FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS, VOLUME 1 9TH EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

John Hope Franklin | --- | --- | --- | 9780077407513 | --- | --- From Slavery to Freedom | Senator John Heinz History Center

Its leaves are used to make hats, nets, baskets, etc. The wood is used for logs, in structures such as forts, wharves, and under water structures. The leaves or palm of the tree is used in roof thatches. The cabbage or vegetable of the tree is edible when ripe. It is also used to make fertilizer. The American chestnut tree produces an edible nut and grown throughout the territory from Florida to Pennsylvania. Eaten raw, roasted or boiled the chestnut was a source of protein. The roots contain an astringent agent and are boiled with milk to treat children diarrhea and teething. The nuts are also used in breads and as animal feed. The bark of the tree used as a product for tanning leather. The wood was used in various carpentry applications such as fence posts. Hickory tree wood and bark was used to make dye, tools, soaps, baskets, food, oil, furniture, axe handles, wagons, and rope. Tree bark was a common source for dyes. In addition to the dye the toxic plant was also cultivated for its medicinal properties as well. The Sugar maple is primarily a northern tree but had been found sparingly in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and at the head waters of Cooper River. The sugar extracted from it is an article of trade and used medicinally also. The wood is esteemed in the manufacture of saddle-trees. The grain of the wood is fine and close, and when polished it has a silky luster. The bark was used in dyes. Found in many parts of the region and was familiar to enslaved African Americans as a source for medicine, dye, and tanning of leather. The wood is used to make tools, furniture, machines, and utensils. The bark had medicinal and industrial applications. The nut, or acorn of the tree during the antebellum period had many uses many of which were applied by African Americans. Coffee was made from acorns and chicory mixture. The acorn coffee, which is made from roasted and ground acorns as a medicinal product. Native Americans used the crushed nuts in unleavened bread. The decoction of the bark, with sulphate of copper, is employed on the plantations to dye woollens of a green or black color, and for tanning leather. This plant is referred as water-gum, tupelo, wild olive, or sour-gum. The roots are immersed in inundated soils and have been used as a substitute for cork. Found growing in swamps and floodplains of the region. The wood is used in machine construction wheels, hubs, wagon parts and for making bowls, dippers, mortars, and other utensils. A tree with a particular wood that was durable and flexible as well is derived a cork substitute. Porcher recommended the wood to make shoes and shoe soles for enslaved on South Carolina plantations to prevent foot disease. A number of enslaved in the WPA narratives mention brogans given to them once a year around Christmas time. Former slaves had commented that their shoes were made with wooden soles. North Carolina slave Patsy Mitchner referring to the shoes they wore as described as those Porcher mentions. Our shoes has wooden bottoms on em. Dey was made wid wooden soles or bottoms. Dey tanned the leather or had it tanned in de neighborhood. A good thing for our negroes. Mississippi planters made large orders of the shoes and found that they were warmer, more durable, and more impervious to water than the leather-soled. This tree grows in dry places at higher elevations than the coast, flowering early in July, and producing a thick cluster of berries, which, when mature in early autumn, are covered with a whitish and acidic substance. The berries are used to make a medicinal syrup. The root and bark are used to make various remedies for ulcers, gonorrhea, sore throat, and antiseptic. The bark is also used to make a dye. Porcher asserts, "If the bark of the root is boiled in equal parts of milk and water, forming with flour a cataplasm, it will cure burns without leaving a scar. Butternut trees grew in the mountains of region. The inner bark of the root was used to make a laxative that proved effective as far back as General Francis Marion's camp during the Revolutionary War. It was effective treating dysentery a scourge during the Civil War. The rind of the fruit and the skin of the kernel were used to make remedies. The bark is strongest in the early summer. The leaves are dried and made into a powder that was used to produce an oil for the skin to aid stiffness. The enslaved were always producing remedies to treat the physical impact on their bodies. The Pine tree has been a staple of southern utility. Found in the mountains and swamps of South Carolina and other regions throughout the south, the soft wood tree has a fine grain. It is used for the inner work of houses, for boxes, cabinets, etc. In ornamental work and carving of every description the white pine is used; in fact, wherever a light wood is required. Masts are also made of it, and are exported to Liverpool, though not fully equal to those from Riga. The bowsprits and spars are made of white pine. By the 16th century the Portuguese introduced Africans to corn, a plant native to the Americas. American cultivation of corn as a cash crop began a century later. Planted by large and small farms, corn sometimes used slave labor, but nowhere near the numbers required for sugar and cotton production. A popular food, it replaced rice as a major staple of the American diet. Made into corn meal, porridge, whiskey, bread, hoe cakes, and hominy, the farming of corn increased as the country spread west. Zea mays, a native crop cultivated by American Indians became exploited as a cash crop of the slave plantation system. A major product of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, humans ate sweet corn, while field corn was used as feed for livestock. The enslaved often had bacon and corn cakes as the main meal of the long day. The corn meal porridge was called kush by North Carolina slave Anna Wright. I took ten or twelve of them, and kept on my journey. During the next day, while in the woods, I roasted my corn and feasted upon it, thanking God that I was so well provided for. Peas were a popular food on slave plantations. These were edible foods for people and feed for livestock. The cow pea is one variety of the pant. It is cooked in soups and stews. In African American culture it is referred as black-eyed peas and has its own tradition as a festive food. A legume, this food provided protein for under-nourished slaves. The use of hot peppers in the diet of the enslaved is a carry-over from Africa. African Americans derived pepper oil and vinegar, as well as medicinal remedies, from these peppers. The many varieties of hot peppers were used as a food and medicine. Escaping slaves would use it to throw their scent away from the hunting dogs on their trails. Joshua Dunbar, the father of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar was said to use cayenne pepper to make search dogs sneeze and throw them off the trail during his escape from slavery in Garrard County, Kentucky. The pepper was also described by John H. Aughey, of Tupelo, Mississippi in when recounting his escape from bondage in a Confederate regiment during the Civil war. I deserted, hoping to reach the Federal lines…. The colored people furnished me with cayenne pepper, onions, and matches, and I felt comparatively safe. Joseph Ringo, enslaved in Mason County Kentucky to John French recollects the remedies used: "Dey used to mel all kines er home remdies fer ailmen's; red pepper tea fer colds, en oak bark en hickory bark fer stommick ails, en but, oh, chile, I cant member all sech home doctorin'. Okra pods were used in soup or stewed with meat, fish, and vegetables as a forerunner of gumbo. According to Porcher, the seeds were prepared as a coffee substitute on plantations throughout South Carolina. The leaves are used to make a clay that is applied to the aching or swollen part of the body and mucous passages. Okra was most likely transported to the Americas as a familiar food to feed the growing African enslaved population. Wild onions similar to garlic have a pungent odor but were used widely in food. The odor would repel insects and used by runaways to mas their scents from dogs. Charlie Davenport a field slave in Second Creek, Mississippi recalls the dinner meal that was brought to the cotton fields. Popularly called pokeweed, this plant is found at certain times of the year and eaten as a green vegetable or as a salad, but only after being cooked, as it is poisonous if eaten raw. Fernald mentions the root as a poisonous plant that is used in medicines as a narcotic, emetic and can cause death. However dangerous it may be, African Americans had long made pokeweed a green potherb along with collard, mustard, and dandelion greens. Rice has been grown since B. Used as a food onboard slave ships crossing the Atlantic, rice also became the major starchy food of colonial America. As colonists invested in growing rice, the expertise and skill of African rice growers became vital to South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana planters and they were enslaved on rice plantations in the American South. A major slave market, located in Charleston, South Carolina, specialized in the sale of African rice growers, exploited for their knowledge and for profit. Rice brought tremendous wealth to slaveholders of the low country including men like South Carolina legislator, Congressman and Governor, R. In addition to being a major food, rice was also used to make bread, and beverages. The product was much valued as a cash crop and not as a food for enslaved. What rice the enslaved would consume may have come from their own fields or scant rations. This plant is a Canada wild rice grown in deep marshes and ponds in Florida and northward. Porcher mentions, "It abounds in all the shallow streams of North America, feeds immense flocks of wild swans and other water-fowl, contributes largely to the support of the wandering tribes of Indians. American sweet potatoes are the starchy root vegetable that reminded many Africans of the yam in their own culture. They could be roasted in ashes, baked, boiled, mashed, fried, or added to soups and stews. Cooked potatoes were taken by runaways for sustenance. Technically classified as a fruit, tomatoes are used primarily like a vegetable. The fruit of this plant is well known as an article of food. A slight acidic taste it induces constipation which in effect prevents diarrhea. The fruit was eaten raw, cooked, dried, or preserved. The leaves are poisonous causing vomiting. The seeds can irritate the stomach and intestine leading to ailments of the digestive tract. The greens could be boiled with salt pork and the root boiled and roasted or added to other ingredients for stews. Turnips are native to West Africa and a carry-over for many African diets. Root vegetables such as turnips are flexible and can be cooked and will last for extended periods of time making it a likely food carried by freedom seekers. Similar to Africans as their native yam or the sweet potato the tubers of this plant provided food and were prepared a number of ways; roasted, boiled, baked, or raw. The roots do not require storage in cellars and were rich and nutritious. Escaping slaves and maroons were known to carry these tubers for sustenance. The yam whether African or the sweet potato have remained traditional foods for African Americans. It provided the growth and economic development for textile mills in the American north and European markets as well. It was so important to the American economy that during the Civil War it became a strategic act for the Union to attack the cotton industry of the Confederacy. Cotton was ubiquitous in the life of the Deep- South enslaved. Those who worked on massive cotton plantations knew cotton as the crop of their toil as well as the fabric that covered their bodies. Sugar became the cash crop that fueled the transatlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution. The sweetener changed diets, and the products it produced—sugar, molasses, and rum— impacted the global economy. During the 17th and 18th centuries the demand in Europe for sugar rose dramatically. As coffee became popular, sugar became the sweetener of choice. The juice of the cane was processed into sugar, molasses, or rum and sold in European markets, generating huge profits for investors. A tough plant to cultivate, harvest, and process, it took thousands of enslaved to produce sugar cane. The conditions and climate in the tropics and in South Carolina and Louisiana made the work laborious and dangerous. Life expectancy on some West Indian plantations was years. Tobacco, a native crop plant cultivated by American Indians became a cash crop of the slave plantation system. It was used for smoking, chewing, snuffing, and making rope. This plant grows in the eastern states including the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and Georgia. As a cash crop it was cultivated using slave labor in the same aforementioned states plus Kentucky. Slave labor became key to each stage of production — planting, harvesting, processing, manufacturing, and shipping. As tobacco became more popular, the demand for slaves increased. This plant has been used medicinally by the Native Americans and also used as food. The roots are dried and pounded into a powder is mixed with a liquid as a medicine and is giving to children suffering from cold or other ailments. Edible parts of the plant are its roots, leaves and flower. Brown, William Wells. Wallcut, Carney, Judith A. Johnston, James F. Boston: Pennington, James W. Pittsburgh abolitionists mount a decades long struggle for freedom and human rights. During the antebellum period from to , Pittsburgh was seen by freedom seekers as a destination for freedom. The gradual abolition act of set in motion colonial and new states' initiatives in the North to abolish slavery. Pennsylvania was one of the first states to establish a law pertaining to the status of African Americans held in bondage. By gradually phasing out legal slavery, the Commonwealth hoped that over the coming decades of the 19th century, slavery would be eradicated from Pennsylvania. One condition of the law established indentured servitude for those born after March 1, to serve for 28 years. Actually, there was very little difference between slavery and indentured servitude on paper or in life. Between and , Allegheny County recorded a number of emancipations, manumissions, indentures, certificates of freedom, and freedom papers for African Americans who were passing through the region or settling in the area. It was important for African Americans to have a legal document describing their status on file in the courts because of the danger of losing their freedom to slave catchers. The documents help understand the transition from slavery to freedom in Western Pennsylvania and also indicate that Pittsburgh was a destination for freedom. Slavery had existed in Pennsylvania from its inception as a British colony in Various ethnic and religious groups such as the Quakers were the first Europeans colonists to abolish and denounce slavery in the colony. But that did not stop slave holding in Pittsburgh. Some of the leading citizens of antebellum Pittsburgh held slaves. John Neville, and a host of wealthy land and property owners held slaves. Slavery was small in Pittsburgh when compared to the plantation economies of the southern states. By , there were 3, enslaved in Pennsylvania with recorded in the western counties and statewide by The gradual abolition act made Pennsylvania a border state with the slave holding southern border of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware important to the abolitionist cause. To its west, Ohio and the Northwest Territory were deemed free of slavery. The first half of the 19th century witnessed a continual battle along the borders between slaveholders and abolitionists as freedom seekers ventured into Pennsylvania and slave catchers followed them. This caused the Pennsylvania legislature to distinguish itself as a free state. Pittsburgh's abolitionists knew and understood the issue of slavery. Both white and African American abolitionists worked for decades to aid freedom seekers and to protest slavery in America. Eventually many would be part of the network of the Underground Railroad. By the s, Pittsburgh had a growing reputation as a fierce, militant abolitionist community. Pittsburghers were founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society and through the Prince Hall Masons and African Methodist Episcopal Church, had established a commitment to the abolitionist cause. Lewis Woodson, John B. These people and others helped form a cohesive African American community that not only addressed slavery but other issues and concerns as well. The community investment included forming organizations to not only aid the cause of abolition and freedom but also to assist in the cause of education, employment, homelessness, and other humanitarian needs of the newly free and destitute. During the height of abolitionist activities, a vigilance committee stood guard over rescue missions as slaves were brought into Pittsburgh. It was built in , became a casualty of the fire of , rebuilt in , and was staffed by African Americans of the vigilance committee including Thomas and Frances Scroggins Brown. The underground network at the hotel worked to free enslaved people as they came into the hotel with their owners. The practice intensified leading up to the Fugitive Slave Law of The network was so effective that a southern slave holder who lost his year-old slave girl while staying overnight at the hotel, wrote in several southern newspapers that slave holders should avoid Pittsburgh and the Monongahela Hotel for chance of losing their "property. Local and national press aided the abolitionists' cause. Abolitionist and standard newspapers often printed stories about Pittsburgh activities. These newspapers are indications that African Americans understood the power of the press in propagating its anti-slavery position and building a collective of supporters for the cause. Counter to the abolitionists sheets was the Pittsburgh Gazette, and the Post newspapers that regularly printed runaway slave reward postings. The issue of slavery and freedom would intensify in the s. By September , the conflict along the southern border of Pennsylvania erupted when the Compromise of and its Fugitive Slave Act gave more powers to slaveholders than ever before to intrude into the homes of citizens looking for fugitive slaves and provide little protection for free people of color from capture and later sold into slavery in the south. As a result, Pittsburgh would witness hundreds of its African American residents migrate to states west and north into Canada. Buxton, Ontario, Canada welcomed migrating Pittsburghers. By , an African American committee of Pittsburghers had a replica of the Liberty Bell caste in a local foundry and sent to the Rev. William King's church in North Buxton. The Bell was inscribed with a message that read in part, "Presented to the Rev. An emigration plan of a different kind was brewing among the African American community. Allegheny County accounted for the largest delegation at the meeting where only a plan for the departure of African American from the U. The convention would settle on Africa as a place of emigration and send Martin Delany and three others to Yorubaland in the Oyo State of present day Nigeria to negotiate land leases with the chiefs of the Abeokuta. Each of these delegates played an important role in the organizing of the movement leading up to the Civil War. Those Pittsburghers not involved with emigration continued to support the growth and development of the local African American community. Philanthropist Charles Avery provided financial support to religious and educational development of African Americans. He founded, funded, and taught at the Allegheny Institute beginning in Barbershop and Bath House owner John B. Vashon, who had spent decades fighting for the anti-slavery cause, died in , a casualty of the Cholera epidemic. Lewis Woodson and John Peck were contributing letters to various newspapers including the Liberator, Colored American, and Frederick Douglass' Paper providing their perspective of the conditions placed on African Americans. Meanwhile, George Vashon would return to Pittsburgh and become principal of the African American public school in addition to his activist writings. The s could be called the decade of the launching pad to freedom. In the decade leading to the Civil War, the struggle for freedom continued to evolve. The impediments of the Fugitive Slave Law, violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions across the state and region, and the venture to find freedom in other lands occupied the mind of African Americans. By the time the Civil War commenced in , hardened Black men in militias volunteered to settle the slavery issue once and for all. But it wasn't until that hundreds of Pittsburgh men went off to join the Massachusetts regiments and the United States Colored Troops at Camp William Penn and elsewhere that the fight for freedom would continue on the battlefield. As the decade of the s came to a close, the armed conflicts, emigration, and agitation over freedom folded into a readiness for war. Abolitionist John Brown had travelled the eastern part of the U. Militias were formed throughout many African American communities to protect themselves from reprisal of the fugitive slave law of Before Lincoln was sworn in as the first Republican Party president in , South Carolina had seceded from the Union and was followed by other southern slave-holding states. When Abraham Lincoln travelled to Washington, D. Within a few months, the nation was in a Civil War and the call for federal volunteers went out. James Negley. Like many such militias throughout the north, they were rebuffed. Pittsburgh would contribute hundreds of African American men over the next two years to the Union army and naval forces. African American men on the home front would work to fortify the city against a pending Confederate invasion. In addition to the Cadets, Jones offered to recruit men from Pittsburgh within 30 days. African American men were ready to fight because they saw the war as a war over slavery and they would fight to end it. When Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into law on Jan. The Federals then relied on the existing network of African American abolitionists to help recruit nearly , men. Pittsburgher Martin R. Delany came back from Canada to serve as a recruiter first for the Massachusetts 54th regiment then for other USCT regiments. Pittsburgh would eventually contribute hundreds of men for the USCT. The 32nd regiment served under terrible conditions, fighting both in battles against the Confederacy at Honey Hill and against white officers whose racist attitudes threatened their lives. Many of the 32nd died from disease and medical neglect. However the Emancipation could not prevent the chaos and terror faced by African Americans in the Confederate South. Delany and others loudly denounced the atrocities inflicted on helpless emancipated slaves by white southerners. Between and , reports of these atrocities prompted civilians like Martin R. Delany to approach Lincoln with solutions to protect the southern freed men. Delany would serve through the end of the war and then work for the Freedmen's Bureau until his commission was served. After the war, the work of ratifying the reconstruction amendments to the Constitution was another cause for the network of abolitionists. Branches of the NERL were established in various states in the nation. John Peck, and B. Over the next five years, the NERL would work to ratify the 13th , 14th , and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th amendment ended slavery, the 14th allowed for citizenship, and the 15th allowed for male voting. The Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League would petition the legislature to ratify the 14th amendment and grant citizenship rights and suffrage to its black inhabitants. After the 15th amendment was ratified in Pennsylvania in , African American Pittsburghers would hold a parade to commemorate the re-establishing of their suffrage rights that were violated in The route for the parade began at Smithfield Street near the Monongahela House hotel and trekked into the Hill District then back downtown and across the 9th Street Bridge to Allegheny City then back across the Suspension Bridge to Liberty and Wood Streets where the event commenced. In , another parade was held that continued east on Liberty commencing in Friendship Grove where a program and meeting were held. Events like these annual parades to commemorate the freedom of African Americans show that the local community was very much engaged in issues of freedom, civil rights, and citizenship. However much of the gains in the aftermath of the Civil War would come to an end and a renewed struggle would ensue changing the landscape of Black life forever. From the end of the Civil War to the turn of the 20th century, former slaves, freemen, and the descendants of the enslaved would help transform Pittsburgh. During this period, the professional class continued to grow and support the founding of social organizations and institutions. George G. Turfley completed medical school in Ohio and opened a clinic in the Hill District where he would train a new generation of African American doctors. Mary Peck Bond co-founded a home for aged colored women eventually called the Lemington Home. A second generation of African American family-owned businesses cemented their economic and cultural significance in the area. Pulpress operated the Allegheny City Market fish dealer business started by his grandfather. Despite the presence of Jim Crow laws, de facto segregation, and discrimination, African Americans persevered in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. In the 35 years after the end of the Civil War and slavery, African Americans in Pittsburgh continued to struggle with the possibilities of real freedom. Southern migrants seeking freedom from the oppressions of the south began to swell the local communities. The Hill District was beginning to form as a migrant and immigrant community. A small enclave of "old Pittsburgh" families distinguished themselves from most migrants causing great schisms in the social network of everyday black life. However a collective agenda was beginning to form that would bring "old Pittsburghers" and migrants together to challenge the racism of early 20th century Pittsburgh. The last 25 years of the 19th century witnessed a political and social drawback from the promise of the Reconstruction era. All gains by African Americans politically, socially, culturally, and economically were under attack by the white power structure. After the election of Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency in , his policies to lift the federal occupancy in the South and provide amnesty to former Confederates opened the social and political resurgence of white oppression of millions of African Americans. White terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan roamed the southern countryside threatening and killing any advancement and hope to escape oppression. The court battles over civil rights escalated as southern states moved quickly to apply black codes and segregated laws. First installed were the voting rights violations, then social restrictions, followed by economic repression. As a result, millions of African Americans who could not escape or change the conditions in their society were trapped in a social, political, and economic subculture orchestrated by whites to protect white power and cultural attitudes. Land ownership, enterprise, and businesses were under attack. Many were forced into sharecropping or slave- like labor teams. As a result, millions fled the South to the North and West searching for a freer society. These migrants contributed to the growth of northern cities like Pittsburgh. They were drawn by the promise of good paying jobs, housing, and social freedoms. What many found was an increasingly segregated society that placed African Americans at the lower point of the economic totem pole. Even in the steel mills and its subsidiary industries, African Americans overwhelmingly received the lowest paid, unskilled, and most dangerous jobs even when they had experience working in mills in the South. Not all migrants during this period were poor, uneducated, former sharecroppers, or unskilled laborers. Robert L. He was a recipient of the Avery scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh and became its first African American graduate of the School of Law. However, the discrimination and restrictions of early 20th century Pittsburgh did not deter African Americans from striving to change the oppressive conditions in America. Leaders in the African American community would fight for better housing for migrants, education, jobs, and against racism. Local activists wore "stop lynching" buttons to support the national campaign against lynching. Steel mill workers in Aliquippa and Pittsburgh organized a local chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and brought the international president general, Marcus Garvey, to town. Their efforts to address the black working class were opposed by some in the black and white communities. The national debate surrounding the war and African American support was centered on the escalating violence such as lynchings and the denial of civil and constitutional rights nationwide. President Woodrow Wilson welcomed segregation into federal offices and cut African American federal employment opportunities. Following the editorials of W. Dubois and others who called for African Americans to "close ranks" and set aside civil rights and support the war effort, thousands of African American men enlisted or were drafted into the military and served valiantly in Europe. The hope was that after the war, the democracy won would be extended to African Americans. Unfortunately, servicemen had to fight for civil rights while in the military and face white retribution upon their return from war. Upon the return of the st to Pittsburgh at the end of the war, Mayor Babcock held a parade from the Hill District to downtown to recognize their bravery in war and democracy. Pittsburgh Lieutenants Donald C. Curtis were officers in the st. Despite the parade, African American servicemen across the country were under attack in and the early s by European immigrants and whites he felt the new aspect of freedom of their expressions were not to be tolerated in America. On the frontline of civil rights battles and community advancement was the black church. The increase in population during the first thirty years of the 20th century also meant the increase in black churches. Ararat Baptist Churches, St. Benedict the Moor Catholic, and Homewood AME Zion that attended to the religious and spiritual needs of congregations but also provided social, cultural, and at times political leadership. Those racial attitudes that showed defiance toward black advancement continued. Various communities in Pittsburgh would bar African American homeownership. Confining African Americans to a few communities like the Hill District, East Liberty, and sections of Homewood, this type of discrimination, called "redlining," was supported by the real estate industry and federally funded programs. When Robert L. Vann moved to Monticello Street in Homewood in , his new neighbors quickly protested. They became eager to sell their own properties. Vann purchased a few homes on his street and resold them to other African American families. Former Pittsburgh Courier reporter and editor Frank Bolden recalled African American teachers had to leave town to find work because of the racist policies of the public schools. African Americans paid taxes that funded the schools yet were barred from pursuing teaching careers. This type of exploitation undermined African American advancement and handicapped students of color and others. Thousands of African Americans students would become teachers but were not hired to teach in Pittsburgh. It wasn't until that Pittsburgh Schools had African American teachers. The first of these teachers and administrators worked in Hill District schools. African American organizing focused on social and political issues of the day as well. Voting rights for women was a main issue for African American women in the early 20th century. Daisy Lampkin was one of the main organizers for women's rights during this period. Historian Leslie Patrick commented that Daisy Lampkin "was active on numerous fronts, both in her adopted Pittsburgh and throughout the nation. Her activism is believed to have begun with hosting a women's rights tea in her home in , which led to her subsequent roles as a suffragist and member of the Negro Women's Equal Franchise Federation, campaigning for women's right to vote. In , Pittsburgh Courier editor Robert L. Vann, in a speech in Cleveland forecasted that African Americans would switch to the Democratic Party presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt because the Democrats were addressing issues impacting blacks. Decades of Republican apathy and exploitation of black voters were coming to an end. By , Homer S. Brown graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. In , he was elected to the state legislature and in , he was appointed a judge in Allegheny County. Brown sat on the bench until his retirement in His political rise followed the movement of African Americans from the Republican to Democratic Party. Twenty-five years after Brown was elected to the state legislature, K. LeRoy Irvis was elected to represent the first district of Pittsburgh. Lynch in South Carolina during reconstruction. Both Brown and Irvis witnessed the civil rights revolution of the s and s from their elected chairs. Political opportunities were the result of a new phase of migration that took place from to African Americans in Pittsburgh expanded from 62, to , while the white population in the city declined. This meant more eligible voters for office holders, but the change was a slow process because African Americans were constituted into two legislative districts, the 1st and the 24th. The migration also impacted employment opportunities. Pittsburgh's great employer of the 20th century was the steel mills. For African Americans, very few worked beyond unskilled labor in the mills. Other occupations recorded the same struggle as eligible workers continued to be denied access to jobs despite having the qualifications. As a result of increased migration, lack of jobs, inadequate housing, unemployment, and slow income growth, civil and economic rights activists continued to advocate for equal rights for African Americans. Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. Aurelia Whittington Franklin. It was through her encouragement and support that John Hope Franklin was able to complete the book, From Slavery to Freedom. Franklin was commissioned by Alfred A. Knopf to write a survey text on Negro history. Franklin set out to research and write the book. Having soon exhausted the resources available in the libraries in the Raleigh-Durham area, he found it necessary to spend several months researching at the Library of Congress. Franklin to complete his research and writing. He affectionately refers to this as a contribution from "the Aurelia Franklin Foundation. Now in its seventh edition and co-authored by Alfred Moss, this book has reshaped the way African-American history is understood and taught. Translated into five languages — Chinese. French, German, Japanese, and Portuguese — From Slavery to Freedom served, and continues to serve, as the primary textbook in the field. John Hope Franklin is James B. He is a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. He received the A. Southern Slavery, 8. Antebellum Free Blacks, 9. Abolitionism in Black and White, Civil War, The Promises and Pitfalls of Reconstruction, The Color Line, The Era of Self-Help, In Pursuit of Democracy, Voices of Protest, The Arts at Home and Abroad, s to early s The New Deal Era, Double V for Victory, American Dilemmas, We Shall Overcome, Black Power, Progress and Poverty, Perspectives on the Present, Since For shipments to locations outside of the U. From Slavery to Freedom

The expansion of white settlement into North Carolina and Georgia also made it difficult for fugitive slaves to go unnoticed by slave catchers. After South Carolina adopted the Barbadian slave code in , slaves who ran away or defied their masters could be maimed or mutilated. The fear of retribution as well as the physical and emotional toll of enslavement made it difficult for slaves in the Carolinas to resist slavery, yet many managed to live free lives in maroon communities. Answer would ideally include: An African world in Carolina: Carolina slaves lived on isolated plantations and created self-contained slave communities. Slaves grew their own food, cooked, and built their own quarters all in accordance with African traditions. Until the s, most slaves were African-born and retained numerous customs from their homeland such as country marks and some religious practices. Slaves in Carolina all worked under the same brutal regime, which shaped the character of their communities. Slaves retained many of their traditional religious beliefs and adapted them to their experience as slaves in America. Answer would ideally include: Fewer slaves in New England: The population of slaves in New England colonies never reached more than 3 percent of the total population. The region's cold climate and short growing season prohibited the cultivation of labor-intensive cash crops, such as rice, sugar, and tobacco. Colonists in New England did not create large plantations with large numbers of slaves like their counterparts in the Chesapeake and Carolina did. Unlike in England's southern colonies, most slaves in New England lived in port cities, and the small family farms that predominated in New England required few slaves. Some of the Puritan and Pilgrim settlers rejected slavery, but most accepted owning Indian and African slaves. Answer would ideally include:. Critics of slavery in New England: Slavery was rejected on religious and moral grounds by some Puritan colonists, such as Samuel Sewall, who in issued the first antislavery tract published in New England, a pamphlet entitled The Selling of Joseph. Most New England colonists ignored such pleas for the abolition of slavery, however, and the institution slowly expanded. Answer would ideally include: Quaker support for slavery: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was founded in by Quakers, members of the egalitarian English Protestant sect also known as the Religious Society of Friends. Religious freedom was a founding principle of their beliefs, but most did not support freedom for the slaves in the colony. The founder of the colony, William Penn, was a Quaker and a slave owner who preferred to buy black slaves rather than pay indentured servants. Many Quakers supported slave labor because of the lucrative trade relationship between Caribbean colonies and Philadelphia. Quaker opposition to slavery: A few Pennsylvania Quakers rejected slavery, and a group in Germantown issued the first American antislavery petition in The Dutch- speaking petitioners had fled Europe to escape religious persecution and were shocked to see that some of their Quaker neighbors used slave labor. The petition never reached a broad audience or drew much support, and slavery continued to expand in Philadelphia and throughout the rest of Pennsylvania. Answer would ideally include: Slavery in French Louisiana: French settlements in the Louisiana colony, which stretched from the Gulf of Mexico up the Mississippi River to the Canadian border, attracted few European immigrants. By , French investors wanted to set up plantations similar to those in the sugar colonies in the West Indies, but Louisiana lacked the manpower to sustain commercial agriculture. France's King Louis XV granted a trade monopoly to the Company of the West Indies in , but it failed to attract French immigrants, so France began to import shiploads of slaves from rice-growing regions of Africa, such as Senegal. Slaves' expertise in rice growing saved the Louisiana colony from collapse. Despite the colony's adoption of the Code Noir in , which made runaway slaves subject to capital punishment, many slaves escaped and formed maroon communities, such as Bas du Fleuve outside New Orleans, which was home to a third of Louisiana's slaves by Answer would ideally include: Slaves run away to Florida: Slaves and free blacks in Florida had a higher degree of autonomy than their counterparts in the English colonies to the north. Slaves escaped to Florida because there was a better possibility of achieving freedom there. The first runaways that arrived from Carolina in were granted their freedom by the Spanish governor of Florida, who claimed them to be religious refugees, and in Spain's King Charles II offered liberty to fugitive slaves who converted to Catholicism. Spanish Florida continued to welcome refugees from English plantations and employed them in militias to rebuff attacks and retaliate against the English. Runaways from the Carolinas. Answer would ideally include: Banning slavery in Georgia: Georgia's colonization was led by a group of British trustees who believed the colony should act as a buffer zone between Spanish Florida and British holdings to the north. They envisioned a colony populated by indentured servants who would defend it against Indians and Spanish enemies, something slaves would likely not do. The Salzburgers, German-speaking Protestants who migrated to Georgia in , agreed with the ban on slavery and showed their support by cultivating their own crop of rice. After sustained lobbying from colonists, Georgia lifted the ban on slavery in Answer would ideally include: Stono rebellion's impact on slavery: In , a slave uprising began near the Stono River in South Carolina after some twenty slaves stole guns, ammunition, axes, and clubs. The rebels were joined by about forty other slaves as they marched south, killing whites as they went, until the revolt was suppressed by a hastily assembled militia. In response to the Stono rebellion, colonial officials in South Carolina passed the Negro Act, which gave whites the power to kill rebellious slaves without a trial. Slaves could not travel beyond the boundaries of their plantation without a pass, and all whites could lawfully kill any slave for resisting interrogation or punishment. The Stono rebellion demonstrated Britain's commitment to slavery in its North American colonies. The perceived threat of slave insurrection created by the Stono rebellion gave colonists a pretense to keep slaves under constant surveillance. Answer each of the following questions with an essay. Be sure to include specific examples that support your thesis and conclusions. How did the colonial legislature in Virginia create a system of racial slavery in which only those of African descent were slaves? What were the differences between slavery in the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, and New England during the seventeenth century? What was the practice of half- freedom in the Dutch colony of New Netherland during the seventeenth century? How did slavery expand after the Dutch lost control of New Netherland in ? How did France encourage French immigration to its colony in Louisiana? In what ways did Africans taken to French Louisiana resist their enslavement? Answer would ideally include: Indentured servitude in English colonies: England's first permanent settlement in North America was founded in on Jamestown Island by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company chartered by King James I. The first settlers did not know how to survive in the Chesapeake and relied on local Indians for food, leaving the colony on the brink of collapse. The introduction of tobacco cultivation in revived the region's economy, and the demand for laborers increased. Landless rural English and Scots- Irish laborers came to the Chesapeake as indentured servants, which meant they owed a term of service to the Virginia Company for the cost of their transportation and care. African slaves and European indentured servants: The first enslaved Africans arrived in English North America in , but many who came to labor in the Chesapeake in the early seventeenth century were indentured servants. African slaves and white indentured servants worked and lived alongside one another, ran away together, and intermarried. The work required to cultivate tobacco was grueling, and fewer immigrants wanted to come to Virginia to work as indentured servants. After , the colonies continued to purchase African slaves in small numbers, but the number of slaves increased rapidly once the English entered the slave trade with the establishment in of the Royal African Company, which transported between 90, and , slaves to English colonies in the New World in the last four decades of the seventeenth century. Transition to African slavery: As more slaves were imported to the colonies from Africa, the English sought to define the legal status of blacks in their colonies. After , blacks continued to acquire a uniquely inferior status. Blacks could be sentenced to a life of servitude, and a Virginia law made the enslaved status of black women heritable. The English created a system of chattel slavery in their colonies in North America through which colonists increasingly exploited African slave labor throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Answer would ideally include: Black slavery in Virginia: The first African slaves brought to a British colony in North America arrived in Virginia in In the s, English colonists began to create a system of chattel slavery in which only those who were of African descent, or black, could be legally enslaved. In , three servants were arrested and put on trial after running away from a Virginia farmer and fleeing to Maryland. All three were lashed and given extended terms of service, but the black servant was ordered to serve for the rest of his life, whereas the two white servants' terms were extended only one year. Subsequent laws continued to relegate blacks to slave status. A law made the enslaved status of black women heritable. This made it virtually impossible to escape slavery and ensured that slaves in North America were black. After Bacon's Rebellion in , Virginia's colonial government sought to sharpen the distinction between servants and slaves by limiting the years of service that could be given to a white servant and allowing slave owners to kill rebellious slaves with impunity. This system of chattel. Slavery in the English colonies became dependent on the color of one's skin, and after the establishment of the Royal African Company in , England imported between 90, and , slaves to North America by Answer would ideally include: Slavery in the Chesapeake: The first African slaves arrived in the Chesapeake in , but during the early seventeenth century, most laborers were indentured servants. Slaves and servants often worked and lived alongside one another and even intermarried. Fewer indentured servants were willing to move to Virginia by midcentury because of the reports they had heard about the hard work and harsh conditions. In the s Virginia began the process of creating a system of chattel slavery in which only blacks could be enslaved and the children of slaves inherited their mother's enslaved status. By the late seventeenth century the Chesapeake colonies had created a plantation economy that revolved around black slavery and tobacco cultivation. To meet the demand for labor on tobacco plantations, the English established the Royal African Company, which imported between 90, and , slaves to North America between and Slavery in the Carolinas: The planters who established the colony of Carolina in arrived with the plan to create a workforce of enslaved Africans to clear and cultivate the settlement. Slaves from rice-growing regions in Africa used their expertise to establish rice plantations in the Carolinas, which by the s were exporting nearly ten million pounds of rice a year. Slaves on rice plantations worked under a task system in which they were assigned daily tasks under the control of a black driver who oversaw the work of other slaves. The task system was designed to motivate slaves to complete their tasks quickly in order to have time off, which led to some degree of autonomy away from white supervision. On the scattered and isolated rice plantations of the Carolinas, slaves were forced to grow their own food, raised livestock, and developed communal belief systems that resembled those practiced in Africa. African slaves brought many of their traditions with them to the Carolinas but developed a uniquely African American world, one that reflected the new realities of enslavement. Slavery in New England: The New England colonies, first settled in the s, did not have as many enslaved Africans as other English colonies in North America did; the population of slaves in New England never reached more than 3 percent of the total population. New England never developed a large plantation economy because of its colder climate and shorter growing season. Instead of the cultivation of cash crops, such as tobacco in Virginia and rice in the Carolinas, the economy of New England revolved around transatlantic trade, which meant that fewer slaves were imported. Some of the Quakers and Puritans who immigrated to New England objected to slavery, but most condoned the practice, and many were slave owners. New England colonists also acquired black slaves in exchange for Native American "Captives taken in just warres," and in , Massachusetts became the first colony to legally recognize chattel slavery. Half-freedom in New Netherland: Because most slaves were owned by the West India Company rather than by private individuals, their legal status was thrown into question under Dutch law, and many slaves sued for their rights and their freedom. The result of such petitions led to a status called half-freedom, in which blacks who defended the colony against Indian attacks would be liberated but their children would not be freed. These adults were required to serve as wage laborers for the company periodically, while the company retained the labor of their children, and slave families were required to pay corporate tribute. English expansion of slavery: The practice of half-freedom allowed many blacks to successfully petition the company for full freedom, but escape from slavery became almost impossible after the English seized New Netherland and laid permanent claim to New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and land that became Pennsylvania. The English Royal African Company increased the importation of slaves to British colonies throughout the eighteenth century. Colonial officials developed policies that encouraged the importation of slaves and the expansion of slavery, such as the abolition of property taxes on slaves in New York and the awarding of sixty acres of farmland per slave to any New Jersey colonist who imported slaves. Answer would ideally include: French immigration to Louisiana: French Louisiana extended from the Gulf of Mexico up the Mississippi River to the Canadian border on the western edge of European settlement in the New World. The French settlers who moved there were eager to set up a plantation system similar to the profitable sugar colonies in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint Domingue. Many of the French and Canadian inhabitants were fur traders or soldiers and were unwilling to do the grueling labor required to clear land and cultivate a cash crop like sugar. Few French men and women were willing to move to such a remote frontier outpost, so France began to ship hundreds of African slaves to the colony to do the hardest labor. Most of the slaves shipped from Africa to Louisiana in the early eighteenth century were from rice-growing regions such as Senegambia, and they brought with them their expertise in cultivating rice as well as indigo and tobacco. Slaves grew rice along large stretches of the Mississippi River and saved the colony from collapse, but it came at a heavy price; nearly one-third of all Africans brought to Louisiana died. Resistance to slavery in Louisiana: By the eighteenth century, Louisiana's black majority outnumbered whites by a ratio of two to one. Due to their small number, the white colonists found it difficult to control the large slave population. Many slaves in Louisiana were able to escape into the dense woods and tidal wetlands, where they formed maroon communities. Some runaways lived with local Natchez Indians, who were hostile to the French. In , approximately Bambara slaves conspired to kill the French and take over the colony before the plot was discovered. The colony had long before adopted strict slave laws known as the Code Noir, which called for capital punishment for slaves who escaped, but the colonists were too poor and too few to kill or even capture runaway slaves. It remained difficult through the eighteenth century for. French colonists to control slaves along the large frontiers of Louisiana. Some fugitive slaves escaped to maroon communities, such as Bas du Fleuve on the outskirts of New Orleans, where they made their living farming and supplying lumber to New Orleans sawmills. By , Bas du Fleuve was home to almost a third of Louisiana's slave population. Use the following to answer questions Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all. Terms a. Code Noir c. Stono rebellion A slave uprising that took place near the Stono River in St. Paul's Parish, South Carolina, in The rebels killed about twenty whites before they were captured and subdued. White laborers who came to the English North American colonies under contract to work for a specified amount of time, usually four to seven years. A status allotted primarily to Dutch-owned slaves who helped defend New Netherland against Indian attacks. A system by which slaves were considered portable property and denied all rights or legal authority over themselves or their children. Where was England's first successful permanent settlement in North America founded in ? How did the first English colonists survive their first few years in North America? What impact did tobacco have on England's Chesapeake colonies after ? A It encouraged English settlers to move to Virginia and Maryland. B The Chesapeake economy declined due to the colonists' reliance on a single cash crop. C The Chesapeake colonists began to grow fewer of their previous cash crops. D It created a new market for labor due to the length and difficulty of its cultivation. When were the first African slaves brought to England's Chesapeake colonies? A B C D How did England seek to increase the number of laborers in its North American colonies in the early seventeenth century? A Through the transatlantic slave trade B By bringing indentured servants to North America C By capturing Spanish prisoners during raids on Spanish military bases in Florida D By employing Native Americans who were knowledgeable about corn cultivation. What did a law passed in Virginia in change about the legal status of slaves? A All sexual relationships between slaves and free people were outlawed. B The children of enslaved women fathered by a white man were declared free. C Children born to enslaved women were freed after twelve years. D The enslaved status of black women became inheritable. What was the system of chattel slavery created by English colonists in North America? A African slaves could earn their freedom by purchasing it from their owners. B African slaves were considered the property of their owners, similar to livestock or furniture. C Indian slaves were controlled by different laws than African slaves. D African slaves could be enslaved for life in the southern colonies but not in New England. What was an impact of laws passed during the seventeenth century that were designed to clarify slaves' legal status in English colonial society? A The child of a slave woman could inherit property if the father was a freeman. B The child of a slave woman was free if the father was a freeman. C Slave women could not seek liberty for their children by claiming freemen as the fathers. D Slave women could sue for their own freedom but not for the freedom of their children. What were the consequences of laws passed in Virginia in outlawing interracial marriage? A All marriages between blacks and whites became a crime. B Sexual relations between white men and slave women became a crime. C Sexual relations between slaves and free people became a crime. D Marriages between slaves became a crime. What previous legal protection for slaves was exempted by an act passed by the Virginia legislature in ? A The children of slaves were born free. B Baptism gave slaves legal standing in colonial courts. C The children of slaves could purchase their freedom. D Baptism gave slaves the right to purchase their freedom. Why did the number of English immigrants coming to Virginia decline by the middle part of the seventeenth century? A Warfare between the English and the Dutch prevented travel to the colony. B Conflict with local Native Americans made the colony dangerous. C News of a slave rebellion frightened potential immigrants from England. D The colony's reputation for abusing and exploiting servants made it unappealing. Why did landless freemen, servants, and slaves join Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia in ? A They wanted independence from British rule due to unfair labor practices. B The Virginia assembly imposed a tax on all forms of labor. C The colony's Indian policy was not aggressive enough to suit their desire for more land. D Virginia planters unfairly controlled the price of tobacco. This eighth edition has been revised to include expanded coverage of Africa; additional material in every chapter on the history and current situation of African Americans in the United States; new charts, maps, and black-and-white illustrations; and a third four-page color insert. From Slavery to Freedom describes the rise of slavery, the interaction of European and African cultures in the New World, and the emergence of a distinct culture and way of life among slaves and free blacks. The authors examine the role of blacks in the nation's wars, the rise of an articulate, restless free black community by the end of the eighteenth century, and the growing resistance to slavery among an expanding segment of the black population. The book deals in considerable detail with the period after slavery, including the arduous struggle for first-class citizenship that has extended into the twentieth century. Many developments in recent African American history are examined, including demographic change; educational efforts; literary and cultural changes; problems in housing, health, juvenile matters, and poverty; the expansion of the black middle class; and the persistence of discrimination in the administration of justice. All who are interested in African Americans' continuing quest for equality will find a wealth of information based on the recent findings of many scholars. Professors Franklin and Moss have captured the tragedies and triumphs, the hurts and joys, the failures and successes, of blacks in a lively and readable volume that remains the most authoritative and comprehensive book of its kind. Im Buch. Inhalt Land of Their Ancestors. The Ashanti people. The African Way of Life. Formats and Editions of From slavery to freedom : a history of African Americans []

According to Michael Twitty, the coastal diets of the Chesapeake region relied on the bounty of the Bay with fish and oysters as part of the diet along with peas, hominy, and various greens. Greens, corn, peas, roots, and wild game such as possum, snakes, and turkey were part of the diet although on special occasions. Basically, regardless of where you were enslaved, life was hard and you made food out of what you could find or grow. By examining the use of plants, flora and the wilderness for survival we have opened a new chapter in Underground Railroad history. Now the learning around the Underground Railroad is on the ground with freedom seekers. This microsite contains a list of plants and foods that were researched to have a relationship with the enslaved, freedom seekers and free people of color. Arranged by category: fruits, herbs, flora, nuts, trees, vegetables, cash crops, and medicines the list explores a history of survival and use of the natural environment to attain freedom. Apples were a popular fruit found growing widely in the region. Various varieties were used as a food, for making cider, liquors, jellies, and to make medicine. Some varieties of apples were used to make remedies for various ailments. The wood was used in furniture making and architectural accessories. The fruit of the crab apple is tart, sour and was often made into preserves. These small sour apples are not much to make a meal but can sustain life in the wilderness for a short period. Pennington escaped slavery in Maryland in and made his way north through Pennsylvania. Grapes are in many varieties more during the antebellum period than now. Porcher opined that they were more suitable for southern growth to produce a better wine. Both wild and domesticated grapes were used to make wine, as food, vinegar, and preserves. May-apple is found in rich swamp lands of the Carolinas and Virginia. No doubt this tree was found in the dismal swamp by Maroons. The enslaved made a medicine from the plant as well as a drink. The leaves can produce nausea in empty stomachs and the fruit is edible. The root is poisonous. We have caused them [medicines] to be used on one on which upward of a hundred negroes resided, and we found that during a period of seven months, including the warm months of summer, they were used in all cases, and apparently fulfilled every indication. No detailed statement of these could be obtained, as it was administered by one of their own number; but large quantities of them were required. The pulp is squeezed into a wineglass, and with the addition of a little old Madeira and sugar, it is said to be equal to the luscious golden granadilla of the tropics. Red mulberry was used by the enslaved as a food, laxative, syrup, and medicine. Therefore berries could be edible or poisonous. Mulberry is an edible type and is an ingredient for wine as well. The Paw Paw is native to the eastern United States. The Paw Paw fruit was eaten like custard and was known to grow in rich soils and along streams. It had medicinal properties as well. The unripen juice was made into a vermifuge to treat ulcers. The fruit was used as a marinade for meat. Pears were eaten and used to make liquor, cider, juice, jelly, and syrup. The wood of the tree was used to smoke meats, furniture, instruments, and utensils. Pear trees required low labor, low cost, and high revenue on the market. Slave labor made it possible to cultivate on many plantations and to make many of the above mentioned products. Persimmons are an edible fruit. The bark was boiled and used to treat fever and diarrhea. Vinegar, jelly, tea, syrup, and breadstuffing were made from persimmon fruit. Persimmon was also used to make a beer. A wild red raspberry is an edible fruit that was eaten as a fruit and from which was made preserves, jelly, marmalade, wine and liquor. The leaves are astringent and the root is a diuretic. A cordial beverage was made from blackberry and raspberry to ward off dysentery, a common and deadline illness during the Civil War. Andromeda mariana, or stagger bush, was used as a medicinal remedy for herpes, and as a wash for ulcers and ground itch. Primarily to treat these and other skin diseases and infections with symptoms such as blisters, parasites, rashes, and other skin ailments. These ailments could be caused by lack of hygiene, stress, trauma and biological spreading. Andromeda mariana is a poisonous plant if eaten and was found growing native in South Carolina and Florida swamps and sandy soil. According to Francis Porcher in Resources of the Southern Fields and Forest, Medical, Economical, and Agricultural Journal, it would be applied as a concoction to make a wash and applied to the skin or infected area. The roots of this plant are edible and it was used for food. Arrowhead, named because its above water leaves are shaped so is a plant grown in swamps or water similar to a Lilly. Porcher reports that the plant grew in the rice fields of coastal South Carolina along the Cooper River from the Sumpter district, vicinity of Charleston. It was also located in ditches and ponds of Georgia, and going north. The leaves are sharp, biting to the taste and smell, caustic and bitter. The enslaved would employ them in dispersing scrofulous ulcers. The Chinese are said to cultivate it on account of the bulbous roots, which are eaten and it was used as food by the Indians. It is said that the leaves, applied to the breasts of nursing women, will tend to dispel the milk. The root of this plant is often of great length and contains starch. Sometimes called the water plantain, it is used by the vegetable practitioners as a demulcent, a soothing application for infected areas of the skin. Asparagus or wild Asparagus should not be confused with the food used today. This wild variety of the plant may have physical characteristics as the food we are familiar with but the 19th century variety was used in much different applications than a compliment for a salmon dinner. It was known to Native Americans and enslaved Africans for the medicinal and food properties it contained. A preparation of a syrup was used as a strong sedative in heart palpitations. Its diuretic property was well known and an account of the alcoholic fermentation from the branches producing a urine cleanse or kidney ailment remedy. Asparagus for coffee and tea was made by roasting the grounded ripe seeds of the plant. The roots are, however, edible when cooked, and the young shoots are a very good substitute for asparagus. Grown in the eastern part of the United States this plants habitat is forest both dry rocky and floodplains. Grows abundantly in pine barrens and is collected in St. The Butterfly Weed is a stimulant that has been used to treat rheumatism, chest ailments, catarrh, and pneumonia. It has also been used to treat dysentery. Porcher comments on the way antebellum doctors used the plant in their treatment:. McBride, of St. John's, Berkley, South Carolina, experimented largely with it in pleurisy, generally finding it to act with advantage. Eberle used it; and Dr. Parker employed it for twenty years with continued confidence. In a communication from Dr. McKeown, who believes it expectorant, tonic, diaphoretic, and sudorific. The dandelion seems to be ubiquitous in growth as it seems to prosper everywhere. The plant is edible and has been used like a vegetable, medicine, weed, and food. The leaves are eaten in salads and as a potherb while the roots are used to make various medicinal treatments for numerous ailments and as a coffee substitute. Tinctures made from the roots treat jaundice, liver ailments, gall-bladder, spleen, kidney, uterin, and hepatitis. Available growth during the Spring and Summer, the plant became useful for runaways during those times of year. One can imagine the dandelion eaten before escape to cleans and energize the liver for the challenge of the trek to freedom. Dock is an herbal flower used to make remedies for various ailments and is edible. Porcher notes that it grows around buildings similar to the dandelion. Dock root is a treatment for itch, syphilis, and as a laxative. The young plat leaves can be used in salads or as a potherb. The mature plant can be poisonous. The roots can be eaten as well but were used often to make various potions to treat ailments. A leafing herb used as a food but could be toxic if eaten raw or unclean. The leaves, shoots, seeds, and flowers are edible. It is a sedative and diuretic used in hemorrhoids. It is known by many names, both folk and scientific. It is sometimes called: white goosefoot, wild spinach, frost blite, baconweed, muckweed, fat-hen, and pigweed. Porcher notes that milkweed is found is all Confederate States. The pods produce a silk fiber similar and when woven with cotton is used to make articles of clothing like gloves or socks. It is used as a pillow stuffer. Since most enslaved had bare sleeping quarters and most times bedding made of corn shucks or hay. The leaves, shoots, and fruits of this plant are all edible. The peppery edge or bitterness is removed by first boiling the young shoots and leaves, and then soaking in water for two days. Cooked like spinach, it makes a nutritious vegetable. It is known to grow wildly among corn. A garden purslane grows in yards and rich soils. Carney and Rosomoff noted purslane as one of the many foods Africans cultivated for subsistence. It is believed to have come to the Americas before Columbus. It is antiscorbutic, diuretic, and an antidote for poisoning from cantharides. It has long been used as a salad and potherb. The young shoots are gathered when from two to five inches long. A very desirable blue dye is made from it. A substitute for sarsaparilla, the smilax plant is also similar to asparagus. Commonly called the Long-stalk Greenbrier, The roots and shoots are made into food. Southern Indians including the Seminoles boiled the roots to make meal. Sorrell is a refrigerant and diuretic, and was employed as an article of diet. The young shoots may be eaten as a salad and the acidic taste is destroyed by drying. The bruised plant is often applied to sores, and it is thought to be very active in allaying inflammation--doubtless owing to its saline constituents. The stalks and leaves contain a number of acidic properties. It is also used in removing ink spots from cloth. The juice of its leaves makes a drink used to treat fever, and the leaves themselves, eaten freely as a salad, cool the blood, and act as a cure or a prevention of scurvy. It is also much used as a salad, and as a season for soups, broths, stews. This plant is sometimes called wake robin, Indian turnip and dragon-root. The three-leaved Indian turnip s not to be confused with the root vegetable, this is an herb. It grows in moist woodland thickets. It is used as a medicinal remedy to treat inflammation of the mucous membranes, particularly pertussis and asthma. Porcher remarks, "In the chronic asthmatic affections of old people it is a remedy of very considerable value. During times of famine the starch of this plant served as a nourishing ingredient for bread. Wild Lettuce grows in damp soils. This herb will produce a discharge by the kidneys and skin. It was used as a treatment for menstruation in women. Often runaways would use wild lettuce to control and delay their menstrual cycles. Wild lettuce was an anesthetic as well and used similar to opiates. A potherb used for menstrual pain, urinary tract, calming for children, muscle and joint pain. The resin taken from flower is smoked or leaves are made into tea. Its seeds are roasted to make the coffee substitute and the leaves are parched or raw and added to soups, stews and salads. Cat-Tail is a reed plant found in stagnant waters, lagoons, ponds and ditches. The roots are eaten and a mucus jelly is extracted to treat gonorrhea and dysentery. Utilitarian uses include the pollen and bark in the application of hats, mattresses, gloves and even paper. Golden club is a water flower that grows in wetlands, swamps, and ponds. The roots and seeds are edible but must be roasted. Native Americans used this flower in their diets. A tincture made from the roots was used to treat rheumatism. Cherokee doctors use it in the form of a poultice of the roots, or a salve, as a local application in allaying inflammation. The fibre is uncommonly strong, and is used for various purposes by enslaved on plantations: for making thongs for hanging up the heaviest hams, bacon, etc. In this case it may have been used as a substitute for hemp and cordage rope. Sometimes called wild okra, it was used by the enslaved for making soup. The bruised leaves were used as application to soothe the skin like a lotion. Called Adams root or bear grass this plant is part of the lily family of flora. A tincture of the roots is much employed in rheumatism. The "Cherokee doctors" use it in the form of a poultice of the roots, or a salve, as a local application in allaying inflammation. Technically the peanut is not a nut but a legume or bean. Though the earliest domesticated peanuts are traced to South America, peanuts became a popular food in West Africa where peanut oil, butter, and nuts are used. A popular garden crop, peanuts also became important for animal feed. Porcher accounts the American peanut was brought to America by the African. Its many uses exploited by Africans both slave and free. Clutches of the peanut accompanied escaping slaves for a source of protein. They are often parched, and beaten up with sugar, and served as a condiment or dessert. The ground-nut was cultivated to some extent in South Carolina, and great use is made of it on the plantations as an article of food, and for various domestic purposes; it is exported with profit, but troublesome to prepare. The black oak tree was used the same as the red oak. Its bark was the raw material that medicines and remedies were derived. Its bark was used in the process for tanning leather. Jack a slave in Hilton Head, South Carolina used the oak to aid in his escape. According to historian Edda L. The meat from the nut is used as a food, the leaves are used for medicine, oil is pressed from the seeds and the wood is used in construction and furniture making. Freedom seekers ate the nuts in the wilderness. The cabbage tree is a sea coastal tree grown plentifully along the coast of South Carolina near Charleston where hundreds of enslaved resided on plantations. The image of the tree is used on the state flag of South Carolina. Its leaves are used to make hats, nets, baskets, etc. The wood is used for logs, in structures such as forts, wharves, and under water structures. The leaves or palm of the tree is used in roof thatches. The cabbage or vegetable of the tree is edible when ripe. It is also used to make fertilizer. The American chestnut tree produces an edible nut and grown throughout the territory from Florida to Pennsylvania. Eaten raw, roasted or boiled the chestnut was a source of protein. The roots contain an astringent agent and are boiled with milk to treat children diarrhea and teething. The nuts are also used in breads and as animal feed. The bark of the tree used as a product for tanning leather. The wood was used in various carpentry applications such as fence posts. Hickory tree wood and bark was used to make dye, tools, soaps, baskets, food, oil, furniture, axe handles, wagons, and rope. Tree bark was a common source for dyes. In addition to the dye the toxic plant was also cultivated for its medicinal properties as well. The Sugar maple is primarily a northern tree but had been found sparingly in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and at the head waters of Cooper River. The sugar extracted from it is an article of trade and used medicinally also. The wood is esteemed in the manufacture of saddle-trees. The grain of the wood is fine and close, and when polished it has a silky luster. The bark was used in dyes. Found in many parts of the region and was familiar to enslaved African Americans as a source for medicine, dye, and tanning of leather. The wood is used to make tools, furniture, machines, and utensils. The bark had medicinal and industrial applications. The nut, or acorn of the tree during the antebellum period had many uses many of which were applied by African Americans. Coffee was made from acorns and chicory mixture. The acorn coffee, which is made from roasted and ground acorns as a medicinal product. Native Americans used the crushed nuts in unleavened bread. The decoction of the bark, with sulphate of copper, is employed on the plantations to dye woollens of a green or black color, and for tanning leather. This plant is referred as water-gum, tupelo, wild olive, or sour-gum. The roots are immersed in inundated soils and have been used as a substitute for cork. Found growing in swamps and floodplains of the region. The wood is used in machine construction wheels, hubs, wagon parts and for making bowls, dippers, mortars, and other utensils. A tree with a particular wood that was durable and flexible as well is derived a cork substitute. Porcher recommended the wood to make shoes and shoe soles for enslaved on South Carolina plantations to prevent foot disease. A number of enslaved in the WPA narratives mention brogans given to them once a year around Christmas time. Former slaves had commented that their shoes were made with wooden soles. North Carolina slave Patsy Mitchner referring to the shoes they wore as described as those Porcher mentions. Our shoes has wooden bottoms on em. Dey was made wid wooden soles or bottoms. Dey tanned the leather or had it tanned in de neighborhood. A good thing for our negroes. Mississippi planters made large orders of the shoes and found that they were warmer, more durable, and more impervious to water than the leather-soled. This tree grows in dry places at higher elevations than the coast, flowering early in July, and producing a thick cluster of berries, which, when mature in early autumn, are covered with a whitish and acidic substance. The berries are used to make a medicinal syrup. The root and bark are used to make various remedies for ulcers, gonorrhea, sore throat, and antiseptic. The bark is also used to make a dye. Porcher asserts, "If the bark of the root is boiled in equal parts of milk and water, forming with flour a cataplasm, it will cure burns without leaving a scar. Butternut trees grew in the mountains of region. The inner bark of the root was used to make a laxative that proved effective as far back as General Francis Marion's camp during the Revolutionary War. It was effective treating dysentery a scourge during the Civil War. The rind of the fruit and the skin of the kernel were used to make remedies. The bark is strongest in the early summer. The leaves are dried and made into a powder that was used to produce an oil for the skin to aid stiffness. The enslaved were always producing remedies to treat the physical impact on their bodies. The Pine tree has been a staple of southern utility. Found in the mountains and swamps of South Carolina and other regions throughout the south, the soft wood tree has a fine grain. It is used for the inner work of houses, for boxes, cabinets, etc. In ornamental work and carving of every description the white pine is used; in fact, wherever a light wood is required. Masts are also made of it, and are exported to Liverpool, though not fully equal to those from Riga. The bowsprits and spars are made of white pine. By the 16th century the Portuguese introduced Africans to corn, a plant native to the Americas. American cultivation of corn as a cash crop began a century later. Planted by large and small farms, corn sometimes used slave labor, but nowhere near the numbers required for sugar and cotton production. A popular food, it replaced rice as a major staple of the American diet. Made into corn meal, porridge, whiskey, bread, hoe cakes, and hominy, the farming of corn increased as the country spread west. Zea mays, a native crop cultivated by American Indians became exploited as a cash crop of the slave plantation system. A major product of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, humans ate sweet corn, while field corn was used as feed for livestock. The enslaved often had bacon and corn cakes as the main meal of the long day. The corn meal porridge was called kush by North Carolina slave Anna Wright. I took ten or twelve of them, and kept on my journey. During the next day, while in the woods, I roasted my corn and feasted upon it, thanking God that I was so well provided for. Peas were a popular food on slave plantations. These were edible foods for people and feed for livestock. The cow pea is one variety of the pant. It is cooked in soups and stews. In African American culture it is referred as black-eyed peas and has its own tradition as a festive food. A legume, this food provided protein for under-nourished slaves. The use of hot peppers in the diet of the enslaved is a carry-over from Africa. African Americans derived pepper oil and vinegar, as well as medicinal remedies, from these peppers. The many varieties of hot peppers were used as a food and medicine. Escaping slaves would use it to throw their scent away from the hunting dogs on their trails. Joshua Dunbar, the father of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar was said to use cayenne pepper to make search dogs sneeze and throw them off the trail during his escape from slavery in Garrard County, Kentucky. The pepper was also described by John H. Aughey, of Tupelo, Mississippi in when recounting his escape from bondage in a Confederate regiment during the Civil war. I deserted, hoping to reach the Federal lines…. The colored people furnished me with cayenne pepper, onions, and matches, and I felt comparatively safe. Joseph Ringo, enslaved in Mason County Kentucky to John French recollects the remedies used: "Dey used to mel all kines er home remdies fer ailmen's; red pepper tea fer colds, en oak bark en hickory bark fer stommick ails, en but, oh, chile, I cant member all sech home doctorin'. Okra pods were used in soup or stewed with meat, fish, and vegetables as a forerunner of gumbo. According to Porcher, the seeds were prepared as a coffee substitute on plantations throughout South Carolina. The leaves are used to make a clay that is applied to the aching or swollen part of the body and mucous passages. Okra was most likely transported to the Americas as a familiar food to feed the growing African enslaved population. Wild onions similar to garlic have a pungent odor but were used widely in food. The odor would repel insects and used by runaways to mas their scents from dogs. Charlie Davenport a field slave in Second Creek, Mississippi recalls the dinner meal that was brought to the cotton fields. Popularly called pokeweed, this plant is found at certain times of the year and eaten as a green vegetable or as a salad, but only after being cooked, as it is poisonous if eaten raw. Fernald mentions the root as a poisonous plant that is used in medicines as a narcotic, emetic and can cause death. However dangerous it may be, African Americans had long made pokeweed a green potherb along with collard, mustard, and dandelion greens. Rice has been grown since B. Used as a food onboard slave ships crossing the Atlantic, rice also became the major starchy food of colonial America. As colonists invested in growing rice, the expertise and skill of African rice growers became vital to South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana planters and they were enslaved on rice plantations in the American South. A major slave market, located in Charleston, South Carolina, specialized in the sale of African rice growers, exploited for their knowledge and for profit. Rice brought tremendous wealth to slaveholders of the low country including men like South Carolina legislator, Congressman and Governor, R. In addition to being a major food, rice was also used to make bread, and beverages. The product was much valued as a cash crop and not as a food for enslaved. What rice the enslaved would consume may have come from their own fields or scant rations. This plant is a Canada wild rice grown in deep marshes and ponds in Florida and northward. Porcher mentions, "It abounds in all the shallow streams of North America, feeds immense flocks of wild swans and other water-fowl, contributes largely to the support of the wandering tribes of Indians. American sweet potatoes are the starchy root vegetable that reminded many Africans of the yam in their own culture. They could be roasted in ashes, baked, boiled, mashed, fried, or added to soups and stews. Cooked potatoes were taken by runaways for sustenance. Technically classified as a fruit, tomatoes are used primarily like a vegetable. The fruit of this plant is well known as an article of food. A slight acidic taste it induces constipation which in effect prevents diarrhea. The fruit was eaten raw, cooked, dried, or preserved. The leaves are poisonous causing vomiting. The seeds can irritate the stomach and intestine leading to ailments of the digestive tract. The greens could be boiled with salt pork and the root boiled and roasted or added to other ingredients for stews. Turnips are native to West Africa and a carry-over for many African diets. Root vegetables such as turnips are flexible and can be cooked and will last for extended periods of time making it a likely food carried by freedom seekers. Similar to Africans as their native yam or the sweet potato the tubers of this plant provided food and were prepared a number of ways; roasted, boiled, baked, or raw. The roots do not require storage in cellars and were rich and nutritious. Escaping slaves and maroons were known to carry these tubers for sustenance. The yam whether African or the sweet potato have remained traditional foods for African Americans. It provided the growth and economic development for textile mills in the American north and European markets as well. It was so important to the American economy that during the Civil War it became a strategic act for the Union to attack the cotton industry of the Confederacy. Cotton was ubiquitous in the life of the Deep-South enslaved. Those who worked on massive cotton plantations knew cotton as the crop of their toil as well as the fabric that covered their bodies. Sugar became the cash crop that fueled the transatlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution. The sweetener changed diets, and the products it produced—sugar, molasses, and rum— impacted the global economy. During the 17th and 18th centuries the demand in Europe for sugar rose dramatically. As coffee became popular, sugar became the sweetener of choice. The juice of the cane was processed into sugar, molasses, or rum and sold in European markets, generating huge profits for investors. A tough plant to cultivate, harvest, and process, it took thousands of enslaved to produce sugar cane. The conditions and climate in the tropics and in South Carolina and Louisiana made the work laborious and dangerous. Life expectancy on some West Indian plantations was years. Tobacco, a native crop plant cultivated by American Indians became a cash crop of the slave plantation system. It was used for smoking, chewing, snuffing, and making rope. This plant grows in the eastern states including the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and Georgia. As a cash crop it was cultivated using slave labor in the same aforementioned states plus Kentucky. Slave labor became key to each stage of production — planting, harvesting, processing, manufacturing, and shipping. As tobacco became more popular, the demand for slaves increased. This plant has been used medicinally by the Native Americans and also used as food. The roots are dried and pounded into a powder is mixed with a liquid as a medicine and is giving to children suffering from cold or other ailments. Edible parts of the plant are its roots, leaves and flower. Brown, William Wells. Wallcut, Carney, Judith A. Johnston, James F. Boston: Pennington, James W. Pittsburgh abolitionists mount a decades long struggle for freedom and human rights. During the antebellum period from to , Pittsburgh was seen by freedom seekers as a destination for freedom. The gradual abolition act of set in motion colonial and new states' initiatives in the North to abolish slavery. Pennsylvania was one of the first states to establish a law pertaining to the status of African Americans held in bondage. By gradually phasing out legal slavery, the Commonwealth hoped that over the coming decades of the 19th century, slavery would be eradicated from Pennsylvania. One condition of the law established indentured servitude for those born after March 1, to serve for 28 years. Actually, there was very little difference between slavery and indentured servitude on paper or in life. Between and , Allegheny County recorded a number of emancipations, manumissions, indentures, certificates of freedom, and freedom papers for African Americans who were passing through the region or settling in the area. It was important for African Americans to have a legal document describing their status on file in the courts because of the danger of losing their freedom to slave catchers. The documents help understand the transition from slavery to freedom in Western Pennsylvania and also indicate that Pittsburgh was a destination for freedom. Slavery had existed in Pennsylvania from its inception as a British colony in Various ethnic and religious groups such as the Quakers were the first Europeans colonists to abolish and denounce slavery in the colony. But that did not stop slave holding in Pittsburgh. Some of the leading citizens of antebellum Pittsburgh held slaves. John Neville, and a host of wealthy land and property owners held slaves. Slavery was small in Pittsburgh when compared to the plantation economies of the southern states. By , there were 3, enslaved in Pennsylvania with recorded in the western counties and statewide by The gradual abolition act made Pennsylvania a border state with the slave holding southern border of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware important to the abolitionist cause. To its west, Ohio and the Northwest Territory were deemed free of slavery. The first half of the 19th century witnessed a continual battle along the borders between slaveholders and abolitionists as freedom seekers ventured into Pennsylvania and slave catchers followed them. This caused the Pennsylvania legislature to distinguish itself as a free state. Pittsburgh's abolitionists knew and understood the issue of slavery. Both white and African American abolitionists worked for decades to aid freedom seekers and to protest slavery in America. Eventually many would be part of the network of the Underground Railroad. By the s, Pittsburgh had a growing reputation as a fierce, militant abolitionist community. Pittsburghers were founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society and through the Prince Hall Masons and African Methodist Episcopal Church, had established a commitment to the abolitionist cause. Lewis Woodson, John B. These people and others helped form a cohesive African American community that not only addressed slavery but other issues and concerns as well. The community investment included forming organizations to not only aid the cause of abolition and freedom but also to assist in the cause of education, employment, homelessness, and other humanitarian needs of the newly free and destitute. During the height of abolitionist activities, a vigilance committee stood guard over rescue missions as slaves were brought into Pittsburgh. It was built in , became a casualty of the fire of , rebuilt in , and was staffed by African Americans of the vigilance committee including Thomas and Frances Scroggins Brown. The underground network at the hotel worked to free enslaved people as they came into the hotel with their owners. The practice intensified leading up to the Fugitive Slave Law of The network was so effective that a southern slave holder who lost his year-old slave girl while staying overnight at the hotel, wrote in several southern newspapers that slave holders should avoid Pittsburgh and the Monongahela Hotel for chance of losing their "property. Local and national press aided the abolitionists' cause. Abolitionist and standard newspapers often printed stories about Pittsburgh activities. These newspapers are indications that African Americans understood the power of the press in propagating its anti-slavery position and building a collective of supporters for the cause. Counter to the abolitionists sheets was the Pittsburgh Gazette, and the Post newspapers that regularly printed runaway slave reward postings. The issue of slavery and freedom would intensify in the s. By September , the conflict along the southern border of Pennsylvania erupted when the Compromise of and its Fugitive Slave Act gave more powers to slaveholders than ever before to intrude into the homes of citizens looking for fugitive slaves and provide little protection for free people of color from capture and later sold into slavery in the south. As a result, Pittsburgh would witness hundreds of its African American residents migrate to states west and north into Canada. Buxton, Ontario, Canada welcomed migrating Pittsburghers. By , an African American committee of Pittsburghers had a replica of the Liberty Bell caste in a local foundry and sent to the Rev. William King's church in North Buxton. The Bell was inscribed with a message that read in part, "Presented to the Rev. An emigration plan of a different kind was brewing among the African American community. Allegheny County accounted for the largest delegation at the meeting where only a plan for the departure of African American from the U. The convention would settle on Africa as a place of emigration and send Martin Delany and three others to Yorubaland in the Oyo State of present day Nigeria to negotiate land leases with the chiefs of the Abeokuta. Each of these delegates played an important role in the organizing of the movement leading up to the Civil War. Those Pittsburghers not involved with emigration continued to support the growth and development of the local African American community. Philanthropist Charles Avery provided financial support to religious and educational development of African Americans. He founded, funded, and taught at the Allegheny Institute beginning in Barbershop and Bath House owner John B. Vashon, who had spent decades fighting for the anti-slavery cause, died in , a casualty of the Cholera epidemic. Lewis Woodson and John Peck were contributing letters to various newspapers including the Liberator, Colored American, and Frederick Douglass' Paper providing their perspective of the conditions placed on African Americans. Meanwhile, George Vashon would return to Pittsburgh and become principal of the African American public school in addition to his activist writings. The s could be called the decade of the launching pad to freedom. In the decade leading to the Civil War, the struggle for freedom continued to evolve. The impediments of the Fugitive Slave Law, violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions across the state and region, and the venture to find freedom in other lands occupied the mind of African Americans. By the time the Civil War commenced in , hardened Black men in militias volunteered to settle the slavery issue once and for all. But it wasn't until that hundreds of Pittsburgh men went off to join the Massachusetts regiments and the United States Colored Troops at Camp William Penn and elsewhere that the fight for freedom would continue on the battlefield. As the decade of the s came to a close, the armed conflicts, emigration, and agitation over freedom folded into a readiness for war. Abolitionist John Brown had travelled the eastern part of the U. Militias were formed throughout many African American communities to protect themselves from reprisal of the fugitive slave law of Before Lincoln was sworn in as the first Republican Party president in , South Carolina had seceded from the Union and was followed by other southern slave-holding states. When Abraham Lincoln travelled to Washington, D. Within a few months, the nation was in a Civil War and the call for federal volunteers went out. James Negley. Like many such militias throughout the north, they were rebuffed. Pittsburgh would contribute hundreds of African American men over the next two years to the Union army and naval forces. African American men on the home front would work to fortify the city against a pending Confederate invasion. In addition to the Cadets, Jones offered to recruit men from Pittsburgh within 30 days. African American men were ready to fight because they saw the war as a war over slavery and they would fight to end it. When Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into law on Jan. The Federals then relied on the existing network of African American abolitionists to help recruit nearly , men. Pittsburgher Martin R. Delany came back from Canada to serve as a recruiter first for the Massachusetts 54th regiment then for other USCT regiments. Pittsburgh would eventually contribute hundreds of men for the USCT. The 32nd regiment served under terrible conditions, fighting both in battles against the Confederacy at Honey Hill and against white officers whose racist attitudes threatened their lives. Many of the 32nd died from disease and medical neglect. However the Emancipation could not prevent the chaos and terror faced by African Americans in the Confederate South. Delany and others loudly denounced the atrocities inflicted on helpless emancipated slaves by white southerners. Between and , reports of these atrocities prompted civilians like Martin R. Delany to approach Lincoln with solutions to protect the southern freed men. Delany would serve through the end of the war and then work for the Freedmen's Bureau until his commission was served. After the war, the work of ratifying the reconstruction amendments to the Constitution was another cause for the network of abolitionists. Branches of the NERL were established in various states in the nation. John Peck, and B. Over the next five years, the NERL would work to ratify the 13th , 14th , and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th amendment ended slavery, the 14th allowed for citizenship, and the 15th allowed for male voting. The Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League would petition the legislature to ratify the 14th amendment and grant citizenship rights and suffrage to its black inhabitants. After the 15th amendment was ratified in Pennsylvania in , African American Pittsburghers would hold a parade to commemorate the re-establishing of their suffrage rights that were violated in The route for the parade began at Smithfield Street near the Monongahela House hotel and trekked into the Hill District then back downtown and across the 9th Street Bridge to Allegheny City then back across the Suspension Bridge to Liberty and Wood Streets where the event commenced. In , another parade was held that continued east on Liberty commencing in Friendship Grove where a program and meeting were held. Events like these annual parades to commemorate the freedom of African Americans show that the local community was very much engaged in issues of freedom, civil rights, and citizenship. However much of the gains in the aftermath of the Civil War would come to an end and a renewed struggle would ensue changing the landscape of Black life forever. From the end of the Civil War to the turn of the 20th century, former slaves, freemen, and the descendants of the enslaved would help transform Pittsburgh. During this period, the professional class continued to grow and support the founding of social organizations and institutions. George G. Turfley completed medical school in Ohio and opened a clinic in the Hill District where he would train a new generation of African American doctors. Mary Peck Bond co-founded a home for aged colored women eventually called the Lemington Home. A second generation of African American family-owned businesses cemented their economic and cultural significance in the area. Pulpress operated the Allegheny City Market fish dealer business started by his grandfather. Despite the presence of Jim Crow laws, de facto segregation, and discrimination, African Americans persevered in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. In the 35 years after the end of the Civil War and slavery, African Americans in Pittsburgh continued to struggle with the possibilities of real freedom. Southern migrants seeking freedom from the oppressions of the south began to swell the local communities. The Hill District was beginning to form as a migrant and immigrant community. A small enclave of "old Pittsburgh" families distinguished themselves from most migrants causing great schisms in the social network of everyday black life. However a collective agenda was beginning to form that would bring "old Pittsburghers" and migrants together to challenge the racism of early 20th century Pittsburgh. The last 25 years of the 19th century witnessed a political and social drawback from the promise of the Reconstruction era. All gains by African Americans politically, socially, culturally, and economically were under attack by the white power structure. After the election of Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency in , his policies to lift the federal occupancy in the South and provide amnesty to former Confederates opened the social and political resurgence of white oppression of millions of African Americans. White terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan roamed the southern countryside threatening and killing any advancement and hope to escape oppression. The court battles over civil rights escalated as southern states moved quickly to apply black codes and segregated laws. First installed were the voting rights violations, then social restrictions, followed by economic repression. As a result, millions of African Americans who could not escape or change the conditions in their society were trapped in a social, political, and economic subculture orchestrated by whites to protect white power and cultural attitudes. Land ownership, enterprise, and businesses were under attack. Many were forced into sharecropping or slave-like labor teams. As a result, millions fled the South to the North and West searching for a freer society. These migrants contributed to the growth of northern cities like Pittsburgh. They were drawn by the promise of good paying jobs, housing, and social freedoms. What many found was an increasingly segregated society that placed African Americans at the lower point of the economic totem pole. Even in the steel mills and its subsidiary industries, African Americans overwhelmingly received the lowest paid, unskilled, and most dangerous jobs even when they had experience working in mills in the South. Not all migrants during this period were poor, uneducated, former sharecroppers, or unskilled laborers. Robert L. He was a recipient of the Avery scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh and became its first African American graduate of the School of Law. However, the discrimination and restrictions of early 20th century Pittsburgh did not deter African Americans from striving to change the oppressive conditions in America. Leaders in the African American community would fight for better housing for migrants, education, jobs, and against racism. Local activists wore "stop lynching" buttons to support the national campaign against lynching. Steel mill workers in Aliquippa and Pittsburgh organized a local chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and brought the international president general, Marcus Garvey, to town. Their efforts to address the black working class were opposed by some in the black and white communities. The national debate surrounding the war and African American support was centered on the escalating violence such as lynchings and the denial of civil and constitutional rights nationwide. President Woodrow Wilson welcomed segregation into federal offices and cut African American federal employment opportunities. Following the editorials of W. Dubois and others who called for African Americans to "close ranks" and set aside civil rights and support the war effort, thousands of African American men enlisted or were drafted into the military and served valiantly in Europe. The hope was that after the war, the democracy won would be extended to African Americans. Unfortunately, servicemen had to fight for civil rights while in the military and face white retribution upon their return from war. Upon the return of the st to Pittsburgh at the end of the war, Mayor Babcock held a parade from the Hill District to downtown to recognize their bravery in war and democracy. Pittsburgh Lieutenants Donald C. Curtis were officers in the st. Despite the parade, African American servicemen across the country were under attack in and the early s by European immigrants and whites he felt the new aspect of freedom of their expressions were not to be tolerated in America. On the frontline of civil rights battles and community advancement was the black church. The increase in population during the first thirty years of the 20th century also meant the increase in black churches. Ararat Baptist Churches, St. Benedict the Moor Catholic, and Homewood AME Zion that attended to the religious and spiritual needs of congregations but also provided social, cultural, and at times political leadership. Those racial attitudes that showed defiance toward black advancement continued. Various communities in Pittsburgh would bar African American homeownership. Confining African Americans to a few communities like the Hill District, East Liberty, and sections of Homewood, this type of discrimination, called "redlining," was supported by the real estate industry and federally funded programs. When Robert L. Vann moved to Monticello Street in Homewood in , his new neighbors quickly protested. They became eager to sell their own properties. Vann purchased a few homes on his street and resold them to other African American families. Former Pittsburgh Courier reporter and editor Frank Bolden recalled African American teachers had to leave town to find work because of the racist policies of the public schools. African Americans paid taxes that funded the schools yet were barred from pursuing teaching careers. This type of exploitation undermined African American advancement and handicapped students of color and others. Thousands of African Americans students would become teachers but were not hired to teach in Pittsburgh. It wasn't until that Pittsburgh Schools had African American teachers. The first of these teachers and administrators worked in Hill District schools. African American organizing focused on social and political issues of the day as well. Voting rights for women was a main issue for African American women in the early 20th century. Daisy Lampkin was one of the main organizers for women's rights during this period. Historian Leslie Patrick commented that Daisy Lampkin "was active on numerous fronts, both in her adopted Pittsburgh and throughout the nation. Her activism is believed to have begun with hosting a women's rights tea in her home in , which led to her subsequent roles as a suffragist and member of the Negro Women's Equal Franchise Federation, campaigning for women's right to vote. In , Pittsburgh Courier editor Robert L. Vann, in a speech in Cleveland forecasted that African Americans would switch to the Democratic Party presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt because the Democrats were addressing issues impacting blacks. Decades of Republican apathy and exploitation of black voters were coming to an end. By , Homer S. Brown graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. In , he was elected to the state legislature and in , he was appointed a judge in Allegheny County. Brown sat on the bench until his retirement in His political rise followed the movement of African Americans from the Republican to Democratic Party. Twenty-five years after Brown was elected to the state legislature, K. LeRoy Irvis was elected to represent the first district of Pittsburgh. Lynch in South Carolina during reconstruction. Both Brown and Irvis witnessed the civil rights revolution of the s and s from their elected chairs. Political opportunities were the result of a new phase of migration that took place from to African Americans in Pittsburgh expanded from 62, to , while the white population in the city declined. This meant more eligible voters for office holders, but the change was a slow process because African Americans were constituted into two legislative districts, the 1st and the 24th. The migration also impacted employment opportunities. Pittsburgh's great employer of the 20th century was the steel mills. For African Americans, very few worked beyond unskilled labor in the mills. Other occupations recorded the same struggle as eligible workers continued to be denied access to jobs despite having the qualifications. As a result of increased migration, lack of jobs, inadequate housing, unemployment, and slow income growth, civil and economic rights activists continued to advocate for equal rights for African Americans. Political opportunities were the result of continued activism and a new phase of migration that took place from to This meant more eligible voters for office holders but the change was a slow process because African Americans were mostly constituted into two legislative districts, the 1st and the 24th. Citation formats are based on standards as of July Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. More Like This. Other Editions and Formats. Choose a Format. F 1 of 1 Pitkin County Library F Date Edition Publisher Physical Desc. Availability [] 9th ed. McGraw-Hill, xxv, pages : illustrations mostly color , maps, photographs ; 26 cm Available from another library. See Full Copy Details. More Info Place Hold. F More Copies In Prospector. Loading Prospector Copies Table of Contents. Ancestral Africa. Loading Excerpt LC Subjects. African Americans -- History. Slavery -- United States -- History. African Americans. United States. More Details. Similar Series From NoveList. Similar Titles From NoveList. From Slavery to Freedom - Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, John Hope Franklin - Google Books

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