Pioneers remembered during Black History Month
The Daily Mail
Feb. 23, 2009

CATSKILL - Deacon Wayne Neal asked the congregation at the Second Baptist Church on Main Street Sunday who was the first black President of the United States.

Several worshipers at the service answered, “Obama.”

They were wrong, Neal said.

Neal explained that John Hanson, who served as the President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, was the nation’s first black president.

Hanson’s term lasted from 1781 to 1782.

As President, Hanson decided the seal, appointed the first Secretary of War and designated the fourth Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving, Neal said.

Hanson also established the first Treasury Department and the first Foreign Affairs Department as well as appointed the first Secretary of War, read Neal from a biography he prepared.

Neal told the congregation they could learn more about the first president from the Library of Congress website.

Over the past month a number of members of the congregation and youth ministry have presented biographies of noteworthy African Americans, including that of Hanson.

The list included inventors, athletes and abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

Velvet Tarver departed from the biographies to give the lives historical context.

“According to the 1860 United States Census, 380,000 individuals - 1.4 percent of white Americans in the country and 4.8 percent Southern whites - owned one or more persons,” she said.

She reminded the congregation that 95 percent of the black population lived in the South. Blacks made up of about one-third of the entire population of southern states, she said.

Tarver explained that the wealth of the country before the Civil War was greatly enhanced by slave labor.

Slaves were subjected to harsh treatment by their owners, were traded for profit and known as legal property, she said.

“Being that we were slaves, we were incapable of committing any civil act because we were considered as things, not persons,” she said.

She reminded the congregation that plantations were broken apart after the Civil War and that only a few years after the war ended the first African Americans were elected to serve in Congress.

Over the month of February, children in the church’s youth ministry compiled a list of accomplishments of lesser-known African Americans. The list included Frederick Jones, who held over 60 patents for different refrigeration and air-conditioning machines and techniques, Alexander Miles, who, in 1887, improved the method of opening and closing elevator doors and NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson, who founded the Johnson Research and Development Corp. and invented the super soaker water gun.

Also remembered were boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, whose 1967 convictions for a triple murder were overturned in 1988 and tennis player Althea Gibson.

Jason Owens recounted Carter’s years in the ring as well as the controversies surrounding his trial.

Gibson was the first African American woman to win a grand slam title, in 1956, Alice Jimpson said.

Sterling Swann described how Harriet Tubman led slaves to freedom, some walking over 800 miles with bloodhounds following in quick pursuit.

Tubman worked with congregations to hide slaves along their routes to freedom.

“Back then, people could keep their mouths shut,” he said, “they didn’t talk, but they did. She did and she left such a legacy.”

Allison White spoke of how Christian faith helped all those individuals remembered strive and survive through their ordeals.

“Your faith may be the only piece of black history that somebody may record and that you are recording and making black history. So look at your neighbor and say, ‘you’re making black history,’ and look at yourself and say ‘today I am making history,’” she said.