Jan. 27, 1847

More than 100 citizens of Marshall, Michigan, helped Adam Crosswhite, his wife, Sarah, and their children, who had escaped slavery, to flee to Canada rather than be captured by bounty hunters. 

Three years earlier, Crosswhite and his family had fled a Kentucky plantation after learning one of his four children was going to be sold. They traveled on the Underground Railroad through Indiana and Illinois before winding up in Michigan. 

At 4 a.m., bounty hunters broke into the home of Crosswhite and his family, telling them they were being taken back to Kentucky. Before that could happen, hordes of citizens intervened. When the bounty hunters offered to take the children only, the couple refused. The sheriff’s office then arrived and arrested the bounty hunters for trespassing, enabling the Crosswhite family to escape to Canada. 

Later, the slaveholder sued seven Black and white Marshall citizens who intervened and won $1,926, which with court costs totalled nearly $6,000 (more than $211,000 today). 

Citizens of the town rallied, raised the money and adopted a resolution that said, “We will never voluntarily separate ourselves from the slave population in the country, for they are our fathers and mothers, and sisters and our brothers, their interest is our interest, their wrongs and their sufferings are ours, the injuries inflicted on them are alike inflicted on us; therefore it is our duty to aid and assist them in their attempts to regain their liberty.” 

An abolitionist journal at the time, The Signal of Liberty, wrote, “If the slaveholder has the right to seize a fugitive from slavery in a free State, let him appeal to the proper tribunals to maintain that right, instead of midnight seizure, backed by a display of bowie knives and seven shooters.”

After the Civil War ended, Crosswhite and his family returned to Marshall. A monument now marks the place where they made their courageous stand.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, outlines for Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender and Michael Goldberg some of the top issues his committee will tackle this legislative session.

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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jan. 26, 1870

Virginia was readmitted to the Union after the state passed a new constitution that allowed Black men to vote and ratified the 14^th and 15^th Amendments. The readmission came five years after Black men first pushed to vote. 

A month after the Civil War ended, hundreds of Black men showed up at polling places in Norfolk to vote. Most were turned away, but federal poll workers in one precinct did allow them to cast ballots. 

“Some historians think that was the first instance of blacks voting in the South,” The Washington Post wrote. “Even in the North, most places didn’t allow blacks to vote.” 

Black men showed up in droves to serve on the constitutional convention. One of them, John Brown, who had been enslaved and had seen his wife and daughter sold, sent out a replica of the ballot with the reminder, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He won, defeating two white candidates. 

Brown joined the 104 delegates, nearly a fourth of them Black men, in drafting the new constitution. That cleared the way not only for Black voting, but for Virginia’s senators and representatives to take their seats in Congress. 

But hope of continued progress began to fade by the end of the year when the Legislature began to create its first Jim Crow laws, starting with separate schools for Black and white students. Other Jim Crow laws followed in Virginia and other states to enforce racism on almost every aspect of life, including separate restrooms, separate drinking fountains, separate restaurants, separate seating at movie theaters, separate waiting rooms, separate places in the hospital and when death came, separate cemeteries.

Following Mississippi’s lead, Virginia adopted a new constitution in 1902 that helped to disenfranchise 90% of Black Virginians who voted. States continued to adopt Jim Crow statutes until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.