. 2. Historic sites—United States. 3. African Americans—
Monuments. 4. United States—History Local. I. Title. II. American landmarks
E185.H6444 2004
973'.0496073—dc22 2004002798
Printing number: 987654321
Printed in China on acid-free paper.
Cover: Cedar Hill, the home of Frederick Douglass, and Dred Scott (inset).
Frontis: Martin Luther King Jr. rallies for "jobs and freedom" in Washington D.C. in 1963.
Title page: The USS Arizona Memorial to those who lost their lives in the attach on Pearl Harbor.
American Landmark
JAMES OLIVER HORTON
General Editor
Landmarks of African American History
Landmarks of American Immigration
Landmarks of American Indian History
Landmarks of American Literature
Landmarks of the American Presidents
Landmarks of American Religion
Landmarks of the American Revolution
Landmarks of American Science & Technology
Landmarks of American Sports
Landmarks of American Women's History
Landmarks of the Civil War
Landmarks of Liberty
Landmarks of the Old South
L A N D M A R KS OF
African American History
Contents
INTRODUCTION 8
How TO USE THIS BOOK 10
PREFACE 12
1 JAMESTOWN, COLONIAL NATIONAL
HISTORICAL PARK
Slavery and Freedom in British North America 14
2 THE OLD STATE HOUSE
Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre 25
3 KINGSLEY PLANTATION
Page 25
Race and Family in Spanish Florida 37
The Old State House
4 THE AFRICAN MEETING HOUSE
Platform for a Community 50
5 THE OLD COURTHOUSE
Dred Scott, the Supreme Court, and the Struggle
for Freedom 61
6 HARPERS FERRY NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK
Allies for Freedom 76
7 CEDAR HILL, FREDERICK DOUGLASS NATIONAL
HISTORIC SITE
Home of the Black Sage of Nineteenth-Century
America 90
8 NICODEMUS NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
In Search of a Promised Land 107
9 SWEET AUBURN HISTORIC DISTRICT
Page 50
A Haven in a Hostile World 119
The African Meeting House
ID THE APOLLO THEATER
Harlem's Stage of Dreams 137
11 USS ARIZONA MEMORIAL
Race and War in Paradise 150
IB BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION
NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
The Supreme Court and Public Education 168
13 THE F.W. WOOLWORTH BUILDING, DOWNTOWN
GREENSBORO HISTORIC DISTRICT
The Start of the Student Sit-in Movement 181
CHRONOLOGY 193
FURTHER READING 195
INDEX 199 Page 137
The Apollo Theater
Introduction:
The Power of Place
James Oliver Horton
F
ew experiences can connect us with our past
General Editor
more completely than walking the ground
where our history happened. The landmarks of
American history have a vital role to play in help-
ing us to understand our past, because they are
its physical evidence. The sensory experience of a
place can help us to reconstruct historical events, just as
archaeologists reconstruct vanished civilizations. It can
also inspire us to empathize with those who came before
us. A place can take hold of us, body, mind, and spirit.
As philosophers of the Crow Indian nation have reminded
us, "The ground on which we stand is sacred ground. It
is the blood of our ancestors." It is the history owed to
our children. They will remember that history only to the
extent that we preserve the places where it was made.
Historical sites are some of history's best teachers.
In the early 1970s, when I was a graduate student in
Boston, working on a study of the nineteenth-century
black community of that city, I walked the streets of
Beacon Hill imagining the daily lives of those who lived
there a century before. Although I had learned much
about the people of that community from their newspapers
and pamphlets, from their personal letters and official
records, nothing put me in touch with their lives and
their time like standing in the places where they had
stood and exploring the neighborhood where they lived.
I remember walking along Myrtle Street just down
Beacon Hill from the rear of the Massachusetts State
House in the early morning and realizing that Leonard
Grimes, the black minister of the Fugitive Slave Church,
must have squinted into the sun just as I was doing as
he emerged from his home at the rear of number 59 and
turned left on his way to his church. Walking up Joy
Street in December added new meaning to descriptions I
had read about the sound of children sledding down its
slope during the particularly snowy winter of 1850. And
twisting my ankle on irregular cobblestone streets made
8 • INTRODUCTION
clear the precarious footing for fugitive slaves fleeing at
full run from slave catchers empowered by the Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850.
Any historical event is much better understood
within the context of its historical setting. It is one thing
to read the details of the Battle of Gettysburg. It is quite
another to stand on Little Round Top, with its com-
manding view of the battlefield to the north and west,
and contemplate the assault of the 15th Alabama
Confederates against the downhill charge of the 20th
Maine Volunteer Infantry. Standing at the summit, taking
the measure of the degree of slope and the open area
that afforded little cover to advancing armies is an unfor-
gettable experience. It also bears irrefutable testimony
to the horror of that battle, the bloodiest of the Civil
War, and to the sacrifice of the more than 50,000 men
during four days in the summer of 1863.
The Landmarks of American History series has
emerged from this belief in the power of place to move
us and to teach us. It was with this same philosophy in
mind that in 1966 Congress authorized the establish-
ment of the National Register of Historic Places, "the
Nation's official list of cultural resources worthy of
preservation." These enduring symbols of the American
experience are as diverse as the immigration station on
Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, which served as U.S.
entry point for thousands of Asian immigrants; or
Sinclair Lewis's Boyhood Home in Sauk Centre,
Minnesota, the place that inspired the novelist's Nobel
Prize-winning descriptions of small-town America; or
the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, launch
site of Neil Armstrong's historic trip to the moon. Taken
together, such places define us as a nation.
The historic sites presented in this series are selected
from the National Register, and they are more than
interesting places. The books in this series are written
by some of our finest historians—based at universities,
historic museums, and historic sites—all nationally rec-
ognized experts on the central themes of their respective
volumes. For them, historic sites are not just places to
visit on a field trip, but primary sources that inform their
scholarship. Not simply illustrations of history, they
bring the reality of our past to life, making it meaningful
to our present and useful for our future.
INTRODUCTION • 9