Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
East Linden Street showcases its past and present
KENNETT SQUARE » Friends, neighbors and visitors from out-of-town came to one of the borough’s oldest and most historic streets on Saturday to mark Juneteenth. The day is called that because it was June 19th in 1865 that Union soldiers finally landed in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War had ended and the enslaved were now free. Curiously, it took two-anda-half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which had become official in 1863, for the message to get there.
Thus, when the last of the slaves were notified, it became cause for a day of remembrance.
Starting several decades before that, black slaves from the south were escaping and traveling north to freedom along what became known as the Underground Railroad. It wasn’t an actual track with trains along rails, rather a route well known among the escaping slaves where they could stop at safe places along the way at the homes of people who were sympathetic to their cause.
Kennett Square was well known to be along that route, especially because it had been settle by Quakers who believed in freedom for blacks and rights for all races and genders.
Two of those Quakers specifically were Samuel Pennock and Edwin Brosius, businessmen who had settled on East Linden Street around 1846, according to resident Theresa Bass, who was among the hosts of Saturday’s event. That set a culture on East Linden Street especially inviting to African Americans seeking safety.
Although there are no officially documented homes with identified Underground Railroad hiding places on East Linden, Bass said several people who have houses there have found unusual features like sub cellars and passage-
ways that exit in unusual directions.
Saturday’s Juneteenth celebration — the borough’s second in two years — showcased the strides East Linden Street has made in its long history. It has become a vibrant, safe and multiracial neighborhood that has much to offer its residents and their children.
Bass, who has lived most of her 60-plus years on the street, said she remembers how conditions declined in the late 1900s. There were drugs, crime and insufficient police protection. Then in 2005, after enduring the frequent nighttime arrivals of prostitutes and
drug dealers, the neighbors rose up and asked for police intervention.
They also formed a new non-profit called Historic East Linden Street to put the neighborhood back on its feet and place itself in position to apply for grants.
Bass was instrumental in much of that renaissance and said she was inspired by her Uncle Oddie, who was a school teacher in North Carolina who rose to earn an honorary doctorate at a college. “He said he was an old slave,” Bass said,
On display Saturday were the fruits of the persistent efforts of local residents.
Highly visible were the kids who participate in the Study Buddies program, which has evolved into the name of the Carter Development Cooperation Study Buddies, in honor of Joseph and Sarah Carter, who were the first African American couple to buy a house on East Linden Street.
The Study Buddies serve between 15 and 20 kids four afternoons a week and help with homework. Meaghan Toohey, who heads the program said it has been extended to go throughout the summer on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1 to 3 p.m.
“We added a fifth day (Friday) during the school year, and the kids all cheered,” Toohey said.
Also on display Saturday was an extensive and impressive pop-up historical museum in the basement of New Garden Memorial UAME Church run by the Kennett Underground Railroad Center members. Many pictures, books and items of paraphernalia were on display, and quite a few representatives were there to answer questions.
UGRRC President John O’Neal had a set of leg irons which brutal slave owners used to control their black workers. UGRRC board member Terry McGuire had a wooden shipping box that a slave actually used to ship himself North to freedom.
Mayor Matt Fetick and members of the Kennett Square Police Department
were there to interact with the children, reading to and speaking with them, and then being read to by the kids. The police, as well as residents and visitors, all participated in a “cake walk” a dancing contest among African Americans in which a cake was awarded as a prize for being on the picked number when the music stops.
There was a walking tour by dwellings of historic interest, a movie “The Whispers of Angels” in the Kennett Library, a drum presentation and much more.
The Juneteenth celebration was organized by Historic Kennett Square Mainstreet organization. The groups included were Kennett Underground Railroad, Bethel UAME Church, Study Buddies, Kennett Library, Kennett Underground Railroad Center, Martin Luther King CommUNITY and New Garden Memorial UAME Church.
Bass noted that East Linden Street is now or has been in the past home to many familiar black families. She listed Rochester, Brown, Walls, Carter, Dennison, Brison, Jackson, Smith and Anderson, among others. She credited much of the success of East Linden’s revitalization to the family-like atmosphere among neighbors and the dedication to the local police, including the late Chief Eddie Zunino.