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Exhibit on Black history slated to tour country.
1975 (Feb 16)
The Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, a branch of the Smithsonian Institute, announced that a traveling exhibit on Black history would tour the country as part of the bicentennial celebration. The exhibit would include forty-six illustrated panels, along with artifacts and a written text. Among the characters and events in the exhibit were York, William Clark's slave; Mary Fields, a colorful Western pioneer; Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, an early Black migrationist; Bill Pickett, a pioneer Black cowboy; and Mary Ellen Pleasant, a pioneer civil rights leader. York was a strapping, six-foot interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806. His fluency in French and Indian dialects as well as English made him indispensable to the exploration. He was, in fact, seen as the leader of the expedition by the Indians. Because of his services, York was granted his freedom in 1805. “Black Mary” Fields was born in slavery but migrated to Montana after emancipation. She became a friend and confidante of the nuns of Cascade, a restaurant owner, and a mail woman. She often walked through the snow when it was too deep for horses to ensure that the mail got through. Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, one of the earliest “Black Moses,” led an exodus of Blacks from the South to the West in 1879. Between 1870 and 1890, a number of these Western migrations took place as Blacks sought to escape racial oppression in the Post-Reconstruction South. Men like Singleton organized “colonies” to help the Blacks move West, where they often faced legal and extra-legal moves to keep them out of the frontier territories. Once in the West, Blacks founded all-Black towns and worked on the railroads and in cattle drives. It is estimated that there were at least 8,000 Black cowboys during this pioneer era. Among the most famous of the Black cowboys was Bill Pickett, “the Dusky Demon” of the rodeo circuit. Pickett lost his life at age seventy-one, when he tried to make a comeback to the rodeo by roping and taming a wild horse. Mary Ellen Pleasant was born enslaved in Georgia but also became a migrant to the West. She was one of San Francisco's first civil rights leaders and allegedly helped to finance the raid of John Brown at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.