Celebrating Black History Month in Macon

While it’s always important and natural to celebrate the roles African Americans played in shaping Macon’s culture and economy, Black History Month allows a time of focus.

Evelyn Davidson wrote on Feb. 6 about some of the significant events offered this month and I want to add a few with a variety of thoughts.

There are always good things to learn at The Tubman African American Museum, which has celebrated African American art, history and culture for more than 40 years. Now through March 22, there’s a special exhibit called “Freedom Seekers: Runaway Slave Advertisements in the Macon Telegraph, 1826-1865.”

It’s an unnerving yet engaging exhibit, as it shows the trauma enslaved people faced yet brings to light their bravery and something personal about them, their skills and who they were as humans.

Matthew Harper, associate professor of history and Africana studies at Mercer University, whose students researched and put the exhibit together, told me “a-ha moments” occurred as students realized slaves were not just laborers in cotton fields but were also skilled, creative workers as blacksmiths, shoemakers, railroad-workers, road-builders and many of the other skills foundational to life in Macon.

“They were surprised to see how personalities came through, like how some were described as musical or some had facts about their families or other information,” Harper told me. “They were real people suffering the bondage and literal and figurative scars of slavery. Students were shocked to see that virtually every newspaper page had something about slavery on it in one way or another, whether it was the runaway notices, slave market announcements or various news stories.”

There are facsimile articles in the exhibit involving Macon’s William and Ellen Craft, who made headlines nationally and internationally after their daring and unique escape from slavery in Macon in December of 1848. The Crafts escaped in daylight, by train, she having been an enslaved seamstress, and he an enslaved apprentice carpenter and cabinet maker.

Ellen appeared white since her birth father was a plantation owner and her mother a slave. Ellen disguised herself as a sickly, frail white planter while William traveled as his/her servant.

A riveting account of the Crafts is told by Ilyon Woo in her Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestseller, “Master Slave Husband Wife.” I can’t recommend it enough; you can get copies locally at Bear’s Books on Forsyth St.

Woo, who has spoken in Macon and whom I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing several times, has said the Crafts’ escape was one in pursuit of “liberty, literacy and family.”

Liberty, of course, and family. Having suffered the trauma of being themselves torn from beloved parents and siblings, they couldn’t bear the thought of having children born as others’ property.

And literacy?

At the time, it was illegal for slaves to read or write or be taught to read or write. This, too, was unbearable for the Crafts and in considering their children. They sought literacy.

Harper said much of the history of the time is lost because slaves couldn’t write, couldn’t keep records.

The Crafts first escaped to Boston and then had to flee to England due to enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in northern and southern states with presidential backing. There, the Crafts had a family and indeed became literate, writing a book called “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from
Slavery.”

That slim volume is available at the gift shop of The Cannonball House, where descendants of the Crafts came to Macon to speak in 2023.

The Crafts became the most famous escaped slaves of their pre-Civil War era and it’s a shame they’re so little-known today. It was discovery of the Craft’s book that led to Woo’s scholarly, page-turner of a book.

Don’t be surprised if you get a chill reading the runaway ads or walking past 803 Mulberry St., where Ellen Craft was a slave seamstress, where she fearfully but boldly set quietly out one winter morning to join William on their dangerous freedom journey.

Can you imagine it?

Another way to read more about the Crafts is an article I wrote for Macon Magazine in April/May of 2023, “A Thousand Miles to Rediscover Our History.”

Somewhat ironically, the Mulberry house is now a professional building called The Robert E. Lee Building. Its basement was once home to the famed WIBB radio station in whose studios James Brown recorded hits like “Please, Please, Please,” as confirmed to me by the Historic Macon Foundation.

Here are more bits, pieces and thoughts on Macon’s history and Black History Month:

— This weekend, The Douglass Theater celebrating William H. Douglass’ 155th birthday with a Tribute Show Saturday. 

— There are numerous pertinent walking and driving tours like Visit Macon’s African American Heritage Tour and African American Music Experience Tour. There’s information and booking for both on visitmacon.org. The tours allow visitors and locals the opportunity to hear stories of historic sites on a guided experience throughout the city.

“Macon’s Black Heritage Trail is also available in the free download of our Tour Macon app,” said Marisa Rodgers, director of marketing at Visit Macon. “We seek to tell the story and increase awareness of African American history in Macon in order to build a more inclusive community.  In partnership with many organizations, like the Middle Georgia Archives, Macon Black Pages, Macon Magazine and Macon200, we continue to update this trail as more research is done and new stories are unveiled. I think it is incredible that so many organizations within this community are working together to preserve this history.”

In cooperation with such groups, Macon Magazine’s new February/March edition has a printed map and narrative exploring the historic Cotton Avenue Black Business District.

— If you have bits and pieces of family records, church records, recollections of places, events and other aspects of Macon’s black history from your own family, friends, neighborhood, business or other associations, Muriel Jackson would like to speak to you and invites you to bring what you have to a regular meeting and discussion at the Washington Memorial Library the third Wednesday of each month except June and July.

The library is at 1180 Washington Ave. and Jackson is the head of its Genealogy and Historical Room. Jackson believes in the importance of history and its preservation. And she said learning the little things can make a difference. “Everybody who lived here contributed something to our community and our history,” she said. “Whether they were in political office or functioned as a letter carrier, mother, father, business owner, student or whatever, everyone played a part and is woven into all our lives.”

The Crafts risked harm — literally life and limb — to pursue freedom and key to the freedom they desired was reading and writing — things we, old and young, take for granted today.

Like Jackson, Dr. Thomas Duval is a master of Macon’s Black history and, like the Crafts, he’s a big, big
believer in literacy.

He’s had a dental practice, worked in his field in Georgia’s prison system and retired as Georgia’s first African American state dental director. He was part of the Macon200 committee.

Duval works passionately for the good of Macon’s Black community and well being of the whole community every day. Especially its young people.

“We’ve got to inspire these children and teach them why it’s so important to learn to read and write,” he told me. “Having kids learn to read at grade level is one of the most important things we can do for them. Doing that, having students graduate the 12th grade able to read at a 12th grade level, will do more to stop the school-to-prison pipeline and prison recidivism than anything else. And it will lead to a more productive, fulfilling life. We’re doing a lot of wonderful things in Macon, things that need doing, but I think we’re missing it if we miss truly educating our children, mentoring them and pointing them to worthwhile heroes instead of useless ones. We need to get Macon’s philanthropy focused on literacy. It’s great to have fun but learning to read at grade level is life-changing. Remember the Crafts and remember that even though they got their freedom and had a good life in England, they didn’t sit back and enjoy it. After the Civil War, they returned home at great risk and gave back. They started a school. Can you believe that? They truly believed the freedom they ran toward included literacy and wanted others to enjoy its benefits.”

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com. Find him on Instagram at michael_w_pannell.