8 Delawareans re-create African Americans out of history

Among the various programs that mark Black History Month each February are presentations that include a distinctly personal touch.

These eight Delawareans have mastered the art of first-person interpretation of African Americans from the past and can be seen at libraries, museums and historical sites not only this month, but around the year in various presentations.

We asked the actors and some state institutions to share some things that are not well known – but should be – about African American history in the Delaware area. Here is what they said:

• In the Revolutionary War, 3,000 to 5,000 blacks fought for the colonists. Hence George Washington led America’s “most integrated army” until the Korean War, said K. Lynn King, a Delawarean who does a first-person interpretation of astronomer Caroline Herschel.

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• Several important figures in African American history had strong connections to this area, Ron Whittington pointed out. Harriet Tubman, an Underground Railroad conductor and Civil War spy, was born on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born a slave on the Eastern Shore, and he became famous as an orator, author and federal official under the name of Frederick Douglass. Writer and poet Langston Hughes graduated from Lincoln University. He bequeathed his personal library to the Pennsylvania school, which named its library after him.

• As an Underground Railroad conductor, Samuel Burris risked his own freedom in an uncommon way, according to Don Blakey. Burris was born a free black man in Kent County in 1808. In 1847, he was caught helping a slave flee to the north, and his conviction included being sold into slavery. But the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society collected enough money to buy freedom for Burris. “I want to tell who he was, what he did, his trials and tribulations and his victories,” Blakey said.

Here’s more about the women and men who bring history alive.

Dolores Blakey as Harriet Tubman and Dinah

Dover resident Dolores Blakey has re-created one of America’s leading civil rights activists and a slave who had only a first name. They’re Harriet Tubman, an Underground Railroad conductor selected last year as the face for the $20 bill, and Dinah, a slave once owned by patriot John Dickinson. Dinah had no last name, because “she was just the property of someone,” said Don Blakey, Delores’ husband.

Dolores, a veteran actress, was asked a decade ago to perform Tubman in Margaret Barton Driggs’ “Sweet Chariot.”

“It just caught on, and people kept asking for it,” she said, and she invites people interested in her interpretations to reach out to her at (302) 697-6723.

Don did the research and wrote the words for Dinah, whom Dickinson inherited in 1760, when his father died. In 1777, he conditionally freed his slaves; he decided on unconditional freedom in 1786.

Dolores likes this “Sweet Chariot” passage, with Tubman (who died in 1913) considering her arrival in Pennsylvania: “There was a such a glory over everything, the sun coming like through the trees and over the fields, and I looked at my hands. Am I the same? I’m Moses, and I will lead my people out.”

Valarie Boyer as Bathsheba Bungy, Charlotte Forten Grimke, Nannie Goode and Susan Petty

Valarie Boyer is fascinated by all four women that she re-creates. Bathsheba Bungy was 14 when she was kidnapped in New Castle in 1830. Nannie Goode taught in the Iron Hill Colored School in the 1920s. Charlotte Forten Grimke (1837-1914) was one of the most influential antislavery activists of her time, and a wealthy writer who relished the freedom in frequent trips to England. And then there is a slave running for freedom, whom she named Susan Petty, for her grandmother.

Four women may not be enough. She’s considering developing a program on Hester Bungy, a New Castle homemaker and her grandmother (yes, that means Boyer is related to Bathsheba).

The Dover resident once taught history and now teaches at Delaware Technical Community College. She started the portrayals in 1997 and runs them out of timelesshistorical.weebly.com. She researched and wrote all her scripts and brightens them with thematic songs. She invites the audience to join in the 11 spirituals in “Songs of a Faithful People,” an interpretation about the slave.

Her portrayals provide an key lesson for schoolchildren who only know of impoverished and uneducated slaves. She tells them: “People who look just like you were free, educated and had money.”

She likes this line she wrote for Grimke: “It is this country that I love so much with its green meadows and rolling hills. I love the dawning of a sunrise and the passion of a sunset. I love the smell of elder blossoms as they perfume the air, and the sight of white farmhouses peeping between the trees. It is in all of these scenes that I see liberty, glorious, boundless and reigning supreme.”

Sharon Moore as Bessie Coleman

The short life of the first African American female pilot – Bessie Coleman was just 34 when she died in a 1926 crash – provides much to think about for Sharon Moore.

Moore, a retired educator who portrays Coleman through the Delaware Humanities Forum, feels the presentation shows “sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone to pursue your interests.”

Coleman was one of 13 children, and after her parents separated, her mother asked her to drop out of school to care for the family. To get around the racial and gender discrimination she faced in America (“a fascinating story about the doors being closed”), she went to France to learn how to fly on planes that Moore said were “little more than cardboard and wires.”

Moore hopes that her portrayal, in words and music, encourages other people to be as brave and strong-willed.

“She showed tenacity. She held on. Several no’s weren’t enough,” she said.

Willis Phelps as James H. Elbert

Thanks to military documentation, many details are known about Pvt. James H. Elbert of Company C, 8th Infantry of the U.S. Colored Troops. Thanks to Willis Phelps, the details come alive.

Phelps, 79, a military retiree, dons the uniform, carries the gear and conscripts audience members to play other characters as he reveals how an illiterate man fought for his country, was nearly executed in bureaucratic bungling but still served a solitary sentence standing on a barrel.

Elbert was just 40 when he died in 1882 and was buried in the newly restored African Union Church Cemetery in Delaware City, where Phelps is president of its Friends group.

In a recent Delaware Humanities Forum presentation at the Kirkwood Highway Library, he used colorful language, like “hay foot, straw foot” (a way to teach marching to men who didn’t know their left from their right by putting hay and straw in separate shoes), “old doc sawbones” (a nickname for medical men quick to amputate) and “lickety-split” (referring to a speedy gait).

“Delaware is the hub of American history, with spokes going east and west, north and south,” he said. “If you come to Delaware, we have some of your history.”

Roberta Perkins as Jane

“I want the average, everyday person’s story to be told,” said Roberta Perkins. “That gives people a better reality of what life was like back then.”

Perkins interprets Jane, a free black hired as a cook and laundress for Confederate officers held as prisoners of war during the Civil War at Fort Delaware. She earned $17 a week – far more than black soldiers (earning $8 to $10 a month) and white soldiers ($15 or so a month).

Why? Perkins concluded that she was good – so good that a diarist writes about weight gains.

There’s little else to go by written about Jane – no surname, no family, no dates of birth and death – and so Perkins, a retired DuPont research technician, over the last three years has supplemented her portrayal with research on life in the 1860s. She often has a banjo by her side and sometime works in “Run, Rabbit Run,” a song about slave-catchers.

She acknowledges that some stories, like those about slavery, are tough to take but hopes the her programs – and those of other first-person interpreters – are “portrayed with dignity and truth.”

Latecia Prophet as Amelia Shadd

Latecia Prophet was looking for the Aunt Sally who was reportedly an ice cream entrepreneur in Wilmington two centuries ago when she encountered Amelia Shadd. After a year and a half of research on her family, she started portraying Shadd last year.

“I thought the whole thing was thrilling,” said Prophet, 68, who works as a historic-site interpreter for the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs. “Mostly people talk about slavery. People don’t know a large population was free.”

Her portrayal was written with colleague Gavin Malone, who plays a reporter interviewing her.

“Jeremiah and I had 15 children, three girls and 12 boys,” Prophet quoted a favorite line. “And those boys were a handful.”

They were boon and burden after she was widowed in 1819. While one son kept up the family butcher business in Wilmington, she helped by selling assets and possibly being a baker.

The records aren’t sure about a lot. When was she born, and when did she die? Ditto for where, since in her later years, Shadd moved between Delaware and Canada.

Tom Pulmano as Vincent Summers

To create his portrait of Vincent Summers, a free black born about 1800 in Kent County, Tom Pulmano had to “use a chisel and a hammer and uneducate himself on how things would have been.”

Pulmano 61, who works as a historic-site interpreter for the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, portrays Summers as an elderly man recalling laws banning learning and assembly and the lynch mob that burned his church.

He also recalls happier times, like making ice cream from snow and enjoying “big family dinners on Sunday’s at grandmom’s house.” His words are prophetic.

“Maybe one day my great-great-grandchildren or the great-great-grandchildren of my beloved brother Thomas or my sister Ruth, they may one day be able to vote for a person of their own race,” he quoted. “That may take 70 years or 70 times two years, but I know that in the 70 years of my life, I have met people colored and white who sacrificed a lot for the protection of the negro.”

It was the latter: 70 times two years later was the election of Barack Obama.

Ron Whittington as Benjamin O. Davis, Frederick Douglass, Judy Johnson, William Owen, Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson

There’s often a familial motivation to Ron Whittington’s portrayals. He started telling stories to his 3-year-old daughter’s friends 26 years ago.

Tuskegee Airmen Benjamin O. Davis was the brother of his writing instructor at the University of Delaware. He and his father were both baseball players. And he’s a distant cousin of Frederick Douglass (and writer James Baldwin).

He has grown his repertoire, available through the Delaware Humanities Forum, when he identified “different times in history we need to talk more about.” They include the activism of Frederick Douglass through much of the 19th century, Judy Johnson and Jackie Robinson’s baseball careers in the 20th century, William Owen’s military service during the Civil War and Paul Robeson’s work in the arts and civil rights in the 20th century

“I enjoy sharing my knowledge and encourage people to do more research,” said Whittington, 67, who has a long background in teaching and administrating at UD. His portrayals cover “pieces of history that we need to remember. If one more generation doesn’t learn them, they will be lost.”

He feels what Douglass said July 5, 1852 is important to remember: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim… There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

Experience It Yourself

The Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs has scheduled multiple free programs to mark African American History Month and National Harriet Tubman Day.

• “Fats Waller: A Man of Many Talents.” Guided tours of the Johnson Victrola Museum, 375 S. New St., Dover, focus on the jazz musician, accompanied by 78-rpm recordings of his work. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Feb. 18.

• “A World Apart.” Tours, with guides in period outfits, explore the 18th-century African-American experience at the John Dickinson Plantation, 340 Kitts Hummock Road, Dover. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Feb. 18 and Feb. 25.

• “Baseball, Churches, and Schools: Delaware’s African American History Through the Eyes of the National Register.” Madeline Dunn, Delaware’s coordinator for the National Register of Historic Places, reviews significant African American sites. The Old State House, 25 The Green, Dover. 1 p.m. Feb. 18.

• “Paul Robeson.” Guided tours of the Johnson Victrola Museum focus on the singer, accompanied by 78-rpm recordings of his work. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Feb. 25.

• “Preserving African-American History in Delaware: Highlighting Vibrant Communities Through Research and the Green Book.” Carlton Hall of the State Historic Preservation Office offers revelations from the Green Book, a guidebook for people of color during the segregation era. The Old State House. 1 p.m. Feb. 25.

• “The Influence of the Shadd Family.” First-person interpretation of Amelia Shadd by Latecia Prophet, with colleague Gavin Malone. Shadd’s granddaughter, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, was an influential abolitionist, educator, writer, newspaper editor and publisher, lawyer and feminist. The Old State House. 1 p.m. March 4.

• “Listen Up! African American History.” Local youth, working with spoken-word artist Brock Kalim, perform their compositions on Delaware’s African-American and women’s history, including Underground Railroad conductors Samuel Burris and Harriet Tubman. The Old State House. 1 p.m. March 11.

• “Stories of Courage and Freedom.” Programming for National Harriet Tubman Day. The Old State House. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. March 6-11, 1:30-4:30 p.m. March 12.

• “Run for Freedom.” Tours focus on the lives of three slaves who escaped from bondage. John Dickinson Plantation. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. March 7-11.

• “Thomas Garrett and his Role in the History of Delaware Slavery.” Program highlights the noted abolitionist and others. New Castle Court House Museum, 211 Delaware St., New Castle. 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. March 11 and 2 p.m. March 12. Reservations required at 323-4453.