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African-American history(Continued from Page 1)and the Quinn African Methodist Episcopalian Church were used as hospitals after the Battle of Anhetam during the Civil War.Other sites m Frederick Countv include churches and schools in villages where black Frederick Coimtians clustered. Bartonsvilte is the home of the St. James AME Church and the Jackson United Methodist Chapel, two African-American churches. It was also the home of the Bartonsville Comet BandThe musical heritage in Bartonsville runs deep. The community spawned musical progeny Lester Bowie. The legendary jazz trumpeter, who spent most of his adult life in Chicago, learned his art from many of his older relatives who played for the Bartonsviile Comet Band. Bowie, who died in 1999, is a member of the Down Beat Hail of Fame.Another famous African-American who had an early start in Frederick was the tum-of-the-20thcentury expatriate artist Henry O’Tanner, whose father, Bar\jamin Tucker Campbell was the principal at the 19th-century freemen’s school.Catoctin Fhrnace and the Brunswick Railroad Museum both detail a segment of black history that is little known. Black slaves worked at the iron furnace, which was built in 1775. A museum at the Thurmont site details the contributions slaves made to the furnace. African Americans also worked on the railroad and the CO Canal, and those contributions are outlined at the Brunswick Railroad Museum.“To know the history here and to have it outlined in a brochure in organized form is something we have been working on for a long time,” said Alfemia Dailey, an AARCH committee member. “It should be very meaningful to everyone.”“It seems like there has been nothing offered for black people coming into Frederick while many other places often have (African-American) tours,” Ms. Onley said.She is the author of “Memories,” a memoir about growing up in segregated Frederick during the 1950s. Ms. Onley was one of the first black students at the formerly all-white Frederick High School in the early 1960s.At a press conference touting the tour oh Monday, the day Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was celebrated, a collection of memorabilia accompanied literature on the tour. Along with photos, there was a booklet of by-laws for the African American Building and Improvement.There was also a 1934 petition signed by a dozen African-American voters asking city leaders to consider lights for Lincoln High School, Frederick’s high school for blacks, jobs for black men, a pool at Mullinix Park and better pavement in streets and alleys in the African-American neighborhoods. Signers included Dr. U.6. Bourne, William Fletcher, William Diggs, Samuel Stroud, James Dorsey and Robert Henderson.There was also a three-ring notebook containing a history of Lincoln High School from 1920 to 1962, and a collection of badges from the various lodges that met regularly at the Pythian Castle. One of those organizations was the Emancipation Association.“This is one half of a dream I’ve had for 20 years, said William 0. Lee, a former Frederick alderman and the chairman of the AARCH museum feasibility study task force. “The other half is a museum of African-American history in Frederick” The committee, as the name states, is investigating that possibility.“This is a culmination of meetings about how we can do what we like to do, which is share stories,” said John Fieseler, director of the Tourism Council of Frederick County.“Frederick is a really nice place to come,” Ms. Onley said “By having an (African-American) tour, we’re saying we do have something to offer everyone.”
Newspaper Details
Frederick County Leader
Frederick, Maryland, US
Fri, Jan 25, 2002
Page 6
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 29 Jan 2024
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