Discovering Black History in Southeast Ohio

On June 28, 2006, Governor Robert A. Taft signed legislation enacting section 5.2234 of the Ohio Revised Code, Ohio House Bill 393, to designate September 22 as Emancipation Day in honor of the anniversary of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862. The First Ohio Colored Regiment. / John M. Langston, colored, made a speech at the Court House, Tuesday night of this week, in behalf of the 1 st Ohio Colored Regiment, in Camp Delaware – asking for aid and recruits. We did not hear him, but learn from several who did that he made an eloquent speech, not surpassed in power by any one who has spoken in Marietta, this year. The house was filled, and at the close, the sum of $260 was raised and paid for the Regiment. It will be borne in mind that the Government does not pay bounty as for white recruits, the law not authorizing it. The colored people present raised $10 towards procuring colors for the Regiment. Two recruits were obtaine...

The Marietta Register , August 22, 1872 Mr. Editor: An incident, related at the Newbury Harvest Home Picnic, by Mr. A. L. Curtis, ought to be preserved from oblivion.  As near as I can remember, these are his words:   "Some fifty years ago, when slaves were owned on the other side of the river, an energetic colored man named Harry, purchased his freedom from his master, and came over here to work for my father, in order to obtain the balance of the purchase money.  Harry left a wife in bondage, and, as he was still in debt, there was little prospect of obtaining freedom for his wife.  They concluded, as have many since that time, that there was a shorter road to liberty; so one night Harry quietly paddled his canoe across the river, and brought his wife to this side, and made a camp among the rocks just on the other bank of that ravine, not a stone's throw from where we are now standing, hoping to get her to a place of greater security during the coming night. ...

  The Register-Leader , October 7, 1913 To the Editor of the Register-Leader: Dear Sir - Being called to Cutler last year to deliver the Memorial Day address, I was deeply interested to find certain racial conditions whose like I had never seen before. Side by side with an excellent class of white citizens there were an almost equal number of self-respecting, well-dressed, intelligent colored citizens who seemed to be received on terms of social equality by the white people, at least as far as they would have been received had they possessed the same personal qualities without their dark complexion. Of the excellent band which furnished music for the occasion, the leader and ten of the fifteen players were negroes. An elderly colored gentleman was called upon for a brief address, which he made admirably. I found that he had been a teacher for more than a generation, now retired in good circumstances upon his farm. In conversation he was of quiet voice and thoughtful, interesting sp...