Henry Highland Garnet

O.C. Gilbert: Speaker, Musician, Black Community Organizer in Saratoga

August 28, 2023 by Loraine Wies 2 Comments

In a recent article in the Washington Post, author Sydney Trent narrates the story of Stephanie Gilbert, a descendant of Oliver C. Gilbert, and her quest to learn of her ancestor and visit his place of birth and enslavement. The article briefly discusses O.C. Gilbert’s life in Saratoga Springs, NY, from about 1860 to 1876, when he moved to Pennsylvania.

Saratoga Springs offered many opportunities for employment, and it was said that while many of the Southern gentleman brought their slaves with them as they took in the season at The Spa, many of the Black men and women serving them were probably former enslaved people who had run for their freedom. Moreover, while Gilbert’s primary legacy is as a lecturer and musician, his political activism both before and while living in Saratoga Springs places him in the company of many prominent abolitionists, businessmen and politicians who continued the fight for racial equality as Jim Crow laws were becoming commonplace in America. [Read more…] about O.C. Gilbert: Speaker, Musician, Black Community Organizer in Saratoga

Beriah Green, Oneida Institute and Education as Liberation

February 20, 2022 by Milton Sernett Leave a Comment

In his classic The Souls of Black Folk (1903), the famous activist, sociologist, and historian W. E. B. Du Bois, tells of how Alexander Crummell told Du Bois that he had experienced “three years of perfect equality” under the tutelage of Rev. Beriah Green when a student at Oneida Institute in Upstate New York.

Crummell, along with Henry Highland Garnet and Thomas Sidney, found an educational haven at Green’s school. They had been admitted to the Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, but outraged whites used teams of oxen to drag the academy building away. Crummell and his friends then journeyed to Whitesboro, New York, and enrolled in Green’s school. Du Bois said of Green that “only [a] crank and an abolitionist” would have dared to accept students of color such as Crummell at a time when African Americans were excluded from opportunities for higher education. [Read more…] about Beriah Green, Oneida Institute and Education as Liberation

Frederick Douglass and the July 5th Movement

December 7, 2017 by Richard White Leave a Comment

“The Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

These were Frederick Douglass’ unyielding words from his momentous “Fifth of July Speech”* to the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester’s Corinthian Hall in 1852.

Douglass had been asked to speak on Independence Day but with entrenched slavery supported by the recently adopted Fugitive Slave law, how could he? After all, he declared with authority, “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, extended to us….I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary.” But he was included “within the pale” of another anniversary which was annually observed by African Americans in the State, and it was a chief reason why he chose to speak the following day. During this pre-war period, the July 5th Movement captured and shaped blacks’ identity as a cohesive, active community. [Read more…] about Frederick Douglass and the July 5th Movement

From Brooklyn Two Men Fought Against Slavery

April 15, 2015 by James S. Kaplan 3 Comments

One hundred fifty years ago this week, in an elaborate ceremony, the American flag was raised over Fort Sumter in South Carolina marking a milestone in the Union victory in the Civil War. Two months earlier the U.S. Congress had adopted the 13th Amendment forever abolishing slavery.

Two longtime Brooklyn clergymen – Henry Ward Beecher and Henry Highland Garnet – were central to the ceremonies marking these events. Beecher (1813-1887) is described as the most famous man in America at the time of the Civil War, while Garnet (1815-1882) was well-known in the free blacks, but prior to the Civil War, was known to relatively few outside that community. [Read more…] about From Brooklyn Two Men Fought Against Slavery