Two black preachers from Baltimore , Rev. Harvey Johnston, of the Union Baptist Church, and Rev. P.H.A. Braxton, of the Calvary Church , filed suit against the Norfolk and Portsmouth Ferry Company in the Fourth Circuit of the Eastern District of Virginia. They did so after being accosted and, eventually, arrested for resisting the orders of the ferry's personnel to remove themselves from the section...
Danville was only one of the many places that experienced the development of a newly mechanized and more highly capitalized cotton-processing business. As mentioned in the Promise of the New South, a prominent mill owner recalled that “every city and town and village wanted a cotton mill.' Furthermore, towns took pride in their new water works, which first were established in major cities in the...
As Edward Ayers explains in the Promise of the New South, even though the railroad had an “aura of glamour' in the South, working on the railroad was dangerous. Many accidents occurred, varying from simple unimportant incidents such as a hand crushed, to as serious incidents such as a black man's head cut off when a train ran over him. Often accidents happened on the tracks, and trains collided...
By 1896, the Alabama-born evangelist Sam Jones was the most famous itinerant preacher in the South. His crusade to Atlanta drew an enormous crowd and demonstrated how much his “equal opportunity' sermons, in which he was “hard on everyone,' resonated with a Southern audience. In an age of emerging political demagogues all over the South such as Ben Tillman and Tom Watson, Ed Ayers calls Jones...
A conflict ensued in Nashville, Tennessee in 1899 when the confederate reunion and the return of a regiment from Manila occurred simultaneously. The president of the local United Daughters of the Confederation firmly opposed the use of the United States flag at the reunion. Her protest proved unsuccessful. Although the United States flag was displayed, the Confederate veterans “marched “under...
In 1884, an African American woman living in Marietta, Georgia developed a rare skin disease that gradually lightened her skin. The woman worked for an upstanding white family in Georgia and experienced continuing skin lightening for many months. White spots covered her face and body, slowly enlarging and spreading across her skin. The spots gradually bleached her skin, making her appear white....
In 1877, Quaker missionary Wilmer Walton moved to Jackson County, Alabama to provide African American children in the town of Stevenson with practical, moral, and intellectual instruction. Before his move to Alabama, Walton aided African Americans in Southern Missouri and hoped to soon retire from his missionary work. However, Walton attended the Quaker Illinois Yearly Meeting, which inspired him...
Lily Suner wrote a letter to her brother on August 12, 1879 regarding Jule, an African American in need of legal help. Jule appeared to be related to the siblings in some way, since the brother was in a position to tell Jule's children and wife that he sent his love and Suner was in communication with him. The letter began with Suner chiding her brother for not writing to her in Alexandria, Louisiana....
"Susan B. Anthony is the Bismarck; she plans the campaigns, provides the munitions of war, organizes the raw recruits, sets the squadrons in the field," read the first lines of an article entitled "The Women Who Dare: Short Patent Sketches of Prominent Revolutionists" in the Courier Journal. The article continued to compare Anthony, the leader of the women's suffrage movement, to a military general,...
On May 8, 1883, a Texan was arrested at the ferry landing in Shreveport, Louisiana for the murder of William H. Lyon. The Texan's name was D.C. Hutchins, and he was an African American. The paper described Hutchins as a desperado and noted that he had been a terror to the decent citizens of Bossier parish, La. The citizens of Bossier parish were indignant at the crime. The paper also noted with no...