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Connor Keiser in the News
An Ohio town
where races have mixed freely for more than 200 years
By Kevin Williams
The Washington Post
September
26
Amid the corn and soybean fields of western Ohio lies a progressive
crossroads where black and white isn’t black and white, where the
concept of race has been turned upside down, where interracial
marriages have been the norm for nearly two centuries. The heavy boots
of Jim Crow have never walked here.
Founded by James Clemens, a freed slave from Virginia who became a
prosperous farmer, Longtown was a community far ahead of its time, a
bold experiment in integration.
Now that history is in danger of being lost. Longtime Longtown
residents are dying, and whites are moving in and buying property. Many
historically black-owned buildings have already been torn down or
remodeled.
But Clemens’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson
is working to save his family’s heritage. Though his eyes are blue and
his skin is pale, Connor Keiser, 22, said that his childhood is filled
with memories of “cousins of all colors” playing in the pastures at the
family farm.
“We were a typical Longtown family. We all looked different, and we
were taught that color didn’t matter,” Keiser said. “As long as I have
anything to do with it, Longtown won’t die.”
Largely because of Keiser’s efforts, the National Park Service, the
National Register of Historic Places and the National Underground
Railroad Freedom Center have recognized Longtown as a place noteworthy
for its early embrace of racial integration and educational
opportunities for blacks. But the town’s institutions are in peril.
Longtown’s former school, the Union Literary Institute, founded in
1845, has a largely forgotten history as one of the nation’s first
integrated establishments of higher education. Notable alumni include
the first black man to serve in the U.S. Senate, Hiram R. Revels of
Mississippi. The school, which closed in 1914, fell into disrepair and
until recently was used to store farm equipment.
The original Clemens farmstead is in better shape; the two-story brick
farmhouse, built around 1850, still has its original fixtures and
woodwork. Although the National Park Service has dispensed $25,000 to
restore the property, Keiser estimated that the project will require an
additional $100,000.
So Keiser has hit the road to appeal for money. He’s been drawing big
crowds to area libraries with his presentation about the racial harmony
of Longtown and the desperate need to preserve it.
“I don’t think the public was aware this was here,” Keiser said. “Black
history is not talked about a lot in general, and I think [the fact]
that we have that kind of history means something to a lot of people.”
The racial harmony of Longtown is the legacy of Clemens, who found his
way here in 1818 and purchased 390 acres — probably with the aid of
abolitionist Quakers, sympathetic Native Americans and, by some
accounts, his former owner in Rockingham County, Va.
Clemens was of a mixed-race ancestry — black,white and Native American.
So was his wife, Sophia. They served as a beacon to other
integrationists, as well as runaway and freed slaves looking for succor
and education during and after the Civil War.
The couple became conductors for the Underground Railroad and — while
the rest of the nation endured Reconstruction and Jim Crow laws — built
a mixed-race town that numbered close to 1,000 people at its peak in
the 1880s.
But Longtown began to falter after World War II, when residents were
forced to seek help from bankers to modernize their farms.
“When we began to need machinery and bank loans to expand and grow and
become competitive, that’s when there was trouble,” said Carl
Westmoreland, a senior historian with the National Underground Railroad
Freedom Center who has visited Longtown...
Read the rest of the article with more photos at The Washington Post
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