Category: African American History

Students’ Research Project Sheds Light on Murder of Educator

During a recent semester, Lisa Hutchings, a student in my African American history class at Wilmington University, embarked on a research project that delved into the remarkable story of Stephen Handy Long and his impact on the education of Black children in Worcester County, MD. However, as she dug into primary and secondary sources, pored over archives materials, and interviewed people, she stumbled upon a distressing revelation. Professor Long, who oversaw African American schools in Worcester County, met a tragic end on the streets of downtown Pocomoke City.1

The Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise reported on the murder of the civil rights advocate on Sept. 17, 1921.

Unraveling the events, Lisa discovered that in September 1921, Professor Long intervened in a situation where a white farmer, granted legal guardianship of two Black children, refused to allow them to attend school. Despite his effort to resolve the issue, the “supervisor of Worcester County Colored Schools” was unable to secure the children’s attendance, prompting him to notify the Orphans’ Court. As was common during the post-Civil War era, children of color were often placed under the guardianship of white farmers.

School Supervisor Murdered

After the court took the children, the farmer and his brother held Professor Long responsible for the loss of labor, resulting in a fateful encounter on September 13, 1921. As Professor Long walked home from the Pocomoke City Colored Fair with his twelve-year-old daughter (Jessie), John and William Pilchard confronted him, leading to the educator sustaining two fatal knife wounds. 2

Stephen Handy Long, born in Pocomoke City after the Civil War in 1865, spent his formative years in Boston, Massachusetts. After graduating from Lincoln University in 1893, he returned to the Eastern Shore to pursue a career in teaching. In 1914, he became the first supervisor of colored schools in Worcester County.

Manslaughter Conviction

After the State of Maryland charged John Pilchard with murder, the Baltimore Sun reported that he was the first white man indicted for the first-degree murder of a Black person in Worcester County. Defense lawyers successfully obtained a change of venue, moving the trail to Dorchester County. The daughter’s testimony was critical for the prosecutors as the Pilchards said eight Black men jumped them.3  

When the Dorchester County Jury brought in a verdict of guilt for manslaughter, the panel recommended clemency. The Maryland and Herald on Nov. 29, 1921, stated that the jurors deliberated for three hours and could not agree on a charge of murder in the first degree, the vote standing eight to four for acquittal, so they settled on manslaughter. The judge sentenced Pilchard to three years in the House of Corrections.4

The Baltimore Afro-American editorial noted the irony of the sentencing: Had Pilchard been colored and Long white, there would have been a different story to tell at this trial. “Even now, Cambridge would be asking the governor to set an early day for execution.” 

stephen handy long
In recent decades, efforts have been made to memorialize Stephen H. Long. This is his memorial stone at Mount Zion Methodist Church Cemetery. (Photo Credit: Lisa Hutchings)

Lisa’s research project on Stephen Handy Long’s impact on the education of African American children in Worcester County was a memorable and poignant experience for everyone in the class. Her in-depth scholarship uncovered a tragic revelation about Professor Long’s untimely death due to his advocacy for equal education opportunities for Black children.

As a descendant cousin of the professor, Lisa noted that she knew very little about Stephen Long when she started her investigation. Sharing his life’s story was an honor and privilege she did not take for granted as she learned much about the dedicated educator and his untimely loss, she wrote in the research paper.

The presentation was a reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought for the rights of Black children to receive an education, and it left a lasting impression on everyone who attended the class. The student-scholar’s dedication to the project and her powerful presentation were a testament to the importance of learning and sharing history to understand and address contemporary issues of inequality and injustice.

The loss of this dedicated educator was a significant blow to the Black community, who were struggling under the oppression of Jim Crow in the 1920s.  Professor Long advocated equality, civil rights, and education for people of color. This was a chilling example of the adversities African American individuals faced in their pursuit of education and equality before the modern civil rights movement.

Researching the Past – A Course Requirement

My classes require students to do applied research projects that involve working with original traces of the past and oral history (when applicable). This approach allows students to better understand historical events and their impact on people’s lives. It also encourages students to explore different perspectives and critically analyze the information they gather. Lisa’s original research project was a prime example of how meaningful and powerful applied research or history labs can be. Through research, the student uncovered important information about a tragic event in history, and this presentation left a lasting impression on everyone who attended

The researcher, Lisa Hutchings, demonstrated an impressive grasp of the era’s intricate historical events, figures, and underlying dynamics around this complicated era. Employing thorough analysis, this scholar expertly researched and crafted the narrative. This well organized, engaging, and emotionally compelling, account is something the members of the class won’t forget. And from the class standpoint, these skills of intellectual inquiry are things they won’t forget as they will carry the applied competencies into their professional careers. 

Visting Pocomoke City

Although this presentation occurred two years ago, it was something I never forget — nor would anyone in the class — so since I was in Somerset and Worcester counties doing fieldwork for another project, I visited the grave where Professor Long was laid to rest and some of the historic spots connected with this civil rights advocate.

Endnotes
  1. Lisa Y. Hutchings, The Legacy of Stephen Handy Long,” Wilmington University Research Paper, Fall 2020[↩]
  2. Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise, (Pocomoke City, MD.) Sept. 17, 1921, 1[↩]
  3. Baltimore Sun, “To Face Court Today for Death of Negro,” Oct. 24, 1921, 2[↩]
  4. Maryland and Herald, Nov. 29, 1921[↩]

Integrating Delaware Nursing Schools

I am researching the struggle for equality in healthcare, a lesser-known dimension of the civil rights movement. Although the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to “separate but equal” in public schools in 1954, segregation persisted for years in medicine. However, by the mid-1960s, a combination of protests, federal legislation, and judicial rulings had significantly disrupted the Jim Crow practices that had long plagued hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics.1

As I delve into this complex and multifaceted intersection of civil rights and medicine, one area I am concentrating on is the integration of Delaware nursing schools, a significant achievement for the civil rights movement. During the 1950s, nursing schools commonly practiced segregation, limiting opportunities to pursue careers in the caring professions and make meaningful contributions to their communities.

Delaware Schools
Delaware Nursing School
Delaware Nursing School (undated, Wilmington Free Library)

In 1950, Delaware had seven nursing schools--four in Wilmington, one in New Castle County, and two downstate. These programs excluded Blacks leading to a severe shortage of professional African American nurses in the state.2

The National League of Nursing Education produced this 1950 list:

  • Delaware State, Farnhurst, established in 1929, 13 students
  • Beebe, Lewes, 1921, 10 students;
  • Milford Memorial, 1926, 21 students;
  • Delaware, Wilmington, 1897, 160 students;
  • Memorial, Wilmington, 1888, 92 students;
  • St. Francis, Wilmington, 1924, 66 students;
  • Wilmington General, Wilmington, 1910, 50 Students

To gain insight into nursing schools in the City, I am examining records of three Wilmington hospitals. The materials archived at the Lewis B. Flinn Medical Library at Christiana Care offer valuable insight into the policies, practices, and enrollment of these institutions during the mid-20th century.

In 1954, a significant civil rights healthcare milestone occurred in Delaware. Late that year, Wilmington Memorial Hospital Superintendent, Grace L. Little, announced a groundbreaking decision to open admission to the school for qualified candidates regardless of race. This decision marked a significant turning point in the fight for integrated medical education in Delaware, overturning in one institution the discriminatory policies that had long excluded Black students from the program.3

In the fall of 1955, when a new class began at Memorial Hospital, two African American students, Ive Brown of Felton and Carrie Thomas of Chester, PA, proudly stood alongside their classmates for the annual “probie” photo.4,5

A Civil Rights Healthcare Milestone

For the first time, African American students were admitted to a registered nurses training program in Delaware. When the hospital held its 65th graduation in 1958, Carrie Thomas and fifteen other young women had completed the course of study for registered nurses. Ive Brown graduated from a one-year practical nursing course at Brown Vocational High School.6.

This milestone, a significant step forward in the struggle for equality in healthcare, contributed to Delaware’s civil rights movement. My work on other dimensions of the civil rights struggle in medicine continues in Delaware.

integrating nursing at Wilmington Memorial Hospital in Delaware
1955 of the “probies” of the class of 19587 (Source: Medial Library, Christiana Care)

For additional photos on integrating nursing schools in Delaware, see this album on Facebook.

Endnotes
  1. Encyclopedia of Alabama, “Hill-Burton Act“[↩]
  2. National League of Nursing Education, “State-Approved Schools of Nursing: Schools Meeting Minimum Requirements Set by Law and Board Rules in the Various States and Territories, (New York), 1950[↩]
  3. Hospital to Accept Nursing Students Regardless of Race,” Morning News, December 7, 1954[↩]
  4. “32 Student Nurses Start Memorial Class, Journal-Every Evening, September 7, 1955[↩]
  5. “Probie Class Photo,” 1958, Wilmington Memorial Hospital[↩]
  6. “15 Graduate at Memorial,” Morning News, September 4, 1958[↩]
  7. Memorial Hospital, Probies-Class of 1958, photograph (Wilmington, DE, 1955), Lewis B. FlInn Medical Library, Christiana Care, Newark, DE.[↩]

Mrs. Grant Was One of the Freedom Riders

BEL AIR, Feb. 9, 2023 — I had the opportunity to attend an award ceremony for Janice East Moorehead Grant, 89, where she received the first Harford County Civil Rights Leadership Award from Harford Community College.

janice east moorehead grant one of the freedom riders
Mrs. Grant (2nd from the left front row) worked with students in one of my U.S. History classes

In the 1950s and 1960s, Mrs. Grant led various efforts to support civil rights in northeastern Maryland. These included protests for fair housing, open schools, and greater economic equality through employment, and she was arrested twice for her activism.

She also led efforts to desegregate Route 40 and joined the 1961 Freedom Riders on the Maryland highway. One of the earliest campaigns of the Freedom Riders focused on the highway in northeastern Maryland and Delaware.

In 1964, she participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer effort to register voters and set up “Freedom Schools in the State. Later she joined the Peace Corps and served as a teacher in Liberia, where she earned one of her three master’s degrees.

On February 21, WMAR’s Kelly Swoope aired a segment about the civil rights leader’s accomplishments and the honor she received at the College.

Here’s the piece that aired in Baltimore.

The “Lynching Bee” — Coming to Terms

In a historical context, the term bee brings to mind social gatherings or events where a group of people came together to accomplish a task or achieve a common goal. Often called work bees or community bees, they were associated with quilting, barn raising, and spelling—activities where a crowd assembled to work for a purpose, share skills, and socialize with one another. These collective endeavors had a sense of community, teamwork, and common purpose, as the effort involved cooperative social undertakings.1

But while completing a study on lynchings for the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project in 2019, I discovered a disturbing association for the colloquial term. Newspapers often discussed lynching bees—occurrences where mobs conducted extrajudicial spectacle hangings for amusement. This contrasted with horrific, racially motivated violence inflicted on victims more quietly, often in the still of the night.  

Researching Lynchings

My focus on researching racial terror lynchings started twenty-one years ago on the Lower Shore when the literature on these crimes was scant, and traces of this dark past were elusive. Of course, secondary literature and original research have advanced in recent years. However, in 2002, all I discovered during my literature review was Dr. Polly Stewart’s groundbreaking research at the Nabb Center. After she started teaching at Salisbury University in 1973, the folklore professor learned that lynchings took place in the area.

So, she started investigating these incidents, applying academic rigor to determine the facts, issues, and dynamics around the undocumented history2. The scholar encountered steep resistance to sharing this history, however. In those early years, Linda Duyer, a geographer, also did pioneering work building upon Professor Stewart’s investigations3.,4

lynching bee princess anne md
This postcard reads, “Looking for the negro, Princes Anne, Md.” Although undated and uncanceled, it is likely from a 1906 incident. A lynching did not occur that day as the judge sent the man to Salisbury. (personal collection)5

Using the work of these two forerunners, I began fieldwork in the communities. Of course, open access to digitized periodicals had not evolved, and the undertaking involved struggling to read old microfilmed newspapers at libraries in Crisfield and Prince Anne. My investigation also involved days of fieldwork–interviews and records searches in out-of-the-way places such as attics and basements of municipal buildings and courthouses. The phrase never caught my attention as I pieced together enough information to develop case studies for my courses on the history of criminal justice on Delmarva at the University of Delaware.

Lynching Bees

My understanding of associations with the term changed in 2019 while completing the Maryland Lynching Memorial investigation. As I dug into the Maryland Archive holdings–19th-century circuit court records, judgments, case files, correspondence, jury records, minutes, pardon dockets, police blotters, and a much broader array of digitized newspapers–this puzzling, troubling term shocked me. What is a lynching bee I mumbled as the first notice caused me to dig much deeper into late 19th and early 20th-century periodicals to determine if this was an outlier. Correspondents and editors often used this phrase, as it turned out.   

Here is a recap of the first 3 column inch narrative from the Midland Journal in Rising Sun, which brought the phrase to my attention. Following an attempt in Rowlandsville, a rural community near the Susquehanna River in Cecil County, the editor applied a larger font to the headline. On Christmas day 1907, an account of a drunken “lynching bee” at Rowlandsville appeared in city papers, the editor wrote. As villagers celebrated with a shooting match that turned into a booze fest, an African American named Webster was lying in a drunken stupor.

“In the spirit of fun (?),” he was suspended by the neck from the wagon bridge and left hanging until life was nearly extinct.” The editor added that the account created considerable commotion and “different versions of its authenticity circulated around the area. Some stated nothing of the kind happened while others said it was greatly exaggerated, but something of the kind did actually take place.”6

Understanding the term

A search of over 20 million pages at Chronicling America at the Library of Congress located 4,148 pages where a correspondent mentioned the phrase. For example, on March 31, 1900, the Baltimore County Union reported that Bel Air had a lynching bee. 

Using the idiom “lynching bee” to describe the horrific act of racial lynching was shocking. How could these appalling acts that terrorized generations of Black people be compared to other types of social bees? However, I had worked with this literature and the primary sources for decades, so I shouldn’t have been surprised as I knew about the shocking actions of jubilant spectators creating carnival-like atmospheres in many cases when any of these horrific acts occurred.

Note: Expanded from an article published in the newsletter of the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project.

Endnotes
  1. “Bee, n” OED Online, Oxford University, June 2022[↩]
  2. Ross Altman, “Polly Stewart – Lynching in Maryland,” FolkWorks”[↩]
  3. Linda Duyer, “The Complex Task of Writing History,” Delmarva African American History, December 31, 2018[↩]
  4. Linda Duyer. “Mob Law on Delmarva: Cases of Lynchings, near-Lynchings, Legal Executions, and Race Riots of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia 1870-1950.” Amazon, The Author, 2014 .[↩]
  5. Linda Duyer, “Looking for the Negro, Princess Anne, Md,” Delmarva African Amerian History[↩]
  6. “Rowlandsville Boozefest, Christmas Celebration at the Town on the Octoraro,” Midland Journal, Jan. 3, 1907[↩]