Adella-Hunt-Logan" (February 12 1863- December 12 1915)

Educator,suffragist, and clubwoman,was born in Sparta,Georgia, the fourth of eight children Henry Hunt,a white planter and tanner, and Mariah Hunt, a mixed-race and Cherokee Native American woman of whom little else is known.Adelle grew up in a prosperous neighborhood and attended Bass Academy in Sparta.At the age of sixteen,she attended the Upper Normal College (a school for teacher education) at Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia.She graduated two years later in 1881, and then taught for two years at an American Missionary School in Albany, Georgia, where she also worked as a city missionary.

She was offered a position teaching at Atlanta University in 1883, Adelle responded to the call of  Booker T.Washington to teach at at Tuskegee University,Booker's renowned industrial school and college in Tusegee, Alabama,teaching at the well established urban Atlanta University might have seemed a natural choice for her broad intellectural interests, she chose tinstead to join Washington's mission to educate young African Americans from more impoverished backgrounds for careers in education and the trades.

In 1888 Adelle married Warren Logan,Booker close friend, who had arrived at Tuskegee a year before her.During Warren career at Tuskegee,he served as the school's president and treasurer.Following her marriage Adelle had little time or opportunity to teach.She was occupied attending to the many duties of the wife of a top administrator and to the raising of her family. In 1890 she gave birth to the first of the couple's nine children. Their last child was born in 1909.

She soon declared that education was her primary interest. Despite her household duties and frequent pregnancies,she managed to continue leading a number of educational missions at Tuskegee's including the formation of a model 

school to prepare student teachers for careers in education, and the guidance and administration of Tuskegee's teacher education curriculum and facilities.

In 1895 She became a charater member of the Tuskegee Woman's Cluyb.The club, which became an affiliate of the of the National Association of Colored Women 

(NACW) IN 1896, consisted of educators and staff at Tuskegee Institute.The Tuskegee chapter's mission focused on the social uplift of African Americans in the communities surrounding the school. As a member, Adelle directed and participated in programs to improve the lives and health of African American families,including programs in nutrition, hygiene,civics, an effort to improve  the preand post-natal health of mothers and babies. She also advocated prison reform and,always mindful of the need to educate, organized and ran a lending library.As a Tuskgee educator and as a clubwoman, she found ways to integrate civics instruction into everything she taught.Her civics interests led directly to her passion to prepare her students and African Americans in the local community for universal sufrage.Although she was personally discouraged by local and state government attempts to disenfranchise African American men,Adelle persisted in educating young men and women for the day when universal suffrage would be achieved. 

She became captivated by the women's suffrage movement sometime in the early 1890s.In 1895 the (NAWSA) held its annual convention in Atlanta  the hopes of educating white southern men and women about the importance of the ballot for women.At this time,NAWSA was seeking this support became a women's suffrage amendment to the Constitution could not be ratified without the approval of many southern states.NAWSA leaders barred African American women and men from attending all of its southern conventions, a move they later claimed was merely in deference to southern whites. African Americans, were allowed to hold membership in the organization.

Adelle traveled to Atlanta during the convention week to hear the NAWSA leader and prominent suffragist Susan B.Anthony lecture at Atlanta University.

After hearing Susan, speak, Adelle was inspired to dedicate herself  further to 

women's suffrage. Despite NAWSA's explict racism,Adelle revered Susan throughout the white suffrage leader's life.

While Adelle disapproved of  NAWSA's  accommodation of white southern's racism, it did not deter her from participating in the organization.She became a life member of NAWSA shortly after 1895. By 1897 she was using the forum of the Tuskegee Women's Club to educate and inform her fellow clubwomen about suffrage and the activities of the movement. Public support for women's sufrage  was nearly nonexistent in Alabama, as would be the case for the next two decades.

She gained knowledge and inspiration from NAWSA conventions, she commented that African American women's suffrage leaders could have run them better; as she wrote to Emily Howland,a white suffragist who sponsored her membership in NAWSA, "You know a number of colored women would have done it [managed the conventions]  more intelligently..."  She also contributed financially to NAWSA and wrote articles for The Woman's Journal, (NAWSA'S primary newspaper),and attended a 1901 NAWSA meeting in Atlanta. Because Adelle was light-skinned, as a result of her predominantly white ancestry,her granddaughter Adelle Logan Alexander has suggested that Adelle consciously attempted to "pass" for white when she attended NAWSA conventions,which was something she might have justified because of African-American suffrage.

It is not evident from Adella"s personal correspondence or letters what her thoughts and feelings were about her attendance at suffrage gatherings of African American clubwomen in the South.She lectured at the Alabama Federal of Colored Women's Club conventions,the  Southern Federal of Colored Womens

Clubs, and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). She was also 

the leader of the NACW's suffrage section.

In addition to her writings for suffrage journals, she contributed article about 

women's suffrage to The Crisis,the NAACP's journal edited by W.E.B. Du Bois,

and the Colored American magazine. A major reason for giving African American women the vote, Adelle emphasized,was to give them a voice in education legislation to ensure that African American children would receive their share of public school funds.She argued that African American women 

gaining the right to vote would improve life for all African Americans.

In 1915 Adelle experienced a series of misfortunes.She suffered a crippling emotional breakdown,which may have been clinical depression.The death of her good friend and colleague Booker T. Washington in the fall of that year contributed to her despair. On the day of his memorial service,she jumped from the top floor of a Tuskegee University building to her death,she died at the age of 52, five years before the Twentieth Amendment became law,thereby guaranteeing women the right to vote.

"Daniel Simmons" 1875-????)

Walked to Savannah Georgia at the age of 17 from Allendale, South Carolina. He 

became a telegraph operator and later entered the Mattress industry. In 1906 his mattress making business became a very successful and he opened a mattress making plant on East Bay Street.

" Eufrosina Hinard" (January 2 1772-1866?)

Slave owner, was born in New Orleans,Louisiana, to a freed slave and a white man (their names are unknown). She never experienced slavery herself,and her life as a slave-owning African-American woman was far removed from thr common experience of most African Americans in North America.This anomaly can be explained in part by the political and social turbulence of early New Orleans.By the time Euffrosina was Forty-two,she lived under French,Spanish, and American rule.In 1791 at the age of fourteen,she was placeed (committed) to the white Spaniard colonial Don

Nicolas Vidal, the auditor de guerra, the Spanish colonial governor.In this 

lofty position,Don provided military and legal counsel for both Louisiana and West Florida. Both the Spanish and the French legislated against racial intermarriage as way of maintaining pure white blood, this legislation did not stop from cohabitating with African American women.Many French and Spanish military military officials sent to help govern the territory would take bi-racial mistresses during their time in Louisana.Because these unions continued to occur in opposition to the law, and extralegal institution called placage developed to provide some formality, as well as some economic and social advantages for the African-American women.

The placage system that brought Don and Eufrosina together developed out of slavery. Many white men freed female slaves after having sex relations with them.especially if children  had resulated.Some of these women encouraged their daughters to also cohabitate with white men. As the system became established,,placage realtionships usually occurred between rich whites and free African-American, who emerged as an 

"upper class" within their communities. Free African-American women usually referred white men wishing to enter into this type of realtionship to one of the girl's parents (usually the mama)  who asked for certain concessions. Once both parties came to an agreement,a ceremony often took place, and then the formal relationship commenced.

While this system developed out of oppression, Eufrosina and other free African-American women did benefit from it in certain ways.In new Orleans' racially stratified society,incre9ased whiteness brought more social status and relative financial security for oneself and one's children.

While it certain that many women were forced into these realtionships,some most certainly chose placage (and its possible benefits) over marriage to a free African-American man.Any benefits were tenuous because the placage system was never legally binding.Whether  coerced or voluntary in the beginning,it seems quite possible that Don & Eufrosina had genuinely realtionship.The couple had at least two children who grew to adulthood during their fifteen years together: Merecedes (Merced) Vidal and Caroline Maria Vidal.

In 1800 Spain secretly transferred Louisiana back to the French.With in three years Napoleon decided to sell Louisiana to the United States.This 

decision affected Don and Eufrosina greatly. They decided to move to Spanish Florida rather than remain in Louisiana under American rule.

Florida would not become American territory until 1819.

When DON DIED IN 1806, Although he had previously sired another child while stationed in South America ( through another placage relationship),

he left his estate to Eufrosina and their daughters.This was an extremely 

unusual act and one that would have been illegal had they stayed in New Orleans.Their daughter Merced later saused an international stir by petitoning President Andrew Jackson to help her recover her deceased daddy's document. Andrew requested these documents from the Spanish Floridian government, and when he did not received the documents.

After Don's death, Eufrosina exhibited considerable business acumen by buying a brick-making business and acquiring a number of slaves. (She owned thirteen by 1840.) Where there is no written record of Eufrosina's 

throughts about slavery, she proably maintained views more akin to Spanish sentiments than those associated with English North Americans,

allowing her slaves to buy their freedom at a fair market price.Even after 

the Florida colonial government had outlawed the practice of self-purchase, she continued to buy slaves and hire them out until they could turn a profit for her; free them, and subsequently buy more slaves. In 

Eufrosina case,slavery seems to have remained primarily a source of labor.Historian Virginia Gould has demonstrated that free African American women in Gulf Cost cities distinguished themselves from the race-based empathy toward slaves. African American slave owners on the Gulf Coast such as Eufrosina's actions directly opposed the increasingly prevalent idea in the American South that slaves had no right to freedom;

Eufrosina behavior also contradicts gender and racial solidarity theories of some contemporary historians. Eufrosina's life clearly demonstrates the complexity of slavery and freedom in and around the Gulf Coast at the turn of the dawn of the nineteenth century.

 

Thomas Fuller 1710-1790

Was an African,shipped to America as a slave in 1724. He had remarkable powers,of calculation, and later in his life was discovered by antislavery campaigners who used him as a demonstration that blacks are not mentally 

inferior to whites.

The place of his birth appears to have been between present day Liberia and Benin.Known as negro Tom, he was described as a very black man he lived in Virginia after being brought to the United States as a slave.Later in life he was 

property of Elixabeth Coxe Alexandria.

He was known as the Virginia Calculator,was stolen from his native Africa at the age of  fourteen and sold to a planter. When Thomas was about seventy two gentlemen, from Pennsylvania,William & Samuel Coates, men of  probity and 

respectable powers in arithmetic sent for him and had their curiosity sufficiently 

gratified by the answers which he gave to the following questions: First,Upon being asked how many seconds there were in a year and a half,he answered in 

about two minutes, 47 304 000. Second: On being asked how many seconds a man has lived who is 70 years old, 17 days and 12 hours old, he answered in a minute 

and half 2 210 500 800. One of the gentlemen who employed himself  with his pen

in making these calculations told him he was wrong,and the sum was not so great as he said- upon which the old man hastily replied: stop,master, you fotget the leap year. On adding the amount of the seconds of the leap years the amount of the whole in both their sums agreed exactly.

Another question was asked and satisfactorily answered. Before two other gentlemen he gave the amount of nine figures multiplied by nine... Thomas 

died at the age of 80 years old, having never learned to read or write,in spite 

of his extraoridinary power of calculation.

He did not learn to calculate while in the United States.

"The Witherspoon School for The Colored" 1858

This was a school  that operated for African Americans that operated before the Civil War. Located in Princeton New Jersey,it first opened its doors on a building on the corner of Maclean and Witherspoon streets.One of the teachers was Besty Stockton.She was a slave owned by the Stockton family. Before the the Witherspoon School was opened,she taught students in a house or a church as early as 1848.In the early 1900s, Paul Robeson attended the school for three years.

Soon after the school opened, Princeton Township arranged to send their African American children too. On February 20, 1908, a new site was purchased on Quarry Street,and the building on the corner of Maclean and Witherspoon streets

was abandoned.While it operated as a school for the colored,the Quarry Street 

building was still known as the Witherspoon School.The school paper was called 

the "Witherspoon Hearld." The building was reconstructed in 1938 as the least 

expensive solution to fixing an overcrowded, run-down school instead of desegregating the schools,which would have required more expensive renovations.

While the building was being renovated, students attended classes in the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church and the Elks lodge ( now the Masonic Lodge on the corner of John & Maclean Streets). The building was rededicated 

on December 7th,1939.Its Principal from 1936-1948 was Howard B. Waxwood,Jr.

Became the John Witherspoon School Principal between 1948-1968.In 1947, the 

State of New Jersey determined that school segregation was unconstitutional.

The desegregation plan,called the Princeton Plan,called for the Nassau Street School to house kindergarten through grade five. The Witherspoon School Served 

grades six through eight.

Jude Hall (1744- August 1827)

Revolutionary War soldier, was born a slave in Exeter, New Hampshire. 

His first known master was Philemon Blake of nearby Kensington,on whose farm Jude worked,who sold him to his fellow townsman Nathaniel Healy in early 1775.Jude was so distressed by the sale that he ran away from his new master and had made it far as Amherst,New Hampshire,when the first battle of the Revolution broke out at Lexington and Concord.With the uproar caused throughout New England by the war's outbreak he could have mad an easy escape.He seems to have been filled with the patriotic spirit of the day and on May 10th 1775 he enlisted as a soldier in the company of Captain Jacob Hind in Colonel James Reed's Third New Hampshire Regiment.

Jude service in the New Hampshire militia was not unsual.While New Hampshire had a 1719 statue that prohibited African Americans (along with the mental ill and "Native Americans) from serving in the militia,the law was ignored and African American soldiers were mustered,paid the same,and shared the same hardships as any other colonies, notably Massachusetts and Connecticut,was the subject of considerable debate,the same did not hold true for New Hampshire,and 

nearly two hundred African American men that saw service in the state's forces have been documented.The legal condition under which New Hampshire's African American soldiers (and sailors) performed their service was varied; some were freed men, others were slaves who were freed by conscientious masters on the eve of the Revolution,and some were slaves that purchased their freedom with the bounty money they received for enlisting.Not be forgotten are those men that served in the army,sometimes as substitutes for their masters,and were only freed when their service was over,as well a small number of men that served 

but never gained their freedom and remained slaves even after the war

ended. as for Jude,tradition holds that he was formally freed,by presumably by Nathaniel,after his military service was completed.

Whether or not Jude's company commander had any reservations about using African American soldiers is unknowm; if he did,his fears were quickly dispelled as Jude was a tough soldier.He fought with his regiment at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17 1775 and was "thrown headlong by a cannonball striking near him" while stationed at the rail fence at the bottom of the hill.Jude would continue serving in the Third New Hampshire until November 13 1776. He then immediately re-enlisted in Col.Nathan Hale's Second New Hampshire Regiment.The reasons for this switch are unknown,they may have been motivated by the lure of additional bounty money for additional term of service,as well as chance to serve with men from the part of the state that Jude knew well, Kensington, included.Despite the fact that Jude had ran away, the town of Kensington claimed him as one of its own soldiers; so did Amherst, where Jude had stopped his running to enlist.

The two towns would later argue over the matter,futher demonstrating that color was not an issue when it came to troop enlistment in the state.

Described on his regiment muster rolls "Negro," twenty-three years old, five feet, ten inches tall, with "black" complexion, 

hair, and eyes,he became a battle-hardened veteran and served with his regiment at least through 1782. He particularly distinguished himself in the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778,gaining the nickname "Old Rock" in fighting that took place in 100 heat.Later in the war Jude served garrison duty with his regiment in the area of West Point, New York, from January to February 1783 Jude was absent on leave and may have returned to Exeter or Kensington, New Hampshire, to spend time with his future wife, Rhoda Paul.Whether or not he returned to serve with the New Hampshire Battalion until its disbandment in January 1784 is unknown but likely.It would not be until 1786 that he was paid in full for his seven years of nearly uninterrupted miluitary service.

As with many veterans, both African Americans and white, times were tough for Jude after the war, and he suffered through many economic and physical hardships, the latter no doubt aggravated by his years of grueling service. Living in and around the Former Revolution established population of free African Americans, he was warned out of town a number of times-indicating his severe poverty.In 1786 he married Rhoda Paul and they would have ten children. Life for their children was equally difficult; three of his grown children sons were kidnapped and sold into slavery, two of whom were never heard from again. For a time the family lived in a cabin in the woods near Exeter, close to a body of water called Jude's Pond, Jude was known as a skilled fisherman. The family's financial situation eased somewhat in 1818 when he began receiving a small pension for his military service. After his death, Rhoda moved to Maine and colected a wodow's pension until her death in 1844.

His service as a soldier in the American Revolution is respresntative of the valuable service peformed by large numbers of patriotic African American soldiers from New England. Though his own future freedom was assured, Jude and others like him fought as if they were indeed free men.In the case of Jude, his influence would continue beyond his own lifetime; during the Civil War two of his grandsons, Moses ( third U.S. Colored Regiment) and Aaron (Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment) Hall would enlist as soldiers undoubtedly spurred on by the legendary service of their granddaddy.

John-Berry-Meachum" (1789-1854)

Was an African American pastor,business man,educator and founder of the First African Baptist Church St.Louis,the oldest African American church west of the Mississippi River.

At a time when it was illegal in the city to teach African Americans to read and write,John 

operated a school in the church's basement. He also circumvented a Missouri state law 

banning education for African American by creating the Floating Freedom School  on a steamboat on the Mississippi River.

As a young, he guided 75 enslaved people from Kentucky to their freedom in Indiana,

a free state.Once established in Missouri, he and his wife Mary Meachum were conductors on the Underground Railroad.They also purchased enslaved people and took them into their home until they earned enough money to repay their purchases price.The Meachums employed the enslaved people that they purchased and emancipated them when they have saved enough money to repay their purchase price.In the meantime,they were also educated and learned skills to be self-sufficient once freed.John &Mary also helped runaway enslaved people across the Mississippi and into Illinois along the 

Underground Railroad.The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing in St.Louis, thw first site 

in Missouri to be accepted in the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom,was named after Mary.

In 1846,John spoke at the National Negro Convention in Philadelphia and published the 

pamphlet An Address to all of the Colored Citizens of the United States,which stressed the importance of educational and self respect.

He was born in Goochland County,Virginia. John was the son of an enslaved Baptist minister named Thomas Granger and an enslaved woman named Patsy.Born into slavery, his slaveholder was Paul Meachum (Mitchem).  They moved to North Carolina,and after 

nine years,they moved to Hardin County,Kentucky.His owner,who John described as kind

man,allowed the young man to be hired out to work at a saltpeter cave.He also earned 

money as carpenter.With his shares of his earnings,John purchased his freedom when he was 21.John then walked 700 miles to Hanover County,Virginia,and purchased his daddy's freedom for 100 Virginia pounds.John was baptized in Virginia in 1811.After they 

accumulated more money,the daddy and son walked to Kentucky and freed John's mama 

mama and siblings.His family settled in Harrison Indiana.Remaining in Kentucky,John married  and enslaved woman named Mary.

According to John,Paul was more than 100 years of age with  75 slaves when he made 

John an offer to free his slaves if he would lead them out og Kentucky.He agreed and led  the group across the Ohio River to Harrison County Indiana,where his parents had 

settled.His parents' neighbors ran the group out of the area and the freed African Americans settled elsewhere.Paul & Susannah Mitchem were and elderly couple when they chose to move to Indiana in 1814 with about 100 enslave people.John traveled 

with them.Most of the former slaves settled around the town of Corydon in Harrison 

County.

When John returned to Kentucky,he learned that his wife's had taken her and their 

children to St.Louis Missouri,with only three dollars (equivalent $44 in 2021),he 

moved to the river port city to be with her in 1815.He saved his earnings as carpenter,

cabinet,maker,and cooper to purchase the freedom of Mary and their children. He made

a good living in the city as a cooper.

In St.Louis,he met white Baptist missionaries John Mason Peck and James Welch who 

established the Sabbath School for negroes in 1817.John began preaching and assisting the missionaries in 1821.After he was ordained by Rev. Peck in 1825,John 

constructed a separate building at the same location for the First African Baptist Church  and school.Founded in 1827,it was the first African American church west 

of  the Mississipp.By that time,there were 220 congregants,200 of whom were slaves,

who required the permission of their owners to attend church.The church continued 

to grow into the 1840s,when it had 500 parishioners.

A dee-toned missionary spirit,uncommon order and correctness among the slave population,and strict and regular discipline in the church,were among the fruits of 

his arduous preserving labor.

Allen's Register,1835.

Beginning in 1822,John taught religious and secular classes for free and enslaved African Americans.It was the first known school for African Americans in Missouri.

called the Candle Tallow School,it charged those who could pay one dollar per student

in tuition.

In 1825,the city had passed and ordinance that banned the education of free African Americans. Those in violation of the law could be whipped with 20 lashes,fined,or 

imprisoned.In 1847,the school was closed down by the police,who arrested John 

and a white teacher from England.the slave state of Missouri banned all education for 

African Americans,one of several restrictions on the lives of both enslaved African Americans and free people of color.It also prohibited them from having independent 

African American religious services without a white law enforcement officer present,

or from holding any meetings for education or religion.

John moved his classes in the middle of the Mississippi River,which was subject to federal law and outside of Missouri's jurisdiction.He supplied the riverboat with a library,desks,and chairs, and called it the "Floating Freedom School". This allowed 

him to resume his educational practices to African Americans,free snd enslaved,

eluding limitations of the then established Southern state laws.

Among John's student was James Milton Turner,who was at the school when John was arrested. He was the consul to Liberia under President Ulysses S.Grant. After the civil

war,he founded the Lincoln Institute,the first school in Missouri for higher education for

African American students.

John worked as a carpenter and cooper.He purchased enslaved, people,who studied 

under him and worked for him,and saved their earnings.When the bondsman repaid him,John meachum emanicipated them.By 1835,he was worth $25.00 (eqivalent to $ 656,694 in 2021).

John married Mary,who was born about 1805 in Kentucky.They had two children,John & William.In 1840 his household consisted of 10 free people of color and six slaves.

In 1850,they had eight African Americans living with them,two of whom were boatsmen.

John and Mary helped enslaved people gain their freedom via the Underground Railroad.They transported people by boat to the free state of Illinois.Through profits from his successful businesses,the meachums purchases and freed enslaved people.

He provided on-the-job-training. He owned two riverboats and operated a barrel-making factory,which was staffed by escaped slaves,who saved up their earnings, John and Mary purchased the freedom of around 20 slaves between 1826 & 1836. Nearly every 

person that the Meachum's freed paid them back, which provided the money to free others. 

By 1846,John had purchased the freedom of 22 people and taught them vocational and 

life skills to be self-reliant.That year,he spoke at the National Negro Convention in 

Philadelphia.He said that black people needed to receive practical,hands-on education 

so they would could support themselves after emancipation. He punctuated his arguments with Biblical references like Proverds 22:6: "Train up a child the way he should go and when he is old he will depart from it. He also wrote,

In order that we might do more for our young children, I would recommend manual labor schools to be established in the different states, so as they children could have 

free access to them. And i would recommend in these schools pious schools teachers,

either white or colored,who would take all pains with the children to bring them up in 

piety, and in industrious habits.We must endeavor to have our children look up little, for they are too many to lie in indleness and dishonor.

John Berry Meachum

After his death,Mary continued her work with the Underground Railroad. She and a free

African American man named Isaac traveled by a boat with nine slaves across the 

Mississippi River to Illinois, a free state,on May 21, 1855.Once they reached they shore ,

they were arrested and went to jail for violating the Fugitive Slave Act of  1850.On May

24,she was charged with slave theft.The charges against Isaac were dropped. The Missouri Republican reported on July 19,1855,that Mary was tried by a jury and acquitted of a at least one charge, and the remaining charges were dropped.

She was president  of  the ladies aid society in St.Louis. Because African Americans 

were not allowed to ride streetcars at that time, the women negotiated with the streetcar company to ride the streetcar one day a week,on Saturdays,to allow the 

members of the 'ladies aid society visit wounded soldiers at the segregated wing of the Hospital at Benton Barracks in St.Louis.

John died in his pulpit on February 26.