The Town that Started the Civil War

Remember

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

Remember

The days of bondage—

And remembering—

Do not stand still.

Go to the highest hill

And look down upon the town

Where you are yet a slave.

Look down upon any town in Carolina

Or any town i

n Maine, for that matter,

Or Africa, your homeland—

And you will see what I mean for you to see—

The white hand:

The thieving hand.

The white face:

The lying face.

The white power:

The unscrupulous power

That makes of you

The hungry wretched thing you are today.

Who is the greatest poet to ever call Cleveland home for a period of time?  There are some who would say Hart Crane, there are others that could probably name another poet, some might say Michael Stanley (few), Eric Carmen (those would be fewer), or Chrissie Hynde (fewer because she’s from Akron).  I would answer and I think the majority of people, in fact the people in my department were able to answer my question a second after I posed the question.  Their answer and mine is Langston Hughes. 

The reason why I’m bringing Langston Hughes up, is the interesting research I discovered this last week of work.  As a note, besides the basic writing courses in college I never took an English class outside of secondary school that dealt with poetry or literature.  I’ve had history courses that utilized American fiction were it fell inline with the subject matter, one of my favorite professors utilized that technique for our modern American history course.  I studied poetry in my Classical Civilizations courses, Great Greek Minds and Great Roman Minds, but that was the poetry over two thousand years ago.  I don’t know much about Langston, I’ve read some of his poetry, read some of his stories, but I’ve never learned about him in a formal setting.  I do have a picture of him on my wall, mainly because the poetry I’ve read was that inspiring, the other reason, because he’s the poet laurite of Cleveland.

Now for the title of this post and what I was researching this week.  I’m working on an education program that asks the question, Was Honest Abe an Abolitionist?  Of course he wasn’t.  But through an investigation of primary documents I want students to analyze the Ante Bellum period of American history, the actions and life of Lincoln and in the end come up with their own answer to the above question. 

I’ve been reading a book titled The Town that Started the Civil War by Nat Brandt.  This book tells the adventures of the Oberlin-Wellington rescuers.  For those that might not know this event, the Rescue was a direct challenge to the Fugitive Slave Act, by citizens of these two small northern Ohio towns.  The Rescuers, the name they became known by, citizens who stood up for what they believed, that slavery was a moral wrong, that people that had escaped from the peculiar institution, were free under the laws of Ohio, and no federal mandate could stand above the laws of the Ohio Constitution.  This last argument of state’s rights ironically was the same argument that the Confederate States tried to use two and half years later when the tried to dissolve the union.

Two of the Rescuers, were men named Charles Langston and his brother James Mercer Langston.  These two men were directly involved with the freeing of John Price, the runaway slave.  Many of the African Americans in the Oberlin community fought for the freedom of this individual, and many could argue that the blacks had more to lose since the Federal Government under the Dred Scott case said that African Americans were not citizens of the United States and were not protected under the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.  They would not be tried by a jury of their peers, be accorded the same due process, nor the rights to a fast and fair trial.  Free Blacks at this time could also be sent back to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Law, if someone from the South merely claimed that the individual was their “property.”

Towards the end of his book, Mr. Brandt tells of the lives of the individuals involved and what happened to them during the Civil War and later in life.  It was in this section that Brandt tells his readers about Charles Langston moving to Kansas, having a daughter, and then his daughter had a son who was named after his brother, the child’s Great Uncle, the child was James Mercer Langton Hughes.  

James Mercer Langston, recruited for the 54^th Massachusetts, the regiment the movie Glory is based on (no matter what I post this is one of my favorite movies of all time, I love reading the history of the 54^th and this is the movie that solidified Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman, and Denzel Washington as three of my favorite actors).  Charles Langston, who talked to John Brown while in jail, was later tried to be connected to the Harper’s Ferry raid, he was never tried, because he wasn’t involved.

When I read these words I was floored.  Before this, all I had ever read about Langston Hughes came from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, http://ech.case.edu introductions to his books, or various internet sites.  I, immediately after reading the paragraph mentioned above, went online and discovered to my dismay, that the ECH didn’t list this information.  On a side note, ECH does include the paternal grandfather of Garrett Morgan, the famous Cleveland inventor of the safety hood (predecessor of the gas mask) and the three-way traffic signal (predecessor of modern traffic signals), the Confederate General John Hunt Morgan, who lead the Morgan’s Raids during the Civil War, part of the skirmishes in Ohio during the war.

I pulled down the books that ECH listed as being the source of their information.  Brandt had cited Langton Hughes’ autobiography, The Big Sea.  I found out the books that ECH cited also used Hughes’ The Big Sea. 

The conclusion, this Clevelander didn’t know much about a native son.  I remember the year after I moved back from college in 2002, all over Cleveland there was a special anniversary day for Langston to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of his birth and to get a special UPS stamp commissioned.  This is where I learned the name Langston Hughes, despite all of my Civil Rights research growing up.  This was the point where I started to read Hughes’ works and became a fan, almost every word I read by the man pierces the soul.  The connection for Hughes to the Western Reserve besides his graduation from Central High, and his work with Karamu House goes much deeper than what you read on most websites, or even Cleveland history books.  It goes back generations, and I know the pride I have for my Grandfather and his accomplishments and the accomplishments of my Grandfather’s siblings, I try to place myself back to being a young Langston Hughes coming to Cleveland, seeing the smoke stacks of the steel mills, hearing the bells of the trolley car, looking at the buildings that were bigger than anything he had seen in Kansas or Missouri, feeling the pride,  knowing, that only forty miles away his family had played their part in history.