Chicago Race Riot of 1919-- Part 6: James Crawford Shoots at Police and Is Killed

BIKE TOUR

The first stop after the beach is at the city's oldest black Baptist church, the 145-year-old Oliver Baptist at 3101 S. King Drive.  During the 1920s it had  some 10,000 members and was the largest black church in the United States and the largest Protestant church in the world.

It was an active station on the Underground Railroad during slavery and in effect was the community center in Chicago's segregated "Black Belt" at the time, home of 40 different social, economic and cultural organizations and, during the riots it was headquarters for those trying to stop the violence.

D. Bradford Hunt of Chicago's Newberry Library who helped lead the bike tour said:  "Eugene Williams drowns.  Police refuse to arrest the white guy.  African Americans on the beach are furious.  At some point an African American man shoots a gun at police.  Someone gets injured.  Police chase him over the tracks, toward Olivet, and about two blocks northeast, they shoot and kill the guy."

The man was James Crawford, 37, a Southerner who had come up from Georgia, shot at 6 p.m. on July 27 at 29th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.

Album With Rare Harriet Tubman Photograph Goes for $161,000

From the March 31, 2017, Chicago Tribune.

An album containing a rare photograph of 19th-century abolitionist and Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman was sold March 30 in New York City at an auction for $161,000-- far exceeding presale estimates.

The Tubman photograph was taken in Auburn, New York, in 1868 or 1869.  She was in her late 40s at the time.  Most existing photos of her were taken much later in life.  She looks very young here.

The winning bid was made by Lion Heart Autographs, a Manhattan-based dealer.

The Maryland-born Tubman, an escaped slave, helped scores of other slaves escape the South by guiding them to the North.  She served as a spy during the Civil War.  Afterwards, she settled in Auburn, in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

I wonder who else was in the photo album?

If they have to put her on the twenty dollar bill, I nominate this picture.

Harriet Tubman Like You've Never Seen her Before.  --Cooter

John William Dunjee: President Tyler's Son?

Wikipedia.

Back on July 29th, while writing about two of Tyler's grandchildren still being alive, I mentioned that he might have fathered a child named John Dunjee with a slave.

The article says he was an American missionary, educator, Baptist minister and founder of Baptist churches. He was born a slave in Virginia to his owners, the Farrel family.

Dinjee's family has always asserted that his father was John Tyler and his mother one of the Farrell slaves. In 1859, he learned that the Farrels were going to move to Alabama and take him. Not wanting to go, he escaped and took the Underground Railroad to Canada.

After the Civil War, Dunjee returned to the United States and studied at the Maine Seminary and Oberlin College in Ohio. As a Baptist minister, he started churches from New England to the South to the Midwest. He also established several black colleges. I was unable to learn more about his relationship to President Tyler.

Quite a Man, Regardless. Perhaps It's Time for a Movie?  --Cooter

Paoli, Indiana

On a trip awhile back, I had the pleasure of driving through Paoli, Indiana, and was impressed.  I was taking US-150 from Vincennes, Indiana to the New Albany Turnpike across the state.

Paoli is in Ornage County, named after North Carolina's governor's son, Pasquale Paoli Ash.  Must be an interesting story in itself.  It turns out that Paoli's early settlers in 1811 were Quakers fleeing slavery from their homes in Orange County, North Carolina.

They brought freed slaves with them who were given 200 acres. An Underground Railroad site was there, but nothing remains of their settlement but a cemetery.

During the Civil War, a Confederate scouting party under the command of Captain Thomas Hines briefly occupied Paoli.  They captured some Home Guards before leaving.  There is a Hines Road in town.

From 1884 to 1928, Williamson Post of the GAR operated.

The courthouse, which is striking, was built from 1847 to 1850 and is one of Indiana's two oldest continuously used courthouses.  The Greek Revival Style building was renovated in 2009.  A clock was installed in it in 1856 and the 1898 replica is still ticking away.  The building was placed on the NRHP.

The West Baden Springs Hotel, once touted as the 8th Wonder of the World, is located five miles from Paoli.  French Lick Springs Resort is also nearby.

Worth a Stop.  --Cooter

Another Underground Railroad House in Illinois

The May 6th Chicago Tribune ran an article on the 1840s Blodgett House in Downers Grove being moved to its original site. It wqas just a hundred foot move from 812 Randall Street to 813 Maple Avenue.

Besides being an old house with construction starting in 1846 and being completed in 1849, it was owned by staunch abolitionists Israel and Avis Blodgett and was a known stop on the Underground Railroad. They are also known to have befriended Indians during the 1832 Black Hawk War.

The Heritage Preservation Corporation bought it last year from a developer who had planned on tearing it down, but offered it for $10 when he found out its historical value.

The Corporation plans on restoring it to its pre-Civil War condition and set it on a new foundation once it is rotated 180 degree to face Maple Avenue as it originally did.

The project will cost $700,000 and is expected to be open by 2011. So far, $140,000 has been raised. No reason was given for why it was origiannly moved a little over a hundred years ago.

Lots of interesting comments with some questioning the money and whether or not it has the historical significance. One writer pointed out tthat it seems like every old home in Illinois is thought to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. Good Point.

George Washington Slept There Too. --The Old Coot