Destination Travel:
Why You Should Visit Historic Virginia
AUGUST 2017 | VOL 3, ISSUE 8
AUGUST 2017 | VOL 3, ISSUE 8
PUBLISHER
Denise Rolark Barnes
PHOTO EDITOR Dejah Greene
LAYOUT EDITOR
Dominiqua S. Eldridge Sarafina Wright
EDITOR’S LETTER
At Fort Monroe National Monument newly minted Superintendent Terry Brown is making a concerted effort to make the National Park a premiere destination for those who live in Virginia and tourist alike. I caught up with him to speak about his initiatives for the park and his position as an African American superintendent in an industry where we are hard to come by. The exploration of historic Virginia was made possible by American Evolution, a group in charge of events to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first recorded Africans in English North America.
How Fort Monroe PAGE Became Freedom’s Fortress Supt. Brown Working PAGE to Make Fort Monroe a Travel Destination
3 4 5 6 7
The Best Museums in PAGE the US Right in Virginia
I recently got the opportunity to travel to Hampton, Va. and explore historic sites like Fort Monroe, Hampton University and the Jamestown Settlement. I always knew the great history attached to the state of Virginia, but I never thought of it as a place to travel for pleasure until now.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
CONTRIBUTING WRITER Jade James-Gist
Hampton University, A PAGE Beacon of Blackness by the Sea The Road to 2019:
Commemoration of 400 Years of African American History
PAGE
ON THE COVER
WI BRIDGE TEAM
Leading up to 2019, they have a number of programs and celebrations throughout the state that you're not going to want to miss. If you want a quick, quiet, getaway where you can eat great food in “crabtown” take in the sights of the Chesapeake Bay and be surrounded by history and culture you must go to Hampton! What do you think of the Bridge? Let me know at swright@washingtoninformer.com.
www.facebook.com/wibridgecommunity @InformerBridge www.twitter.com/informerbridge
www.instagram.com/washinformerbridge
WI BRIDGE | 2
The ladies of the Bridge Jade, Sarafina and Dominiqua caught up with each other on Saturday, March 25, a beautiful spring day at Union Market in Northeast. / Photo by Steve Garrett. Web: http://washingtoninformer.com/news/wi-bridge/
Email: wibridge@washingtoninformer.com #WIBRIDGE
The Emancipation Oak located on the campus of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia is designated as one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society. /Photo by Barney A. Bishop.
AUGUST 2017 | VOL 3, ISSUE 8
How Fort Monroe Became Freedom’s By Sarafina Wright
Fortress
WI Bridge Editor
The defense of the nation and the quest for freedom converged at Fort Monroe in 1861, barely one month after the first shots of the American Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Working for the Confederate Army building gun positions, three enslaved men, today known as Frank Baker, James Townsend and Sheppard Mallory escaped to Fort Monroe seeking freedom with the Union Army. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act mandated these men be returned to bondage. The fort’s commander Major General Benjamin Butler, a lawyer by profession, reasoned Virginia had seceded and stated it was no longer part of the United States, therefore the Fugitive Slave Act did not apply.
Fort Monroe Quarters No. 1. In this house President Abraham Lincoln stayed during his visit of May 6 - 11, 1862. It was here that President Lincoln, General Wool and Commodore Goldsborough planned the attack on Norfolk, Va. /Photo by Sarafina Wright
Further, because the Confederacy used enslaved persons in their war effort against the Union, Butler argued these men would be considered property and retained as “contrabands of war.” The word spread and over the next couple of weeks hundreds of enslaved people including men, women and children showed up seeking refuge. Butler’s landmark decision to consider these freedom seekers as contraband influenced thousands to seek sanctuary behind Union lines.
Old Point Comfort Light. The lighthouse built in 1802, is the oldest standing structure at Fort Monroe. It remains an active navigational aid the property of the U.S. Coast Guard. /Photo by Sarafina Wright
The waterfront at Fort Monroe. /Photo by Sarafina Wright
That is how “Contraband Camps” came to be formed in areas near Union forces. Descendants of the “contrabands” still live in the Chesapeake Bay area today. Fort Monroe became known as Freedom’s Fortress and has remained a national symbol for protection and freedom. The fort continued as a bastion of defense and training until it was deactivated in September 2011. On November 1, 2011, President Barack Obama established Fort Monroe as a National Monument.
Barracks Row at Fort Monroe. /Photo by Barney A. Bishop.
3 | WI BRIDGE
AUGUST 2017 | VOL 3, ISSUE 8
Supt. Brown Working to Make Fort Monroe a Travel Destination
By Sarafina Wright WI Bridge Editor
The Superintendent of Fort Monroe National Monument comes to work everyday just steps away from where the first recorded Africans landed in the new world almost 400 years ago. For Terry Brown a 27-year veteran of the National Park Service he thinks it’s absolutely spectacular. “There are not a lot of African Americans as superintendents in the National Park Service. I’ve only known a handful,” Brown said. “But, I think in this position, I am well positioned to do a lot of great stuff.” “This community has never had a national park in its back yard and I think that’s really neat.” When Brown arrived to Fort Monroe, Va. from Boston in June of 2016 he went from managing 64 employees to a staff of one. One of Brown’s first priorities was to put together a comprehensive professional staff that could take Fort Monroe to another level in the communities they serve. “We’re working really hard to diversify,” he said. “How many historical places have you gone to that speaks to African Americans but it’s an all white staff ? Its not that you can’t have an all white staff but you need diversity within your organization, because they are going to speak through the different lenses.” After managing the Black Heritage Trail at Boston Harbor Islands National & State Park, Brown got the call last year to serve at Fort Monroe and he happily accepted. “I arrive, it’s a big celebration, everyone is so happy. I'm excited I got the job, and one month later I realized I have some work on my hands,” Brown said. “I walk through the door and realize we have no walking tours, buildings that are falling down with mold, termite damage and no welcome center. There is no way to welcome people to Fort Monroe.” Brown said together with Fort Monroe Executive Director Glenn Oder they came together to conceptualize the Fort Monroe Visitor and Education Center, which will open in 2019. “There was also no National Parks Service sign on the front gate, but now we have the first phase of signs going up. It will start to feel like a national park,” he said.
WI BRIDGE | 4
National Park Service Superintendent of Fort Monroe Terry Brown. /Photo by Barney A. Bishop.
An Army brat who spent most of his life in Germany and Holland the National Park Service came into Brown’s life as a student at Grambling State University in Grambling, La. “A park service representative came into my class and started talking about what they do and I thought it was weird because it was a business class,” Brown said. “Afterwords she asked who was interested and not a single person raised their hand. I said you know what, I’m not really doing anything this summer I’ll try it and three months later I got my first assignment.” “I was hiking, canoeing and fishing and two weeks later I got my first pay check. I was like wow you actually get paid to do this…and I never turned back.” Responsible for overseeing the physical and
archaeological maintenance of Fort Monroe, Brown has a few simple goals to make the historic location a premiere travel destination. “Fort Monroe National Monument is on the same level as the Grand Canyon or Yosemite National Park,” he said. “I know before I arrived, the community wanted this space to be protected, so I have to connect more people to Fort Monroe. It’s a lot of people outside of these gates that don't realize this belongs to them, and that this story is relevant to them,” he said. “Every single park in this country Africans had a part in the establishment of that site. There is not a single place in the United States Africans haven't had a role in.”
AUGUST 2017 | VOL 3, ISSUE 8
The Best Museums in the US Right in Virginia By WI Bridge Staff
One of the many galleries featured in the Hampton University Museum in Hampton, Va. /Photo courtesy of Hampton History Museum.
When the Computer Wore a Skirt: NASA’s Human Computers exhibit flyer. /Photo courtesy of Hampton History Museum.
Hampton University Museum: I challenge you to find a museum on any university’s campus that rivals the beauty, curation and history of the Hampton University Museum.
Hampton History Museum: The city of Hampton has its very own museum because it is such a historic treasure and the location of many pivotal moments in the founding of the nation. From Native American chiefdoms, English settlements, arrival of the first Africans, revolutionary and civil wars, to the future and space exploration, Hampton has played a pivotal role in all periods of our nation’s past.
Founded in 1868, by Hampton University founder General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the museum’s purpose was to aid in good education influencing “the head, the hand and the heart.” As the oldest African American museum in the United States, the museum will celebrate 150 years in 2018. The institution has over 200 years of African American fine art with artist like John Thomas Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence and Henry O. Tanner’s renowned painting, The Banjo Lesson. Walking through the majestic galleries you can also find artifacts from Africa such as traditional regalia, masks, fertility statues from the Ashanti peoples, and gold jewelry including the chief ’s crown from the Akan peoples. What may surprise you is the hundreds of Native American students that attended the University at the request of General Armstrong beginning in 1878. Those students participated in the Native American Education Program that spanned more than 40 years, with the last student graduating in 1923. The Wigwam dorm, the American Indian boy’ dormitory still stands on Hampton University’s campus today. In the gallery you can see basketry, beadwork and period photographs from the historic American Indian Education Program. Hampton University Museum is a true treasure right on the Chesapeake Bay that will have you enamored for hours.
Edgar Allen Poe exhibit featured at the Casemate Museum in Fort Monroe, Va. /Photo by Sarafina Wright.
Casemate Museum: Not like any other museum you've probably visited, the Casemate is a museum for the entire family. There is no grand foyer, tall ceilings and cafeteria, just artifacts of Fort Monroe and the Confederacy. The best part about the building is the maze like structure that twists and turns as you duck through the different casemates finally reaching the end at the bountiful gift shop.
Why is it called the Casemate Museum? The museum is housed in a series of casemates, which are vaulted chambers within the fort's walls. The casements were once used during the civil war and thereafter to house cannons that would shoot at enemies coming to shore. In this all brick structure you can find an exhibit of Edgar Allen Poe who was stationed at Fort Monroe from 1828-29. There is also the Jefferson Davis Cell, where the former President of the Confederacy was imprisoned following his capture by Union troops in May 1865. The Casemate Museum gives a true well-rounded and interesting take on the Confederacy, Southern and ultimately the history of the United States.
In the Give Me Liberty: Fugitive Slaves and the Long Revolution Against Slavery exhibit, you can learn the inspiring stories of more than 30 slaves from Hampton who escaped to freedom or took up arms during times of war. This groundbreaking exhibit highlights their experiences as part of a powerful slave resistance that existed from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. The exhibit will be open to through February 2018. In September 2016 Margot Lee Shetterly published her book Hidden Figures highlighting three Black women mathematicians who greatly contributed to history in helping launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The Hampton History Museum pays tribute to Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Winston Jackson and Katherine Goble Johnson with the exhibit When the Computer Wore a Skirt: NASA’s Human Computers. You can learn about the women individually with real artifacts of their career donated by their families. At the Hampton History Museum you can also experience life in a Kecoughtan lodge in colonial America and how Hampton became “crabtown” because of its booming seafood industry.
5 | WI BRIDGE
AUGUST 2017 | VOL 3, ISSUE 8
Hampton University, A Beacon of Blackness by the Sea By WI Bridge Staff
In May of 1861, Union Major General Benjamin Butler decreed that any escaping slaves reaching Union lines would be considered “contraband of war” and would not be returned to bondage. This resulted in waves of enslaved people rushing to the fort in search of freedom. A camp to house the newly freed slaves was built several miles outside the protective walls of Fort Monroe. It was named “The Grand Contraband Camp” and functioned as the United States' first self-contained African American community. In order to provide the masses of refugees some kind of education, Mary Peake, a free Negro, was asked to teach, even though an 1831 Virginia law forbid the education of slaves, free blacks and mulattos. She held her first class, which consisted of about twenty students, on September 17, 1861 under a simple oak tree. This tree would later be known as the Emancipation Oak and would become the site of the first Southern reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Today, the Emancipation Oak still stands on the Hampton University campus as a lasting symbol of the promise of education for all. General Samuel Armstrong was appointed in 1866 to Superintendent of the Freedmen's Bureau of the Ninth District of Virginia. Drawing upon his experiences with mission schools in Hawaii, he procured funding Students taking a scroll on the campus of Hampton University in Hampton, Va. /Photo by Sarafina Wright. from the American Missionary Association to establish a school on the Wood Farm, also known as “Little Scotland” adjacent to the Butler School. On April 1, 1868, Armstrong opened Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute with a simple declared purpose. "The thing to be done was clear: to train selected Negro youth who should go out and teach and lead their people first by example, by getting land and homes; to give them not a dollar that they could earn for themselves; to teach respect for labor, to replace stupid drudgery with skilled hands, and in this way to build up an industrial system for the sake not only of self-support and intelligent labor, but also for the sake of character." A Hampton University African American history gives the history of the Emancipation Oak in Hampton University will celebrate their professor Hampton, Va. in late August 2017. /Photo by Sarafina The flag post on the campus of Hampton University 150th anniversary in 2018. Wright. in Hampton, Va. /Photo by Sarafina Wright.
WI BRIDGE | 6
AUGUST 2017 | VOL 3, ISSUE 8
The Road to 2019: Commemoration of 400
Years of African American History By Sarafina Wright WI Bridge Editor
Commemorative Events 2017: 2017 VIRGINIA THANKSGIVING FESTIVAL Nov. 5, 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Berkeley Plantation, 12602 Harrison Landing Rd. Charles City, VA 23030
POCAHONTAS REFRAMED FILM FESTIVAL Nov. 17, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Byrd Theatre 2908 West Cary Street Richmond, VA 23221
Commemorative Events 2019:
Remembering Jamestown II Conference: The Missiology of Jamestown 1619 January 2019 Virginia Union University In August 1619, a privateering vessel Richmond, VA “The Missiology of Jamestown 1619 and flying the flag of the Dutch Republic Its Implications” will explore long-standing arrived at Point Comfort, Va., which is assumptions related to Christian mission. The national landmark of the first recorded arrival of Africans to the New World in 1619. /Photo by Sarafina Wright.
now present day Hampton carrying “20 and odd” Africans according to John 400 Years of African American Impact Rofle, one of the early English settlers. February 2019 While the ship had no “cargo” it did have people on board whom were traded to Governor George Yeardley and Cape Merchant Abraham Peirsey in exchange for provisions.
Northern Virginia/D.C. The commemoration will partner with leading national African American organizations, media outlets, and the public to identify the most impactful African Americans of the past and present.
These individuals, originally captured by Portuguese slavers in West Central Africa, [many historians believe Angola] were the the first recorded Africans to arrive in English North America.
First Africans in Virginia: Impact and Legacy Exhibition Feb. - Aug. 2019 Virginia Historical Society Richmond, VA In preparation of the 400th anniversary This exhibition will encourage viewers to in 2019, of the arrival of these men, connect their own historical and contemporary women and children the state of relationships with race and the legacy of Virginia will commemorate the moment American slavery.
in history with a slew of featured events, Cultural Arts World Premiere programs and legacy projects. American Evolution, the group at the forefront of connecting the past with the present, plans to explore not only African American history, but the first representative legislative assembly in the New World and the first official English Thanksgiving in North America in 2019.
May - June 2019 The Virginia Arts Festival will create a cultural arts performance that deepens our understanding of the original three cultures of Virginia and the ongoing impact of diversity in America today. This festival will take place throughout Virginia.
Fort Monroe Visitor and Education Center Dedication Ceremony Aug. 24, 2019 Fort Monroe, Hampton, VA The Fort Monroe Visitor and Education Center will tell the stories of Captain John Smith, the arrival of the first enslaved Africans and the culmination of 242 years of slavery as the first contrabands came to Fort Monroe and received their emancipation.
1619: Making of America Summit September 27 - 28, 2019 Norfolk State University Norfolk, VA This cultural event will begin with the exploration of the contributions and influences of the three founding cultures: African, Native American and English. This expanding cultural tapestry of our nation will be explored by celebrated scholars, artists, film makers, musicians and students through out the nation. Customs, Cultures and Cuisine Festival Nov. 8 - 10, 2019 Williamsburg, VA The event will honor the early beginnings of America with the three cultures present in 1619 Virginia.
7 | WI BRIDGE
The WI Bridge is looking for millennial culture creators, writers, photographers and crea�ves to work with us. We are looking for contributors to “bring the cool.” Who we are: A culturally innova�ve magazine based in Southeast DC that serves as a lifestyle guide for millennials. Follow us! Twi�er: InformerBridge | Instagram: WashInformerBridge | Facebook: WIBridgeCommunity Email the editor at swright@washingtoninformer.com! | #WIBRIDGE