Local black history informs all of us

Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, February 3, 2017.

Black History Month in Wilmington is haunted by a lot of ghosts.

Many of them are the ghosts of Nov. 10, 1898, when white mobs burned a black-owned newspaper, forced dozens of African-American officials out of office and hustled black community leaders onto northbound trains. The death toll from that carnage is still a matter of debate.

Those horrors poisoned race relations in New Hanover County for decades. The old Morning Star, our predecessor, has more than its share of blame for that poisoning; the record shows that its editor, W.H. Bernard, was a key conspirator in the so-called “riot.”

The violence of 1898, however, did not crush Wilmington’s African-American community. Its citizens soldiered on under the burdens of Jim Crow, and they did more than survive. They achieved, remarkably.

Black History Month is a time to recall heroes. One could start with Green Beret Staff Sgt. Eugene Ashley Jr., who earned a posthumous Medal of Honor rallying troops against a North Vietnamese night attack.

Others fought wars on the home front, such as Dr. Hubert A. Eaton Sr., a dedicated physician who served as plaintiff in most of the county’s desegregation battles. Newspaper publisher Thomas Jervay gave people in the black community a voice; the StarNews -- at best -- had pretty much ignored them until the mid-1960s.

Inspired educators from D.C. Virgo to Bertha Todd and Carter W. Newsome labored under hard conditions to give African-American youth a start in life.

Preachers and priests -- such as Bishop Herbert Bell Shaw, who became a worldwide leader in the AME Zion Church -- kept the faith and raised their people’s spirits.

Wilmington's African-American community produced artists from opera singer Caterina Jarboro to jazz master Percy Heath. The visionary artworks of Minnie Evans drew nationwide recognition.

Countless strong figures broke down barriers, such as former Sheriff Joe McQueen and Derick G.S. Davis, director of recreation for the city of Wilmington.

As we look at old records with new eyes, some heroes are being rediscovered. Thomas Peters, a slave in Wilmington at the dawn of the American Revolution, became one of the founding fathers of the modern-day African nation of Sierra Leone.

Abraham Galloway, an escaped slave from Brunswick County, became a daring spy for the Union in the Civil War; afterward, he became a state senator from Wilmington and one of the authors of North Carolina’s constitution.

This is a heritage that young people, black and white, need to learn and heed. It’s heartening, then, to see the release of “Wilmington, N.C., in Color,” a coloring book of local black heritage sites, compiled by students at New Hanover High School with the help of teachers and faculty from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Distributing this book and others like it to area schools will be a helpful start.

We cannot change the past, but we can study it as a guide to make the future better.

As one wag put it, Black History Month should really last all year long. In the meantime, we can use February to learn more about ourselves, and each other.

http://www.starnewsonline.com/opinion/20170203/editorial-feb-3-local-black-history-informs-all-of-us