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Horace King (1807-1885) was the most respected bridge-builder in Alabama, Georgia, and northeastern Mississippi during the mid-nineteenth century. Enslaved until 1846,

Horace King Horace King Horace King (1807-1885) was the most respected bridge-builder in Alabama, Georgia, and northeastern Mississippi during the mid-nineteenth century. Enslaved until 1846, King and his owner, John Godwin, worked as partners on major construction projects. By 1860, he was one of the wealthiest free blacks in Alabama. Both in slavery and a free black, King traveled without any restrictions throughout the Deep South. After reluctantly working for the Confederacy, he served as an Alabama legislator during Reconstruction. His role as an engineer and contractor, during a period when few professional opportunities existed for African Americans, earned him a legendary status that was enhanced over time by towns eager to claim, sometimes erroneously, their own Horace King covered bridge, warehouse, mill, courthouse, church, elaborate Gothic house, or staircase. After his death, local historians and journalists frequently cited Horace King as an example of a successful African American. Although he certainly was an exceptional bridge architect and builder of massive heavy-timber frame structures, his career as an entrepreneur was limited by the racial biases of his time. Eufaula Bridge Born in 1807 into slavery in the Chesterfield District of South Carolina, Horace King was of mixed African, European, and Catawba ancestry. He was purchased by John Godwin, a contractor in Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1830 and may have been related to the family of Godwin's wife, Ann Wright (1808-1854) of Marlboro, South Carolina. In 1832, the Godwins, along with Horace, his mother, brother, and sister, relocated to Girard (present-day Phenix City), Alabama, across the river from Columbus, Georgia, and the town hired Godwin to construct the first bridge across the lower Chattahoochee River. By 1837, John Godwin had transferred the ownership of the King family to his wife Ann Godwin and her uncle and financial guardian, William Carney Wright of Montgomery. This was perhaps done to prevent King from being seized by John Godwin's creditors. In 1839, King married Frances Gould Thomas, a free Black woman who was also of mixed ancestry. Her legal status guaranteed freedom for their children. The unusual sanction of such a marriage by Ann Godwin and William Wright underscores the social latitude afforded the enslaved King because of his exceptional talents. Building a covered bridge required many skills, including erecting tall rock or timber piers and constructing lattice framework (trusses) of sawn lumber for the sides connected to massive hand-hewn support timbers. Builders also needed to join all the elements with treenails (large wooden pegs) and ensure that the bridge truss formed a slight arc, known as camber. Godwin probably taught King these skills, but the pupil quickly became more skilled than the teacher. Between 1838 and 1840, King supervised construction of Godwin's massive toll bridges across the Chattahoochee River at West Point, Eufaula, and Florence (present-day Florence Marina), Georgia. Financed by private investors, each span cost close to $22,000—an indication of the economic potential of toll bridges. Robert Jemison Jr. During the early 1840s, King designed and constructed bridges in Alabama and Mississippi while Godwin remained in Girard. Tuscaloosa resident Seth King (no relation to Horace), rather than Horace King, built the initial bridge in 1834 across the Black Warrior River in that town. Seth King, along with Robert Jemison Jr., a state legislator and Tuscaloosa entrepreneur, invested in Horace's bridges at Columbus, Mississippi, in 1843 and Wetumpka, Alabama, in 1844. Godwin negotiated Horace's fee with these investors, but Horace designed the bridges and supervised their construction. Historians believe that Godwin and Horace King probably shared the revenue. The investors made money by collecting tolls on these bridges. Jemison and Horace King continued to collaborate and developed a close working relationship. In early 1845, while working for William Carney Wright, King bridged the Tallapoosa River at Tallassee. Later that year King oversaw construction of three small bridges for Jemison near Steens, Mississippi, where Jemison owned saw and grist mills. In February 1846, Jemison guided an emancipation bill for King through the Alabama legislature, and the Godwins and Wright freed him. King later asserted that he bought his freedom, possibly with income from his projects with Wright and Jemison. Whatever the factors of King's emancipation, he and Godwin experienced a unique relationship. After Godwin's death in 1859, King erected a monument over Godwin's grave. During the early 1850s, the state of Alabama hired King to perform carpentry work, including elegant circular staircases, on the new capitol building in Montgomery. In the mid-1850s King built Moore's Bridge, over the Chattahoochee River on the road between Newnan and Carrollton, Georgia. In 1857, Milledgeville residents hired King to bridge the Oconee River at Milledgeville, Georgia's capital at the time. King's crews just had begun cutting timbers when a conflict arose between King and the investors. At the same time, Nelson Tift, an entrepreneur, newspaper owner, and legislator, contracted with King for a span across the Flint River at Albany, a town founded by Tift in the 1830s. According to local historians King quit the Milledgeville venture, loaded his timbers on a railroad car, and shipped them to Albany. Dillingham Street Covered Bridge By 1858, King and his family had moved to Moore's Bridge. During the next few years, King's activities contradict the idea of free blacks being restricted in terms of their mobility. He constructed bridges and large timber-frame buildings in Alabama and Georgia and often rode the train between his two houses at Moore's Bridge and Girard. King's wife Frances and their children collected tolls and farmed at Moore's Bridge until July 1864, when Union cavalry under Gen. George Stoneman Jr. burned the span. Frances died in Girard about three months later, and in June 1865 King married Sarah Jane Jones McManus. During the Civil War, King attempted to continue building bridges as an independent contractor, but necessity forced him into war-related work. After the war, King maintained that he had always been a Unionist, and that he always "begged and talked for the Union." Even so, Confederate officials in Columbus forced the pro-Union King to blockade the lower Apalachicola River to prevent Union navigation, and the Alabama governor pressed him into the same activity along the lower Alabama River. King also erected a large mill structure and supplied wood products for Confederate naval facilities in Columbus. King maintained good relations with local naval officers, but in 1864 he wrote Jemison, then a member of the Confederate Senate, asking what would happen if he stopped working for the Confederacy. Jemison's response, if any, has not been preserved. Wetumpka Bridge ca. 1880s During Reconstruction, King became a nominal, moderate Republican, serving twice as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives from 1870 to 1874. He rarely, if ever, occupied his seat during the initial year of his first term and played a limited role in later sessions. He was pre-occupied with the physical reconstruction of wagon and railroad bridges, grist and textile mills, and cotton warehouses. He had also built the initial Lee County courthouse in Opelika in 1867. King reportedly had financial problems but historians have not determined the circumstances. In 1872, King and his family moved to LaGrange, Georgia, where he and his sons continued to build bridges, stores, houses, and college buildings until Horace's death, on May 28, 1885. Lengthy obituaries in white-owned Atlanta, LaGrange, and Columbus newspapers reveal the extent of his fame. King's children—Washington W. (1843-1910), Marshall Ney (1844-79), John Thomas (1846-1926), Annie Elizabeth (1848-1919), and George (1850-1899)—continued their father's profession. Washington moved to Atlanta and built bridges throughout Georgia; his spans, now greatly modified, can be seen at Stone Mountain and Watson Mill State Park near Comer, Georgia. Other members of the family became prominent in the black middle class of LaGrange. Both John and George were builders, and John owned a lumberyard and George operated an annual African American fair. John was the leading layman in the local Methodist Episcopal Church and served as a trustee for that denomination's Clark University from the 1890s to the 1920s. His reputation as a builder extended into Atlanta, where he served as one of two contractors who built the Negro Building at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895. In February 2017, the Alabama state government unveiled a portrait of King in the State Capitol that he had helped to build; it is the first portrait of an African American to hang in the seat of the Alabama government. Further Reading Cherry, Rev. Francis. "History of Opelika . . ." 1883. Reprint, Alabama Historical Quarterly 14 (1953): 193-97. Lupold, John S., and Thomas L. French Jr. Bridging Deep South Rivers: The Life and Legend of Horace King. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2004. Robert Jemison Jr. Papers, 1797-1898, W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. External Links New Georgia Encyclopedia Alabama Legacy Moments: Horace King

Address by J. Sella Martin, Eulogy of John Brown

While many whites believed that John Brown was a madman, African Americans recognized the slave system as madness and celebrated Brown’s willingness to die for the anti-slavery cause. Brown was rare among white abolitionists in his insistence on full equality between blacks and whites; throughout his adult life he interacted socially with African Americans on an egalitarian basis to a degree unprecedented in antebellum America. On December 2, 1859, the day of Brown’s execution, African Americans and abolitionists observed a "Day of Mourning" to honor his martyrdom. Gathering in churches and meeting halls that night, they used speeches, proclamations, and songs both to commemorate Brown and to call for further action to advance the abolitionist cause. In Boston, nearly four thousand abolitionist supporters, both black and white, gathered in and outside the Tremont Temple. J. Sella Martin, pastor of Joy Street Baptist Church and former pastor (and first African-American pastor) of Tremont Temple, addressed the crowd and defended both Brown’s methods and the caution of the Virginia slaves who refrained from joining his armed stand. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, -Today a solemn question has been asked this nation. The Pilate of Providence has asked America-" Whom will you that I deliver unto you - the Barabbas of Slavery, or the John Brown of Freedom?" And, intimidated by the false majesty of despotic enactments, which have usurped the place of Christianity, corrupted by a false policy, and stung to phrenzy by the insinuations of our political high priests, we have cried out, as a nation-"Release unto us the Barabbas of Slavery, and destroy John Brown." And, true to this horrible, this atrocious request, John Brown has been offered up. Thank God, he said, "I am ready to be offered up." Men say that his life was 'a failure.' I remember the story of one of the world's moral heroes, whose life was just such a "failure." I remember one who, having retired to the deserts of Judea, to wring from the hard, stony life of those deserts the qualifications of a moral hero, by living an ascetic life, had subjugated the lower desires of his nature, and who, with all those qualifications, and with all this purity, was brought into a corrupt and voluptuous court. I remember, too, that in that court, not its favorite, notwithstanding the corruption and luxury of the times, he preserved himself the same stern man, and said to the King-- "It is not lawful for you to live with your brother Philip's wife." These were the stern words of John the Baptist and John Brown -- for John Brown, like John the Baptist, retired into the hard and stony desert of Kansas, and there, by the weapons of heroism, by the principles of freedom, and the undaunted courage of a man, wrung from that bloody soil the highest encorniums of Freedom, and the most base acknowledgements of slavery, that the one was right and the other wrong. (Applause.) I know that John Brown, in thus rebuking our public sin, in thus facing the monarch, has had to bear just what John the Baptist bore. His head to-day, by Virginia, - that guilty maid of a more guilty mother, the American Government, (cheers, mingled with a few hisses, which were at once drowned in an outburst of vehement applause) -has been cut off, and it has been presented to the ferocious and insatiable hunger, the terrible and inhuman appetite, of this corrupt government. To-day, by the telegraph, we have received the intelligence that John Brown has forfeited his life- all this honesty, all this straight-forwardness, all this self-sacrifice, which has been manifested in Harpers Ferry. My friends, his life was just such a "failure" as all great movements have been. The physical failure has been the death of the seed, externally, which has given life to the germ, which has sprung forth to spread its moral boughs all over this corrupt nation. (Applause.) I have not the slightest doubt that this will be the result... John Brown has died, but the life of Freedom, from his death, shall flow forth to this nation. I know that there is some quibbling, some querulousness, some fear, in reference to an out-and-out endorsement of his course. Men of peace principles object to it, in consequence of their religious conviction; politicians in the North object to it, because they are afraid that it will injure their party; pro-slavery men in the South object to it, because it has touched their dearest idol; but I am prepared, my friends, (and permit me to say, this is not the language of rage,) I am prepared, in the light of all human history, to approve of the means; in the light of all Christian principle, to approve of the end. (Applause.) I say this is not the language of rage, because I remember that our Fourth-of-July orators sanction the same thing; because I remember that Concord, and Bunker Hill, and every historic battlefield in this country, and the celebration of those events, all go to approve the means that John has used; the only difference being, that in our battles, in America, means have been used for white men and that John Brown used his means for black men. (Applause.) And I say, that so far as principle is concerned, so far as the sanctions of the Gospel are concerned, I am prepared to endorse his end; and I endorse it because God Almighty has told us that we should feel with them that are in bonds as being bound with them. I endorse his end because every single instinct of our nature rises and tells us that it is right. I find an endorsement of John Brown's course in the large assembly gathered here this evening; I find an endorsement of the principles that governed him in going to Virginia, in the presence of the men and women who have come here to listen to his eulogy, and sympathize with his suffering family. I know that all have not come for that purpose, but I know there are seven thousand still in Israel who have not bowed the knee to the political Baal. (Loud applause.) Now, I bring this question down to the simple test of the Gospel; and, agreeing with those men who say the sword should not be used, agreeing with them in that principle, and recognizing its binding obligation upon us all, yet I believe in that homeopathic principle which operates by mercury when mercury is in the system, and that that which is supported by the sword should be overthrown by the sword. I look at this question as a peace man. I say, in accordance with the principles of peace, that I do not believe the sword should be unsheathed. I do not believe the dagger should be drawn, until there is in the system to be assailed such terrible evidences of its corruption, that it becomes the dernier resort. And my friends, we are not to blame the application of the instrument, we are to blame the disease itself. When a physician cuts out a cancer from my face, I am not to blame the physician for the use of the knife; but the impure blood, the obstructed veins, the disordered system, that have caused the cancer, and rendered the use of the instrument necessary. The physician has but chosen the least of two evils. So John Brown chose the least of two evils. To save the country, he went down to cut off the Virginia cancer. (Applause.) I say, that I am prepared to endorse John Brown's course fully. He has said that he did not intend to shed blood. In my opinion, speaking as a military critic, this was one of the faults of his plan. In not shedding blood, he left the slaves uncertain how to act; so that the North has said that the Negroes there are cowards. They are not cowards, but great diplomats. When they saw their masters in the possession of John Brown, in bonds like themselves, they would have been perfect fools has they demonstrated any willing-ness to join him. They have got sense enough to know that until there is a perfect demonstration that the white man is their friend - a demonstration bathed in blood -it were foolishness to cooperate with them. They have learned this much from the treachery of white men at the North, and the cruelty of the white men at the South, that they cannot trust the white man, even when he comes to deliver them. So it was not their cowardice, nor their craven selfishness, but it was their caution, that prevented them from joining Brown. I say this because I think it is necessary to vindicate the character of the Negro for courage. I know very well that in this country, the white people have said that the Negroes will not fight; but I know also, that when the country's honor has been at stake, and the dire prejudice that excludes the colored man from all positions of honor, and all opportunities for advancement, has not interfered to exclude him from the military, he was gone with the army, and there displayed as much courage as his white brother. To some extent, I sympathize with the suggestions of the Boston Journal, that we should consider the state of excitement among the people of Virginia; for I know what that state of excitement is. I know that if a rat should happen to strike his tail against the lathes, they would all be up, looking through the house--taking good care always to make a Negro go before. (Laughter.) I am ready to say, if he has violated the law, if he has taken an improper course, if he has been the traitor that the South brands him as having been, and the madman that the North says he has been, John Brown is not to be blamed. I say that the system which violates the sacredness of conjugal love, the system that robs the cradle of its innocent treasure -- the system that goes into the temple of manhood, and writes upon the altar its hellish hieroglyphics of slavery -- the system that takes away every God-given right, and tramples religion under foot - I say that that system is responsible for every single crime committed within the borders where it exists. (Applause.) It is the system, my friends. I hold that that is a false logic which talks about good slaveholders. I hold that it is folly on the part of the slaveholder himself when he attempts to keep his slaves by mild means. The more a man learns, the more kindly he is treated, the more he aspires for liberty, the more restive he becomes under the yoke. -- Hence it is not an accident, but a necessity of the system of slavery, that it should be cruel; and all its devilish instrumentality, and enginery, and paraphernalia must be cruel also. It is folly for us to talk about the slaveholders being kind. Cruelty is part and parcel of the system. If slavery is right at all, then all its terrors and horrors, -- the whip, the manacle, the thumbscrew, the paddle, the stake, the gibbet -- are right also; if it is not right, then all these are wrong. The people of the North have said John Brown was a madman -- I suppose mostly because it is on the eve of an election: but if he was mad, his madness not only had a great deal of "method" in it, but a great deal of Philosophy and religion. I say, my friends, that no man ever died in this country as John Brown has died to-day. I say it because John Brown was a praying man. I remember hearing an incident in reference to his praying, from the lips of a man in whose presence and in whose house it occurred, and I loved him the more when I heard it. Coming to Henry Highland Garnet, of New York, some two years ago, he said to him, after unfolding all his plans, "Mr. Garnet, what do you think of it?" Said Mr. Garnet, who is at once a Christian, a gentleman, and a scholar, -- "Sir, the time has not come yet for the success of such a movement. Our people in the South are not sufficiently apprised of their rights, and of the sympathy that exists on the part of the North for them; our people in the North are not prepared to assist in such a movement, in consequence of the prejudice that shuts them out from both the means and the intelligence necessary. The breach between the North and the South has not yet become wide enough." Mr. Brown, looking him in the face as his keen eye was lit up with its peculiar fire, and his soul seemed to come forth with all its intellectual energy to look out and scan, if possible, the whole horizon of Providence, said, "Mr. Garnet, I will ask God about it"; and he got down upon his knees, and there poured out his heart to that God who is peculiarly the God of the bondman. He then showed the depth of his religious feeling -- the intense interest that he had in the emancipation of mankind, and the heroism of his soul. Mr. Garnet says that never in his life has he been so moved by a prayer as he was by that prayer of John Brown's. When such a man as this dies as he has died to-day, with the prayers of five millions of people going up to Heaven in his behalf - for I know that at least that number of Christians have prayed for him - when such a man dies, I am sure that his death under such circumstances affords us a great, an almost demonstrable evidence of the success of the movement that he has inaugurated and of the final accomplishment of the great object of his soul. (Applause.) I say that no man has ever died in this country as John Brown has died. While his soul has gone up to God, and his body has been taken down a lifeless corpse, thank God all over the country, meetings are being held-to-night to give expression to that great feeling of sympathy which is to swell the great tornado. -Let Virginia thank herself for it! In her guilty planting she has sown the wind; let her thank herself if in her terrible harvest she reaps the whirlwind of destruction. (Applause.) Go down to Virginia, and see that firm old man as he comes out from his prison, leaning upon the arm of the sheriff and with his head erect, ascends the dreadful steps of the gibbet. We see as he goes his way to the top, and every step he takes seems to be inspired with that feeling which the poet Longfellow describes as animating the heart of the young man climbing to the top of the mountain -"Excelsior" -until planting himself ready for his martyrdom. Though his body falls, the spirit of slavery and despotism falls with it, while John Brown goes up to heaven. Thank God! Thank God! (Applause.) I have detained you long enough. This is not the time to vindicate his cause. I have made these remarks only because they seem to be suggested here. I close by saying, my friends, that John Brown . . . shall slay more in his death than he ever slew in all his life. It is thought by the slaves-and it is a beautiful conceit, though coming from slaves - that the meteors from the heavens are sparks that . . . strike upon the craters of volcanoes, and that is the cause of their eruption. From the firmament of Providence today, a meteor has fallen. It has fallen upon the volcano of American sympathies, and though, for awhile, it may seem to sleep, yet its igneous power shall communicate … to the slumbering might of the volcano, and it shall burst forth in one general conflagration of revolution that shall bring about universal freedom. (Applause.) I feel, my friends and fellow-citizens, tonight, that courage, the adamantine courage, which has today been blasted by the terrible enginery of slavery will serve as the grit in the grindstone upon which the slave shall sharpen his weapon . . . I believe that every drop of blood shed today will be gathered up by the ever vigilant spirit of freedom . . . by whose resplendent light the darkest hovels of slavery shall be penetrated until the chains shall be melted from every limb, and the slave stand forth "regenerated and disenthalled by the irresistible Genius of Universal Emancipation". (Loud Applause.) Source: The Liberator, December 9, 1859.

Exploring the life and legacy of John Sella Martin

SOUTHFIELD/BIRMINGHAM — The Birmingham Museum and the Oakland County Historical Society kicked off Black History Month with a lecture on freedom seeker and abolitionist John Sella Martin Jan. 13 at the Southfield Public Library. “The Underground Railroad in Southfield and the Extraordinary Story of John Sella Martin” was the first in a yearlong series sponsored by the Oakland County Historical Society in celebration of its 150th anniversary in 2024. The story of Martin also tied into a five-community research project on the Underground Railroad in Oakland County led by the Birmingham Museum and funded by a grant from the Michigan Council for the Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project involves volunteer-based teams in Birmingham, Farmington, Royal Oak, Pontiac and Southfield researching connections to the Underground Railroad in Oakland County communities. “The goal is to bring awareness of stories of both abolitionists and formerly enslaved freedom seekers to the public,” Leslie Pielack, the Birmingham Museum director and the research project director, stated in a press release. “Sharing documented evidence with educators, students, and families will cast light on the little-known history of the anti-slavery movement in our area. We all benefit when we have more of the whole picture.” A traveling exhibit and interactive website funded by the grant is set to launch later this month. Early stages of research unveiled nearly two dozen documented freedom seekers and abolitionists. The traveling exhibit was on display at the Southfield Public Library for the presentation on Martin and will be traveling around southern Oakland County to be featured in libraries and public buildings for two months at a time where the public can see it free of charge. The lecture opened with a proclamation presented by Oakland County Commissioners Penny Luebs, Gwen Markham, Kristen Nelson, Yolanda Smith Charles and Linnie Taylor in acknowledgment of the Oakland County Underground Railroad Public History Project. Joy Young, a Birmingham Museum genealogy researcher and cultural consultant, became interested in the project while it was on tour through West Bloomfield, where she lives. Young said that her jaw was on the floor at the Birmingham Museum, and she could not believe the history that unfolded in her community. After reading about Martin, she became fascinated by his life and shared that she was surprised that she had never heard his story before. Young began researching and uncovering more about Martin’s life and legacy. She is currently working on a book illustrating the significance of his life’s work. “From my research, I found out he was a man of faith: a pastor, an abolitionist, a leader, a statesman, a civil servant, an orator, a family man, a politician, and an editor who taught himself to read and write. He was an overcomer. He was a dreamer of freedom for himself and others in slavery. He was a revolutionary and a free thinker, well-read and sociable. He showed great courage in his pursuits, and many think he was handsome,” Young said in the presentation. “John Sella Martin, though small in stature at 5 feet 8 1/2 inches, was a giant of a man during the time of slavery, the Civil War and reconstruction. With all of these accolades, he was not perfect, which you shall see. And though he overcame much sorrow and difficulty, his life ended tragically and too soon.” Young led the presentation on Martin and expressed her desire for people to know his story as an integral part of African American and world history. She informed the attendees that they were just mere footsteps away from the spot where Martin sought freedom through the Underground Railroad at Covenanter Church, now known as Southfield Reformed Presbyterian, with the help of abolitionist minister James S.T. Milligan, who housed Martin for six weeks in 1857. After Martin’s time in Southfield, he became a world-renowned Baptist minister, traveling to England and Scotland, where he was considered one of the most influential abolitionists against American slavery. During her presentation, Young detailed the life of Martin, stating that he was born in 1832 in North Carolina into slavery and was the result of a relationship forced upon his mother, Winnifred — Mrs. Henderson forced Winnifred into a relationship with her nephew as a way to distract him from having relationships with other wealthy white women until his marriage to a white heiress. The relationship resulted in two children, Martin and his older sister, Caroline. Around the time Martin was 7 years old, his family was sold by Mrs. Henderson to a slave trader, which led them to Georgia. When he was around 10 years old, he, his mother and his sister were separated when their enslaver sold them to settle a debt. Martin would go on to be bought and sold at least 11 times. At one point enslaved by a man named Mr. Powers, he worked as an errand boy for gamblers. He heard rumors of African Americans living as free people in the north and in Canada. He became passionate about freedom and took it upon himself to learn to read and write. When he was 17 years old, he learned where his mother was and tried to get her to escape her enslaver, who was known for his cruelty. He visited her and watched as her captor ruthlessly beat her. Because of that visit, Martin would spend seven months in jail for running away. In his autobiography, he described this time as “the most valuable months” of his life because he met a man from the north who taught him about grammar, history, arithmetic and geography, and gave him instructions on how to reach the north. A year later, when Mr. Powers died, Martin was sold to an African American from Mobile, Alabama, named Horace King, an architect and builder of many bridges and structures that still stand today. His time with King was short before he was sold again. His mother died in 1852, and he never saw her again. He received a message from her before her passing that he viewed as prophetic: “Tell my son, he shall not wear out his days in slavery.” Martin began planning his escape to the north, and on Jan. 6, 1856, he declared himself a free man at the age of 24 years old. Following the Underground Railroad, Martin made his way to Covenanter Church in Southfield. Martin lived out the remainder of his life as an abolitionist and minister, traveling the country and the world to fight for freedom. He was a colleague of Frederick Douglass and an acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln. When he died in 1876, his obituary appeared in the Detroit Free Press, as well as many other city newspapers in Michigan, England and Canada. “At the young age of 43, and in just 20 years from escaping slavery and going to Chicago, John Sella Martin left his mark on not just African American history, but American and world history,” Young said. “This man accomplished a lion’s share of achievement that benefited Black Americans and Americans over the last 147 years.”

After being denied a chance to teach in Syracuse, Edmonia Highgate taught freed Black people in the South

By Johnathan Croyle | jcroyle@syracuse.com After graduating with honors from a Syracuse high school in 1861, 17-year-old Edmonia Highgate hoped to begin a teaching career in her home city. She was refused because of her race. Highgate, the daughter of two former slaves, was undeterred. She would go on to teach in Montrose, Pennsylvania before becoming the principal at a Black school in Binghamton. In January 1864, she answered the call of the American Missionary Association who was looking for Northern teachers to travel South during the Civil War to set up schools for the emancipated Black population. “I am strong and healthy,” she wrote in a letter to the Association. “I could labor advantageously in the field for my newly freed brethren.” Edmonia Highgate - This image of a school started by the Freedmen's Bureau is an example of the hundreds of school which were set up during and after the Civil War. Hundreds of Northern teachers, Black and white, men and women, went South to educate the newly freed. Edmonia Highgate of Syracuse was one of them. This is from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Courtesy of the Library of CongressCourtesy of the Library of Congr Highgate was assigned to a school in Norfolk in the March of 1864. She taught children during the day and adults at night. Teachers faced disease and insults and violence from Southern whites. Teachers were threatened and beaten. Some disappeared. Others had their schools burned down. After just a few months, Highgate was back in Syracuse, mentally exhausted from what she was doing. She was not totally inactive during her time away. At the National Convention of Colored Men, held in Syracuse from Oct. 4-7, 1864, Highgate addressed the abolitionist meeting, one of only two women to do so. According to the convention’s minutes, the 24-year-old was introduced by Frederick Douglass, who was president of the convention. Its minutes reported: “The President then introduced Miss Edmonia Highgate, an accomplished young lady of Syracuse. Miss Highgate urged the Convention to trust in God and press on, and not abate one jot or tittle until the glorious day of jubilee shall come.” In March 1865, she was teaching again, this time in Maryland. She had to rush to Petersburg, Virginia to be at her younger brother Charles’ bedside after he was wounded in one of the last battles of the Civil War. He died on April 2 and was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse. After the war, she was assigned by the A.M.A. to the Frederick Douglass School in New Orleans as a principal. After rioting in July 1866, which saw Northerners attacked by Southern whites, Highgate was forced out of the city into the Lafayette parish. In a letter to Rev. M. E. Strieby of the A.M.A., Highgate described what she faced daily while teaching in the South: “There is more than work for two teachers, yet I am all alone, God has wondrously spared me. There have been much opposition to the School. Twice I have been shot at in my room. Some of my night school scholars have been shot but not killed. The rebels have threatened to burn down the school and house in which I board before the first month was passed.” Despite the danger, Highgate recognized the importance of her work and the positive impact it was having among the freed Black people. “The majority of my pupils come from plantations, three, four and even eight miles distant. So anxious are they to learn they walk these distances so early in the morning as never to be tardy. Every scholar buys his own book and slate, etc. They do learn rapidly. A class who did not understand any English came to school last Monday morning and at the close of the week they were reading ‘Easy Lessons.’” “After the horrible riots in New Orleans in July, I found my heart getting impaired from hospital visiting and excitement so I came here to do what I could and to get stronger corporally, that I might enter fully into carrying light and knowledge into dark places,” she added. “The Lord blessed me, and I have a very interesting and constantly growing day school, a night school, and a glorious Sabbath School of near one hundred scholars.” She returned to New Orleans in 1867 but resigned her position after she publicly spoke out against the school board after it proposed “segregated public school system” Highgate said she would “rather starve than stoop one inch on that question.” In 1868, she became a collection agent for the A.M.A in Mississippi. She continued teaching but also became a public speaker to help raise funds. At a speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, she told her audience that their work was “not yet half done; and if it is not thoroughly done, it will have to be done over again.” She also toured cities telling her story in a speech entitled “Five Years Among Southern Loyalists.” Her lecture was a triumph. “Syracuse born and educated, we may all have pride in her accomplishments,” the Daily Standard said on Nov. 15, 1869. And said the local hall where she would speak that night “should be filled to hear her recital of an experience that must be full of interest to all.” “Miss E.G. Highgate was one of the most earnest teachers among the free millions of the South,” the Anti-Slavery Standard wrote. The New Orleans Republican said Highgate “possesses wonderful eloquence,” and The Pilot of Jackson, Mississippi said she was a “thoroughly educated lady and a very charming speaker.” Edmonia Highgate Maireid Conner and Gary Weinstein stand at the grave of Edmonia Highgate (unmarked) in Oakwood Cemetery in June 1988. Syracuse Post-StandardSyracuse Post-Standard The extraordinary life of Edmonia Highgate was tragically short. On Oct. 17, 1870, the Syracuse Daily Journal reported about the “mysterious death” in the city a few days before. The paper said a woman calling herself Sarah Darling who had checked into a boarding house at 67 Taylor Street in Syracuse. She later complained of not feeling well. A doctor called Chase was summoned who gave her some medicine. The woman improved but then died. The woman’s belongings were searched, and it was discovered that she was Edmonia Highgate. A coroner’s investigation said the teacher, activist, and speaker had died after a botched abortion. She had begun an affair with a married white man, a poet named by the name of John Henry Vosburg, whose wife had been sent to a mental institution. Her funeral was held on Oct. 18, 1870, at Syracuse’s Wesleyan Church. “The acquaintance of the family and circumstances of her death attending her death, drew a large audience, filling the house to its utmost capacity,” the Daily Standard said. “At the close, the vast assembly joined in file to take a last look of her who has thus untimely been called away.” Highgate was buried in an unmarked grave besides her brother at Oakwood. On June 18, 1988, a marker to her was placed at her grave on Syracuse’s first observance on Juneteenth. Edmonia Highgate A photograph of Black activist and teacher Edmonia Highgate’s grave in Oakwood Cemetery. The tall marker to the left is her brother Charles. In 1988, a group, The Friends of Edmonia Highgate, led by Mairead Connor, Gary Weinstein and Myriene Jones raised $800 to place a headstone on Edmonia’s unmarked grave. Onondaga Historical AssociationOnondaga Historical Association Read more After breaking records at Syracuse University, Bernie Custis becomes first pro Black quarterback Syracuse’s first Black resident paid $80 for his own freedom, helped dig the Erie Canal

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