The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
FIGHT FOR EQUALITY
Emancipation Day: Annual remembrance looks at America’s past, lays down hopes for the future
PETERBORO, N.Y. » The history of Peterboro’s role in the abolition movement was celebrated and remembered at the ninth annual Peterboro Emancipation Day Saturday.
The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark committee hosts the gathering to honor Gerrit Smith and what he did for African Americans and all Americans.
“Smith was the most powerful abolitionist in the United States,” Dr. Norman Dann, local author and professor, said. “That was because of his philanthropy. In our terms, he would have been a multi-billionaire. But he didn’t want money and gave it away to anyone who was oppressed. And the two big movements at the time was the abolition of slavery and women’s rights. He gave to them, over his lifetime, millions of dollars to help people pursue their goals.”
After his passing in 1925, more than 600 African American men and women from Central New York traveled to Peterboro to pay homage to abolitionists who fought for freedom.
Now in 2018, Peterboro again serves as the destination for those wishing to honor the abolition efforts and the role Peterboro served in the fight against slavery.
“Our lives are molded by what all of these people did 150 years ago and these movements are still with us,” Dann said.
But with the torch passed on, it’s up to people like the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark committee and those who support them.
“We’re all here for one purpose,” committee cochair Max Smith said. “That America must live up to its creed: that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And so I embrace this and embrace coming back here because it’s my heritage and because I want to do something, anything in my own way to make sure we stay on the path and move forward.”
Smith said after it was learned by the committee that former slaves were buried at the Peterboro Cemetery who had no markers, money was raised by people who supported them over the years to buy gravestones for six former slaves over the years.
This year, wreaths were laid on the graves of Maria Howard and Thomas Jefferson Potter.
Howard died on Feb. 17, 1869 at 50 years of age at the residence of the Rev. William F. Bridge, who was the last minister at the Free Church of Peterboro and, at the same time, principal of the Peterboro Evans Academy. Bridge conducted Howard’s funeral. She was one of 37 slaves who were owned by Elias Creswell of New Orleans, La., and freed by Gerrit Smith in 1852. She was also one of the last of 17 who came to Peterboro, and then apparently lived in other towns in the area – including with the Daniel Dorrance family in Vernon .
Potter was born a slave about 1816, in an unknown place. Potter’s freedom was later purchased by Naaham Goodsell of Clinton, N.Y., who also paid for Potter’s education. Potter later moved to Peterboro, where he subscribed to the Madison & Onondaga Abolitionist, a Cazenovia newspaper, in 1841. At an 1842 Cazenovia anti-slavery convention, a long let- ter from Potter was read in which the writer indicated: “I ask the whole American people, had I not rather die, or be put to death, than to be a slave to any tyrant who takes not only my own, but my wife and children’s lives, by inches?” On June 7, 1843, Potter died “near Peterboro,” and his obituary confirms his attendance at Gerrit Smith’s Manual Labor School. His funeral was conducted by the Rev. Abel Schofield.
One wreath was placed near the gravestones of Howard and Potter, while another wreath was placed on the headstone of Gerrit Smith.
“Thousands of people came through Peterboro during the abolition movement. And many times, Gerrit Smith would buy slaves and free them,” Smith said. “At the time, people said he shouldn’t do that because he was putting money in the hands of slave owners. Gerrit thought differently and said to every man, women and child that I buy from slavery, their lives are changed forever and that means something to them. Maria Howard was one of those people and spent her remaining years here in Peterboro after living a life of slavery on a plantation.”
While the fight for freedom and abolition is widely discussed, local resident Jacob Donovan- Colin said there is something that isn’t talked about and must be remembered; the racial terror of lynchings in the United States.
Donovan- Colin spent the majority of his childhood living and playing in Peterboro. After graduating from Morrisville High School, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy to serve his country and travel the world. Upon completion of his service, he returned to upstate New York and eventually bought the home in Peterboro in which he grew up. A graduate of Morrisville State College and Cornell University, Donovan- Colin is currently working on an advanced degree from Syracuse University, where he also works as a steam plant operations supervisor. He currently sits on the Smithfield Community Association and Smithfield Planning boards.
Donovan- Colin was invited to Alabama and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice at the Equal Justice Initiative and for Emancipation Day’s afternoon event, discussed his trip to Mongomery and the memorial.
“The way you heal and make a better future is to acknowledge what you did,” Donovan-Colin said.
Between 1877 and 1950, around 4,000 African Americans were lynched in the United States, without any thoughts to their right for a fair trial. In a presentation by the EJI, the “racial terror lynchings” of the South caused millions of African Americans to flee the South to the North as refugees and exiles.
The EJI embarked on a project to memorialize this history by visiting hundreds of lynching sites, collecting soil and erecting public markers, in an effort to reshape the cultural landscape with monuments and memorials that more truthfully and accurately reflect U.S. history.
The Memorial for Peace and Justice was conceived with the hope of creating a sober, meaningful site where people can gather and reflect on America’s history of racial inequality. Donovan-Colin said the most striking thing about the Memorial for Peace and Justice is when first entering, people see metal columns erected with the state, county and names of those people lynched there.
“As you walk further in, the columns rise off the ground and are suspended in the air,” Donovan-Colin said. “As if they were hanging.”
Donovan- Colin said in his presentation that he remembered when the United States was in the height of conflict with ISIS and a pilot had been captured. A video was released of ISIS members setting fire to the pilot, trapped in a cage and forced to die by the flames.
“I remember watching that and thinking what kind of monster could do that,” Donovan-Colin said. “But we can be monsters too. We have been.”
Donovan- Colin said what is being seen a lot today is the resurgence in white supremacy and an air of it being okay.
Just this Friday, the Oneida County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to the outskirts of Rome after residents found Ziploc bags with printed information about the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
“It’s almost as if it’s okay to come out as racist and that’s all right. And the biggest thing I think is there needs to be a counter to that,” Donovan- Colin said. “There has to be a counterweight and say no, it’s not all right. And a lot of ways, we’re doing that. We just need to keep telling the story and confronting the truth. As long as we do that, we’ll be going in the right direction.