Religious Freedom: Key to Diversity

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Religious Freedom: Key to Diversity “There can be no reason to persecute any man in this world about anything that belongs to the next.” – William Penn   To describe Pennsylvania’s re­ligious diversity is to present the history of its religious develop­ment. Although many other states be­came religiously heterogeneous during the nineteenth century, Pennsylvania was pluralistic even as a colony within...
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The Emergence of Black Religion in Pennsylvania, 1776-1850

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Emergence of Black Religion in Pennsylvania, 1776-1850 The emergence of Black churches at the beginning of the nineteenth century was crucial to the survival of Black people in Pennsylvania and in the North because it provided two key resources. First, it provided a sense of meaning and destiny grounded in hope. Secondly, the Black church provided the institutional base for the economic, social, and political struggle of Blacks, including the...
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Plagued! Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Plagued! Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 On August 5, 1793, Dr. Benjamin Rush was summoned to the waterfront residence of fellow physician Hugh Hodge, whose daughter had recently taken ill. For days Rush had been treating Philadelphians for a serious outbreak of influenza and had assumed that this was yet another case. But when he found the small girl on her deathbed, gasping for breath and vomiting black bile, Rush instinctively knew...
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Some Questions for Examining Pennsylvania’s Black History

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Some Questions for Examining Pennsylvania’s Black History Civil rights activist Julian Bond was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in January 1940. When he was five years old, his father, Dr. Horace Mann Bond, was named the first Black president of Lincoln University, Chester County, the country’s oldest private African American college. Bond’s family lived on the campus of Lincoln University until 1957, when Dr. Bond was appointed dean of the...
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The Protégé Becomes a Prophet: Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Protégé Becomes a Prophet: Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) pronounced her a born artist, and in the dazzling cultural circles of Paris her works of art garnered breathless praise. Yet, in her own country, African American sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1962) of Philadelphia lived and worked unknown to many, until at last she emerged from the stultifying shadows of racial intolerance and domestic responsibilities to...
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Leader of the Band

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Leader of the Band During a visit to Philadelphia in 1818, Englishman Robert Wahn discovered and wrote in his travel diary about a remarkably talented black musician. And by putting pen to paper, he unwittingly recorded for posterity the existence of an early nineteenth­-century musician, composer, and conductor. “The Leader of the band,” wrote Wahn, “is a descendant of Africa [who] possesses a...
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African Americans and Civil Rights in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on African Americans and Civil Rights in Pennsylvania Summer and swimming go hand in hand – or so thought the Creative Steps Day Care Camp. The camp’s leaders had signed a contract to use the pool at a private swim club, but when the children – 46 African Americans and ten Hispanics ranging from kindergarten through seventh grade – arrived for their summer swim, they were subjected to harsh criticism by some club members....
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