Slavery

A series on the Underground Railroad in the Tri-State area; Sunday, Jan. 25: An overview of the Underground Railroad Today: Slavery and the path to freedom in West Virginia. Sunday, Feb. 8: A look at the history of Washington County and other parts of Maryland as slaves sought freedom. Sunday, Feb. 15: Fugitive slaves reached free soil when they crossed into Pennsylvania, but that did not mean they were safe from slave catchers. andrear@herald-mail.

It's been more than 140 years since the end of slavery in the United States and yet its legacy still adversely affects the health of African-Americans, according to author Richard Williams. And, he suggests that white people are also affected in negative ways by what happened way back when, in part because society hasn't really had a frank dialogue about racial issues. Williams, who will be in Hagerstown April 27 to speak at a banquet for the No Smoking Youth Club at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, knows what he's talking about.

SHARPSBURG - Antietam National Battlefield joined in the national recognition of Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States, with a series of talks on the Emancipation Proclamation, held Sunday in the battlefield's visitor center. The holiday commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued more than two years before, but with little effect in the Confederate-controlled state.

Why celebrate a black mark on our history? To the editor: So April is a time set aside to remember or honor the Confederacy. Why? It would seem to me that Germany might just as well set aside a month to honor the Nazi Holocaust. Both were an attempt by a nation to deprive a portion of its populace of its God given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Both sought to declare that the respective group (blacks and Jews) were not fully human, that it was God's decree that they should be inferior, that they should be treated like things, and in the case of at least the blacks, that they were happier and more contented to be kept in slavery and treated like incompetent little children.

On an overcast, drizzly day on Oct. 16, 1859, John Brown and his fully armed raiders marched into Harpers Ferry, then in Virginia, marking what some historians argue is the first step toward the American Civil War. This year marks the 150th anniversary of John Brown's Raid, and his subsequent death by hanging on Dec. 2, 1859. As a way to commemorate what transpired out of Brown's efforts, the Quad-State region has banded together for a sesquicentennial commemoration of John Brown's Raid, according to Todd Bolton, events committee chair of the Sesquicentennial Quad-State Committee.

chambersburg@herald-mail.com CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. - John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but the former boarding house where he planned the Harpers Ferry, W.Va., raid is in good repair, thanks to the Kittochtinny Historical Society and the Boonsboro man who provided it with the money to purchase the property. The society on Sunday honored Wilbur R. McElroy and family as benefactors of the John Brown House at a reception attended by about 80 people at King Street United Brethren Church.