In the darkness of early morning and under the cover of a midwinter haze in the Southern port city of Charleston, South Carolina, the Confederate Navy makes a surprise attack upon the federal blockade that has shut down commercial activity in the city. Firing upon and ramming unprepared Union vessels, Confederate gunboats Chicora and Palmetto…
Michigan’s oldest black congregation, the Second Baptist Church, was founded in 1836 by thirteen former slaves. In 1839 the congregation established the city’s first school for black children. Second Baptist’s first pastor, the Reverend William C. Monroe, was a noted anti-slavery activist. In 1843 Monroe presided over the first State Convention of Colored Citizens, which…
Candles burn late into the night, signifying the coming of a new era in American history: “freedom’s eve,” the beginning of the exodus story of African slaves. Northern free blacks and abolitionists, as well as thousands of freedmen in Union-controlled areas of the South, unable to sleep in anticipation of the morrow’s Emancipation Proclamation, gather…