BGuthrie Photos: WV -- Harpers Ferry NHP -- Exhibit: Black Voices: African American History

WV -- Harpers Ferry NHP -- Exhibit: Black Voices: African American History:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. HARBVO_120408_07.JPG: Property: Slaves were human property protected by the United States Constitution. Many slaves in Harpers Ferry had owners who treated them well and kept a careful eye on their monetary value. Other slaves had masters who cared little for their needs or well being. Though the treatment of slaves varied from owner to owner, all slaves were at the mercy of their masters each and every day.
2. HARBVO_120408_12.JPG: In 1859, $1,400 bought... 1 House 4 Slaves -- A woman and three children 18 Horse Carriages 21 Horses 36 Watches
3. HARBVO_120408_16.JPG: Half-Free: Free African-Americans had opportunities in Harpers Ferry not available to slaves. White townspeople needed the skills and cheap labor free blacks provided, but treated them as second class citizens. Some free blacks created alliances with prominent white citizens to ensure good livings. Still, most free African-Americans struggled with both poverty and racism.
4. HARBVO_120408_19.JPG: Choices: Slave and free African-Americans confronted a basic choice. They could seek to better themselves within the established racial system or they could risk personal security and family life by resisting that system. Slaveowners and many other whites, always dreading the possibility of slave uprisings, tried to control all African-Americans, slave and free, with strict laws and local regulations.
5. HARBVO_120408_27.JPG: Freedom: African-Americans actively participated in the Civil War. In 1861, most Northerners fought to restore the Union. Slaves, however, soon realized that the war could bring them freedom. Harpers Ferry became one of many Union garrisons where thousands of runaway slaves, or "contrabands," came for refuge, employment, and freedom. Beginning in 1863, large numbers of ex-slaves joined the Union Army.
6. HARBVO_120408_31.JPG: Negroes Driven South by the Rebel Officers: On September 15, 1862, 12,500 Union soldiers garrisoned at Harpers Ferry surrendered to Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's Confederates. After the battle, Confederate forces returned many captured African-Americans to slavery. Contemporary accounts estimate that more than a thousand runaway slaves were rounded up and sent South following the Federal surrender.
7. HARBVO_120408_35.JPG: One of the highest-ranking African American officers to serve in the war was Martin Delany, who entered the Union Army as a major in 1865. A well-known abolitionist, Delany was born near Charles Town, the site of John Brown's trial and hanging.
8. HARBVO_120408_39.JPG: The United States Army began to officially recruit, arm, and train African-American soldiers in 1863. In 1865, the last year of the war, one of every ten Union soldiers was black. A total of 180,000 served and 37,000 were killed or died of disease.
9. HARBVO_120408_42.JPG: Artist and author David Hunter Strother revealed how African-Americans desired their freedom and forced the Union Army to accommodate them. Though a native of this region and pro-slavery, Strother supported the Union and served with the Federal Army.
10. HARBVO_120408_49.JPG: Harpers Ferry: 1850-1860 Total African-American Population: 302 Free Black Male: 79 Free Black Female: 68 TOTAL FREE BLACK: 147 Slave Male: 54 Slave Female: 101 TOTAL SLAVE: 155 Total White Population: 2,499 White male: 1,285 White female: 1,214 Slaves: - Most slaves in Harpers Ferry were women and children who worked as laundresses, cooks, nurses, housekeepers, and servants. - One-third of the slave population was male. Most slave men were laborers but some acquired special skills like carpentry and quarry work. - Many slaves in Harpers Ferry were hired out on an annual basis. In the 1850s, owners could rent their most valuable human property for more than $100 a year. - Slaves usually lived with their owner or the person that rented them, sometimes in an outbuilding or attic. Some owners may have boarded their slaves with a free black family. Occasionally, slaves were permitted to live with free black relatives. - Early in the 19th century, some local slave owners allowed slaves to hire their own time, collect wages, and eventually purchase their own freedom. A number of owners emancipated their slaves. As the value of slaves grew, however, and the moral question of slavery became more divisive, such opportunities became rare for slaves in Harpers Ferry.
11. HARBVO_120408_54.JPG: Struggles: Emancipation began a new process of struggle for African-Americans and a promise of all the rights guaranteed to United States citizens. African-Americans defined freedom as social and economic equality. This freedom, however, usually was denied them as blacks faced racism, segregation, and racial violence. In response to injustice, African-Americans struggled to claim their civil rights.
12. HARBVO_120408_57.JPG: Members of the Niagara Movement meeting in Harpers Ferry. Many African-Americans responded to racism and racial violence by organizing and struggling for their rights. In 1906, the Niagara Movement, a militant black civil rights organization, held its second meeting in Harpers Ferry -- the site of John Brown's Raid in 1859. Members of the Niagara Movement helped form the NAACP in 1909.
13. HARBVO_120408_60.JPG: Despite the efforts and hopes of many individuals, the success of some blacks and the work of the Freedmen's Bureau, discrimination and racial violence denied African-Americans most of the rights emancipation had promised.
14. HARBVO_120408_64.JPG: The Harper House in the 1880s. Immediately after the Civil War, nearly a third of Harpers Ferry's population was African-American. The post-war town presented few jobs, much prejudice, and an uncertain future. Some blacks left in search of better opportunities.
15. HARBVO_120408_68.JPG: NAACP Headquarters in New York, ca 1920. Continuing the struggle, black and white leaders formed the NAACP in 1909. Jefferson County founded a branch in 1946. The NAACP had become a leading advocate for African-American rights.
16. HARBVO_120408_77.JPG: The African-American community realized that higher learning was crucial in the struggle for equality and full participation in business and politics. During the last few decades of the 19th century, African-Americans and philanthropic groups established numerous colleges and teacher-training schools for blacks.
17. HARBVO_120408_81.JPG: With the coming of freedom, African-Americans sought education. Schools for ex-slaves sprang up all over the South behind the advancing Union armies. In the winter of 1864-65, a freedmen's school was established in Harpers Ferry.
18. HARBVO_120408_83.JPG: Emancipation compelled African-Americans to learn new skills quickly. Philanthropic organizations sent "missionaries" to the South to help blacks make the transition to freedom. Together with the Freedmen's Bureau, "missionaries" taught reading and writing as well as basic work skills.
19. HARBVO_120408_87.JPG: Laws supporting slavery prevented African-Americans from learning to read and write. Emancipation allowed blacks to seek the education they needed for achieving equality in politics, business, and society. After the Civil War, numerous schools and colleges were established by and for African-Americans. In Harpers Ferry, the Freedmen's Bureau and Free Will Baptist church created Storer College in 1867.
20. HARBVO_120408_89.JPG: "If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places and men, for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia -- not Fort Sumter, but Harper's Ferry and the arsenal -- not Col. Anderson, but John Brown, began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrespressible conflict was one of words, votes and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared. The time for compromises was gone -- the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union -- and the clash of arms was at hand. The South stakes all upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing to do that, drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not Brown's, the lost cause of the century." Frederick Douglass, the famed African-American abolitionist, served on the Board of Trustees for Storer College. In an oration at Storer in 1881, Douglass described John Brown's Raid as the opening event of the war that ended slavery.
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Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(NPS) Harpers Ferry Natl Historic Park] [Display ALL (NPS) Harpers Ferry Natl Historic Park photos] [Civil War] [Park (National Park Service)]
2012 photos: Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired. Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA), a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean, another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc). Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else.. Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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