Historical integrated College -Racist events, Kim Simmons

03/31/13 • 69 min

Oberlin College In 1835 became the first predominately white collegiate institution to admit African American male students and two years later it opened its doors to all women, becoming the first coeducational college in the country. In 1862, Mary J Patterson earned a B.A. becoming the first African American woman to earn a degree from an American college. Other black women had graduated earlier but did not receive the collegiate degree (BA). As part of the Underground Railroad, Oberlin’s intricate network of back road routes and safe houses, the college and town provided refuge for fugitive slaves bound for Canada. In 1858, students, faculty, and residents of Oberlin and nearby Wellington, Ohio rescued a runaway slave John Price from U.S. marshals, and transported him to freedom in Canada. One year later three African American residents of the town of Oberlin, Shields Green, Lewis Sheridan Leary, and John Anthony Copeland, participated in John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry. Unfortunately recently, Classes were canceled after a report of someone wearing what looked like a Ku Klux Klan-type hooded robe on campus. A police report has also detailed the defacement of Black History Month posters with the N-word, a "whites only" sign written above a water fountain, a swastika drawn on a science center window and a student knocked to the ground by a person making a derogatory comment about ethnicity. Two students are being investigated for possible involvement in the graffiti. The students have responded by organizing rallies of solidarity to show their disdain for the cowards who committed the racists acts! Click and Listen to Kimberly Simmons, a descendant of Abolitionists Oberlin Graduates as she speaks on these disturbing incidents from a historical perspective with The Gist of Freedom host Preston Washington www.BlogTalkRadio.com/BlackHistory

Previous Episode

Black Abolitionists Book- John Brown Raid & Civil War

Mary, Free, Educated & A Spy! Disguise... Confederate White House Slave Mary was the best as she was working right in The Confederate President's home. She had a photographic mind. Everything Mary saw on the Rebel President’s desk she could repeat word for word. “Ellen Bond” was neither dim-witted, illiterate, nor a slave. In reality she was a free, well educated African American woman by the name of Mary Elizabeth Bowser. And she was a Union spy working right under Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s nose. For months during the most crucial period of the Civil War, as General Ulysses S. Grant maneuvered to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital, Mary supplied critical military intelligence to the Union army. In recognition of her contributions to the Union war effort, she was inducted into the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Hall of Fame in 1995. Elizabeth was able to arrange for a friend to take Mary with her as a servant to help at social functions held by Varina Davis in the Confederate White House. Mary performed her servant role so well she was eventually taken on full time as, presumably, a slave hired out by her master.

Next Episode

ASALH ~Assoc. Study of African American Life & History

Dr. Mary Frances Berry Speaking at the ASALH Annual Luncehon! Established on September 9, 1915 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, we are the Founders of Black History Month and carry forth the work of our founder, the Father of Black History. We continue his legacy of speaking a fundamental truth to the world--that Africans and peoples of African descent are makers of history and co-workers in what W. E. B. Du Bois called, "The Kingdom of Culture." ASALH's mission is to create and disseminate knowledge about Black History, to be, in short, the nexus between the Ivory Tower and the global public. We labor in the service of Blacks and all humanity