Lincoln University

Posted by on Nov 29, 2021 in | Comments Off on Lincoln University Pennsylvania has the distinction of hosting the nation’s first two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs): Cheyney and Lincoln universities. Both schools were established to provide people of African descent with higher education opportunities that were profoundly lacking in the 19th century. Cheyney, founded in 1837, initially provided training in trades and agriculture and the...
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Absalom Hazlett by Spencer Sadler

Posted by on Aug 25, 2021 in | Comments Off on Absalom Hazlett by Spencer Sadler Absalom Hazlett A Loyal Soldier in John Brown’s Army by Spencer Sadler Arcadia, 144 pp., paperback $21.99 Most readers will undoubtedly associate Harpers Ferry (the locale) with John Brown (the man). Brown’s charismatic personality and single-minded focus tend to overpower any narrative. Many of the 22 men who joined this well-intentioned yet ill-fated 1859 arsenal raid are usually collectively...
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A Gathering at the Crossroads: Memorializing African American Trailblazers and a Lost Neighborhood in Harrisburg

Posted by on Mar 25, 2021 in | Comments Off on A Gathering at the Crossroads: Memorializing African American Trailblazers and a Lost Neighborhood in Harrisburg Twice during the second half of 2020, people gathered at Harrisburg’s Capitol Park to witness the dedication of A Gathering at the Crossroads, a monument commemorating four statewide civil rights crusaders and the African American residents of a now-vanished neighborhood in Harrisburg who contributed to the commonwealth’s entrenched legacy of freedom. The monument, sculpted by Becky Ault,...
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“Without Fear and Without Reproach”: Octavius V. Catto and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Feb 5, 2021 in | Comments Off on “Without Fear and Without Reproach”: Octavius V. Catto and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Pennsylvania On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, the City of Philadelphia unveiled a monument to Octavius V. Catto in a ceremony at the southwestern apron of City Hall. Catto was a cornerstone figure in Philadelphia’s early civil rights struggle — a recruiter of an African American militia during the Civil War, an instrumental figure in the victory to desegregate Philadelphia’s horse-drawn streetcars, a...
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Three Generations on the Underground Railroad: The Gibbons Family of Lancaster County

Posted by on Apr 16, 2020 in | Comments Off on Three Generations on the Underground Railroad: The Gibbons Family of Lancaster County Shortly after sunset, a fugitive slave from Maryland tapped on a window of a modest farmhouse near Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. Daniel and Hannah Gibbons walked swiftly to the door. The Quaker couple escorted the young man to the barn to sleep and in the morning summoned him back to the house. If the fugitive’s owner was in close pursuit, they would send him to another farm. If there seemed to be...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Apr 15, 2020 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter August 18, 2020, will mark the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote. In issues of Pennsylvania Heritage leading to this significant anniversary, we will be featuring articles on the early 20th-century movement that led to suffrage as it played out in Pennsylvania, as well as the stories of women’s achievements in the Keystone...
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“I Must Be an Abolitionist”: Pennsylvania Liberty Man Francis Julius LeMoyne

Posted by on Oct 24, 2019 in | Comments Off on “I Must Be an Abolitionist”: Pennsylvania Liberty Man Francis Julius LeMoyne In 1839, when William Lloyd Garrison (1805–79) and his allies lost control of the abolitionist movement in Warsaw, New York, African Americans could only vote in seven states. In the North, free blacks could neither sue nor own weapons, and their wages were disproportionate with those of their white counterparts for the same type of work. The Slave Power seemingly strengthened its influence in...
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Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience Samuel W. Black, editor of a collection of eight essays comprising The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience (Senator John Heinz History Center in partnership with Pennsylvania Civil War 150, 2013, paper, 239 pages, $29.95), contends, “In various ways African Americans have been fighting for freedom for several...
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Free-Thinking, 19th-Century Style

Posted by on Dec 2, 2013 in | Comments Off on Free-Thinking, 19th-Century Style Francis Ellingwood Abbot (1836–1903) was nothing if not determined. In 1872, as editor of The Index, the nation’s leading free-thought magazine, he began to muster the full force of his small army of subscribers against what was being called “the God-in-the-Constitution amendment.” A philosopher and theologian, he sought to reconstruct theology in accordance with scientific methodology. From the...
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Washington County: From Ice Age to Space Age

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Washington County: From Ice Age to Space Age Southwestern Pennsylvania was for centuries a happy hunt­ing ground for Indians who were living there as long as two thousand years ago. In fact, as the result of archaeological discoveries made at the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter near Avella between 1973 and 1975, University of Pittsburgh anthropologists have proven conclusively that Ice Age people roamed the forests of Washington County even...
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