Central Pennsylvania's journey
from enslavement to freedom

The Year of Jubilee: Men of God, available here

August 1, 1834: The British Parliament decrees an end to African slavery in the West Indies. This "Emancipation Day" was celebrated in many African American communities in the United States, including Carlisle and Harrisburg, until the mid-1860s.
Read about an 1857 Harrisburg Emancipation Day celebration here.
Read about an 1845 Carlisle Emancipation Day celebration here.

August 2, 1925: Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is organized, with A. Philip Randolph elected president.

August 6, 1862: The editor of Harrisburg's Patriot and Union newspaper was arrested by military authorities on charges that he published an article discouraging enlistments. The article, which was later proved to be a prank, stated that two regiments of African American troops were to be raised in the city, and that rations, pay and bounty would be the same as received by white troops.
A detailed account of that incident may be found here.

August 7, 1847: William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass stop as invited guests in Harrisburg on their trip to Ohio. Garrison stayed with Dr. William W. Rutherford, while Douglass stayed with African American schoolteacher John Wolf. Their evening lecture at the Courthouse was violently disrupted by anti-abolition rowdies. Garrison was hit by rotten eggs and Douglass was hit by stones and bricks.
A detailed account of Douglass and Garrison's Harrisburg experiences may be found here.

August 8, 1847: William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass lectured twice at the Wesley Union A.M.E. Zion church, in Tanners' Alley. They spoke in the late morning and in the afternoon, to a crowded audience that was mostly African American, although in a letter written several days later from Pittsburgh, Garrison recalled that "a number of white [friends] were also present."
Read about their appearance at Wesley Union A.M.E Church here.

August 11, 1850: Charles Lenox Remond lectures in Harrisburg. He and his sister, Sarah Parker Remond, were the first traveling African American lecturers with the American Antislavery Society.
Many anti-slavery lecturers passed through central Pennsylvania. Read about some of them here.

August 11, 1965: A routine traffic stop near the Los Angeles community of Watts escalates into six days of violence as the local African American community vents its rage against decades of mistreatment by police and government authorities.
An excellent historical summary of the Watts Rebellion is at History.com.

August 12, 1868: Death of Thaddeus Stevens, staunch advocate of free public education, African American civil rights, and proponent of radical reconstruction in the South.
Thaddeus Stevens' anti-slavery views were strongly influenced by Jonathan Blanchard. Read about their friendship here.

August 15, 1840: Birth of Harriet McClintock Marshall, legendary Harrisburg Underground Railroad worker. She married escaped slave Elisha Marshall in Wesley Union church in June 1864.
Harriet McClintock Marshall on the UGRR Whos Who
Marker in Lincoln Cemetery honoring the USCT, placed by members of the Marshall and McClintock families

August 15, 1852: Fourteen freedom seekers from Washington County, Maryland enter Harrisburg, most likely forwarded by Underground Railroad agents in Chambersburg. Most of the group were reported to have escaped from a Mrs. Pendleton in Maryland. Although pursued by Slave Commissioner Richard McAllister's men, most of this group of freedom seekers remained at large in Harrisburg.

Source: Sunbury (Pennsylvania) American, 28 August, 1852, p.2.

August 16, 1834: On a Saturday night, a campaign of violence and vandalism against the homes of African American residents in Columbia, Lancaster County, began. It would culminate with a full-scale riot by a white mob in the town's African American neighborhood four days later.
News articles about these incidents may be found here.

August 16, 1838: American Anti-slavery Society agent Daniel Alexander Payne undertakes a speaking circuit through Pennsylvania, beginning in Philadelphia, where he meets with James Forten, Charles W. Gardiner, and Robert Purvis, among others.
Read more about the "anti-slavery pilgrims" that visited central Pennsylvania.

August 17, 1855: In response to T. Morris Chester's advocation of African Colonization in Liberia, William Nesbit of Altoona, who had recently visited the colony and found it undesirable, challenged Chester to debate the subject at Wesley Union Church. Chester declined to appear, so Nesbit delivered a speech against African Colonization to the assembled African American residents and visitors from nearby towns.
Details about this event may be found here.

August 19, 1834: After nightfall on Tuesday evening, August 19, 1834, a mob of about fifty white boys and men rioted in Columbia's African American neighborhood, terrifying the residents by stoning their houses, breaking windows, and firing guns. The demonstration lasted until 1 a.m.
News articles about this event may be found here.

August 20, 1859: John Brown meets Frederick Douglass in an abandoned stone quarry in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in a last attempt to convince Douglass to join his raid on Harpers Ferry. Douglass, believing the plan would hinder the cause of abolition, declines to be included.
Read a detailed description of John Brown's Chambersburg operations here.

August 21, 1619: Twenty African slaves are brought to the settlement of Jamestown in the colony of Virginia, marking the beginning of slavery in British North America.

August 21, 1829: Wesley Church is founded in Harrisburg. Organized by a group of local African American residents, it began holding services in a small log building at Third and Mulberry Streets, in the Judystown neighborhood. Its first pastor was Rev. David Stevens.
The story of the founding of Wesley Union Church in Harrisburg may be found here.

August 21, 1843: Henry Highland Garnet delivers his address to the delegates of the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York in which he urged all enslaved Blacks to rise immediately in rebellion to force an end to slavery. Garnet thundered "Now is the day and the hour. Let every slave throughout the land do this, and the days of slavery are numbered. You cannot be more oppressed than you have been -- you cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have already. Rather die freemen than live to be slaves. Remember that you are FOUR MILLIONS!". His speech shocked the nation but became a rallying point for radical abolitionists.
Read the text of Garnet's "Call to Rebellion" here.

August 22, 1831: Nat Turner begins his rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner's group killed 55 whites before being scattered by militia. In the violent aftermath, more than 200 slaves and free Blacks would be killed in retribution.

August 22, 1848: Oliver C. Kelly and fourteen other men who had escaped enslavement in Howard County, Maryland by fleeing from a Camp Meeting arrived at sunset in "Little York" after two harrowing days of travel. Here, they were greeted by William Goodridge, who put them on the road to Columbia, from where they walked to Lancaster the next day, and were directed by Thaddeus Stevens to the farm of Daniel and Hannah Gibbons. Oliver Kelly adopted the surname Gilbert, and his reminiscences are one of the best primary sources of the workings of the Underground Railroad.
Read the full story here.

August 23, 1845: In Lancaster, William Dorsey is remanded south to slavery by Judge Lewis. Dorsey had for several years been a employee at one of the iron furnaces owned by Clement B. Grubb, and had married in Lancaster County. Upon hearing of the court's ruling, Clement Grubb purchased Dorsey's freedom for $600.
A short biography of Clement Brooke Grubb is found here.

August 24, 1850: Harrisburg experiences its most significant fugitive slave related violence as a large crowd of local African American residents threatens some Virginia slave catchers who were attempting to subdue resistant fugitives in an anteroom of the county prison. Harrisburg resident Joseph Pople attacked the Virginians, allowing one of the fugitives to escape with the help of the crowd. Judge John J. Pearson ordered the immediate arrest of the slave catchers and the two remaining slaves and issued warrants for the arrest of nine local Blacks on charges of creating a riot.
Read a detailed account of this landmark resistance here.

August 26, 1847: Trial begins in Carlisle of Dickinson College professor John McClintock and thirty-four local African American citizens on charges of rioting, rescuing two slaves who were lawfully within the possession of their owner, and assault and battery on slaveholder John Kennedy, who died from his injuries, and bystander John Black. McClintock and twenty-one of the defendants were acquitted of all charges. Eleven of those found guilty served nine months in Eastern Penitentiary in solitary confinement before their sentence was reversed by the state Supreme Court.
The Carlisle McClintock Slave Rescue is told in detail here.

August 27, 1839: The slave ship Amistad is discovered by a U.S. Coast Guard brig off the coast of Long Island. Two surviving crewmembers told of the mutiny by slaves to secure their freedom. It took a U.S. Supreme Court decision to finally return the Africans home to their Mende tribal lands late in 1841.

August 29, 1835: A colonization meeting, billed as an "anti-abolition" meeting, is held in the Dauphin County Courthouse. The meeting is attended by Charles C. Rawn, who agrees to draft an address of the Harrisburg Colonization Society's aims.

August 29, 1963: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his "I Have A Dream" speech at the Washington Memorial during the "March on Washington" civil rights demonstration.
Visit the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the Capital Area Greenbelt.

August 30, 1839: The Amistad is towed into New London, Connecticut and its 53 African revolutionists are imprisoned, pending trial for murder and piracy. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Africans. They were finally put on a ship and returned to thier homeland in Africa.