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Tour gets close look at city's black history
Silver Cos. Vice President Jervis Hairston, whose family is the subject of a critically acclaimed book on slavery, conducts a trolley tour of historic slavery sites in Fredericksburg
Date published: 2/23/2009
BY CATHY JETT Fredericksburg's black history begins, as so much of the city's story does, at its riverfront. It was here on the shore of the Rappahannock that slave ships such as Capt. John Duncan's Othello began docking and unloading their human cargo in the late 1670s. "They were put in slave pens, fenced-in areas along the river, before being taken to street corners or busy restaurants to be sold," Jervis Hairston said yesterday on the first stop of a special trolley tour of downtown Fredericksburg. Sponsored by Germanna Community College for Black History Month, it gave the 32 participants a chance to hear about the blacks--both free and enslaved--who lived, worked and helped shape the city. As Fredericksburg's first black city planner, Hairston ran across some of their stories as he researched deeds. Others he has learned through reading Ruth Coder Fitzgerald's "A Different Story: A Black History of Fredericksburg, Stafford and Spotsylvania" and the histories Fredericksburg was a thriving seaport during Colonial days, with blacks working on the docks, in domestic service and a wide range of other activities, said Hairston, now a Silver Cos. vice president. Some learned to read in a slave school that St. George's Episcopal Church started to help slaves and free blacks participate in religious services. And some earned their freedom after working aboard Fielding Lewis' ship The Dragon, which patrolled the Rappahannock and parts of the Chesapeake Bay during the American Revolution. But when Gen. Lafayette stopped in Fredericksburg on his grand tour of America after the war, City Council ordered all blacks--free and enslaved alike--off the route of his parade down Princess Anne Street, Hairston said. Laws regarding blacks grew more oppressive after the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. Educating blacks became illegal, and was punishable by two months in jail plus a $50 fine for whites and 39 lashes for blacks. That didn't prevent several courageous women, however, from making sure black children got an education.
Date published: 2/23/2009
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