“̶H̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶m̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶q̶u̶o̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶l̶i̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶A̶m̶e̶r̶i̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶s̶m̶a̶n̶.̶”̶ — “There is no race problem before the country, but only a political one, the question whether a Republican has any right to exist south of Mason and Dixon’s line.” — Frederick Douglass (1890). The same year Frederick Douglass uttered these words at Tremont Temple in Boston, Judge David Schenck —…

“The Great Escape From Slavery of Ellen and William Craft” — This short chapter (XX) of North Carolina’s first official Black history textbook (1894), which contains no revisions to the original text of the 1891 edition, focuses exclusively on “The Great Escape From Slavery of Ellen and William Craft” — which Marian Smith Holmes covered in more detail in Smithsonian Magazine…

While enslaved Blacks were used by Confederates for “building fortifications and in performing various kinds of labor”, there were “over 100,000 Negroes in the Union ranks, and over 50,000 armed and equipped on the fields of battle” by summer of 1863. — “I hope this miserable war will soon close.” — Alexander Keener, in a letter to his wife Ruth, in January of 1864 (as quoted in The Catawbans: Crafters of a North Carolina County 1747–1900 (1995)

As “The Civil War” (was “T̶h̶e̶ ̶W̶a̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶R̶e̶b̶e̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶”) Begins… As noted by Sarah Shepherd (2018), Johnson’s original Black history textbook “had little sympathy for the South; the Civil War, which he called the War of Rebellion, ‘was destined to shake the very foundation of Southern civilization.’” You may…

While recognizing “the hand of Providence in it all… — “I know folks think the books tell the truth, but they shore don’t.” — Martin Luther Bost (1937) A “faithful, consistent, and valuable” member of the German Reformed church, “Major Finger” was described by the Charlotte Observer as “a worthy member of the Masonic fraternity, a consistent Christian, an educated…

But some disagreement on the race of ancient Egyptians. — “This Biblical story has been the single greatest justification for Black slavery for more than a thousand years. It is a strange justification indeed, for there is no reference in it to Blacks at all. And yet just about everyone, especially in the antebellum American South, understood that in this…

By John Sinclair Leary (1845–1904), youngest brother of Lewis Sheridan Leary who was mortally wounded at Harpers Ferry during John Brown’s Holy War (1859). John wrote this chapter for Edward A. Johnson’s A School History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1890 (1890). However, it was removed from the 1894 revision approved for use in NC public schools. — THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR IN NORTH CAROLINA. BY THE HON JOHN S. LEARY.