Righting a Wrong in Harpers Ferry
In recent long-delayed acknowledgement of our own dark past, many Confederate monuments have been taken down throughout the South and in border states. Though there are some resisters (“fine people on both sides,” Trump said at Charlottesville, Virginia when neo-Nazis sought to preserve the prominent statue of Robert E. Lee), by and large these relics of the Lost Cause have been consigned to the dustheap of history, or at least relocated to less prized locations.
And then there’s the stone memorial in Harpers Ferry. W.Va., to Haywood Shepherd, the black B&O Railroad baggage handler fatally shot by John Brown’s men as they seized control of the town and federal armory in an ultimately unsuccessful effort in October 1859 to incite a slave rebellion. Shepherd was a free man of color who lived in nearby Winchester, Va., and commuted to his job in Harpers Ferry. His ironic death made him a martyr to the defenders of slavery long after the North’s triumph in the bloody Civil War had abolished it.
At a time when statues of Confederate soldiers nobly posed were being erected on courthouse lawns across the South (and in Maryland towns like Rockville, in Montgomery County, and Easton, the Talbot County seat, on the Eastern Shore), the United Daughters of the Confederacy deemed it appropriate and forever timely to dedicate a memorial tablet in Harpers Ferry to Haywood Shepherd. In 1905, the UDC made clear its motivation in promoting such a tablet as a “monument to the faithful old slaves who remained loyal and true to their owners in the dark days.”
On Oct. 10, 1931, a crowd of some 300 — including 200 whites and 100 blacks — gathered to formally dedicate the tablet praising Shepherd as “an industrious and respected colored freeman….This boulder is “a memorial to Haywood [sic] Shepherd exemplifying the character and faithfulness of thousands of Negroes who, under many temptations, throughout the subsequent years of war, so conducted themselves that no stain was left upon the records that is the peculiar heritage of the American people, and an everlasting tribute to the best of both races.” The white president of Storer College, established on Camp Hill above the lower town in 1867 to educate the formerly enslaved, tried to turn the event into one of reconciliation between the races.
But the UDC president, in her remarks, chose to reassert the Lost Cause, claiming that “the Negro in the South was well clothed, well housed.” She waxed nostalgic about “that old black mammy who shared our lives, nursed our children, was our confidant… Mammy is now old and decrepit, but she lives in a little rose-covered cottage in my yard, and there she will live until her spirit goes marching on… We of the South are true to the Union; we are true to the stars and stripes, and yet, in a higher and truer sense, to the stars and the bars.”
It was all too much for Pearl Tatten, a black woman who directed the Storer College choir, which was on the program. Unscheduled, she rose to express her outrage. “I am the daughter of a Connecticut volunteer, who wore the blue, who fought for the freedom of my people, for which John Brown struck the first blow.” The old white ladies were not amused, but the Afro-American newspaper called her “Barbara Fritchie in Black at Harper’s Ferry.”
And there the Shepherd tablet stood until late in the last century when it was temporarily put into storage during renovation of some lower town buildings. It re-emerged into controversy, sheathed for a time in plywood while arguments raged over its ultimate fate. When it was finally uncovered, in 1995, the Park Service erected an interpretive plaque nearby that could rightly be accused of both siderism. It featured a sketch of Shepherd and a few sentences about the 1931 dedication. “During the ceremony, voices raised to praise and denounce the monument. Conceived around the turn of the century, the monument has endured controversy. In 1905, the United Daughters of the Confederacy stated the ‘erecting the monument would influence for good the present and coming generations and prove that the white men of the South were the negro’s best friends and that the men of the South are the negro’s best friends today.'”
The Park Service plaque provided what it termed “another perspective” that quoted W.E.B. DuBois which, it said, “responded to the Shepherd monument by penning these words.” The words, however, were an ode to John Brown, made no mention of Shepherd or the monument, and were intended to be on a plaque at Storer College, at a meeting of the NAACP that was held there that summer. But the trustees had refused to accept the inscription. It wasn’t until 2006 that these words found their rightful place on the campus, by then under the Park Service.
This alternative “perspective” also omitted any reference to Pearl Tatten and her dramatic remarks. In 2017, I blogged about what I regarded as this sanitizing and misrepresentation of history by the Park Service. So, imagine my surprise and delight last Sunday to see the old interpretive sign gone, replaced by one that did justice to the past. “I just had to speak out,” is the bold headline, a direct quote from Pearl Tatten.
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And then, there was this…
Last Sunday, Oct. 13, on the anniversary weekend of the 1859 raid, I was privileged to give a talk about Osborne Perry Anderson, the sole survivor, who wrote the only inside account. He was one of the men I highlight in my book Five for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown’s Army. I also devote an entire chapter to “Hapless Haywood Shepherd,” with a full account of the man’s life, death and the aftermath, including the controversial stone memorial tablet. During the all-day program, I was joined by Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., whose newest book is about Boyd Stutler, John Brown’s Expert, and by Brianna Wheeler, a descendant of Dangerfield Newby, the first of John Brown’s men to die at the Ferry. She spoke about her book Altogether Different, part history, part memoir. The event also marked the formal launch of a reprint of Anderson’s book A Voice from Harper’s Ferry, published by the Harpers Ferry Park Association. The paperback includes my introductory essay. At the end of the day, I was thrilled to donate six boxes of my research files from Five for Freedom to the association. They will eventually be available for public inspection — adding to the 35 other boxes of files I have donated to three other institutions.
This is fascinating, Gene. I’d never heard this story. Thanks! And congratulations on doing your part to get the NPS sign updated.
I am so excited to read about this new interpretive signage highlighting the words of Pearl Tatum, someone I was not familiar with before today. I never did receive a reply back from the Harpers Ferry Superintendent when, at your suggestion, I emailed him in April 2022 about removing that “chiseled stone of Lost Cause lies”. Your update today on this subject has made me so happy! Thanks and have a great day! Gayle
What a wonderful column. Thank you so much for the great American history packed into it.
Glad you were there this past weekend, Gene. And glad Lou was with you. Two of my favorite “John Brown People” commemorating the 165th anniversary. We were in Norwich, CT over the weekend performing our play Sword of the Spirit. Norwich, as you know, is the hometown of Aaron Dwight Stevens, Kansas freedom fighter and another of Brown’s Harper’s Ferry volunteers. The historical society folks in Norwich are quite devoted to the story of Brown and his cohort. Tomorrow at NOON we’ll be singing a couple of good chorus songs from our “Sword of the Spirit” song cycle on the “Antidote of Song” daily Zoom event. Here is the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87303995571. As for the Shepherd rock monolith, those of us unafraid of the truth of history continue to look forward to its removal, and we feel that day can’t come too soon.
. Your blog was, as usual, very informative and interesting. I admire your industrious and enterprising spirit.
The comments before mine here are also informative and interesting. Thank you very much.
Amazing story, Gene. Thank you for making me slightly more literate about local history. And great that historians and aficionados of the Civil War and the long fight for freedom (or even recognition) will get your archives. My grandchildren will benefit too b/c the history I recount when next we visit will be slightly more fulsome.
Joan Mitric
So glad your papers will have a righteous home, Gene.
Thank you so much for the update. We at the Josephine School Community Museum in Berryville are very interested in righting what wrongs we can regarding African Americans’ resistance to the Civil War and beyond.