The African-American presence in West Virginia dates from the 1780s, when European exploring parties brought slaves to the Greenbrier and New River valleys. During the French and Indian Wars, blacks aided the army as it moved through the New River and Big Sandy valleys up toward the Ohio River and helped to stake claims for white settlers.
By 1830, the black population in the state was nearly 20,000, most of who worked as slaves in the region's newly emerging industries of iron, coal and salt. This generation of blacks contributed many African items that now are enjoyed by West Virginians of all cultural backgrounds, including the banjo and the black-eye pea.
One of the most notable events in the state's history was the 1859 raid on the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry by abolitionist John Brown, in search of arms to provoke a slave revolt. This episode set off a chain of events that eventually led to the Civil War. In 1863, the western counties of Virginia seceded to become the state of West Virginia. When the legislature abolished slavery two years later, many blacks left the state in search of relatives and greater security.
The ancestors of most black West Virginians entered the state between 1870 to 1930, as African-Americans came to constitute about 23 percent of the total labor force in the southern part of the state, attracted mainly by the bituminous coal industry. They were drawn from Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, and to a lesser extent from Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. This period saw the explosive growth of churches, which served as the central institutions of African-American communities, and fraternal orders like the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, Masons, Elks, and the Knight of Pythias, which spearheaded a national effort to get blacks to buy land.
As the curtain of segregation fell across the nation following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896, blacks in West Virginia retained the right to vote and sent several of their own representatives to the state Legislature. Segregation gave rise to several all-black schools like Douglass High in Huntington and Sumner High in Parkersburg, which now houses an African-American museum.
As the coal industry declined after World War II, many blacks - like other West Virginians - sought employment outside the state, settling mainly in Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Washington and Alexandria, Va.
The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. Board of Education forced West Virginia to integrate its public schools and institutions. Desegregation in some regions proceeded quickly and peacefully while it took a number of lawsuits to integrate the schools of southern West Virginia. The school systems of Hampshire, Hardy, and Jefferson counties were the last with black students to desegregate. While integration had many positive effects, it also eliminated a significant element of black society. African-American schools had given blacks a sense of identity in their communities. After the Brown decision, many African-Americans chose to keep their children in all-black schools, some of which remained until the late 1960s.
The integration of schools and state-operated institutions sparked a national civil rights movement to desegregate the rest of society. In 1958, West Virginia's first chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was formed in Charleston and began boycotts of the Woolworth, Kresge and Newberry five & dime stores which refused to serve African-Americans at their lunch counters. The following month, the stores integrated. CORE targeted other cities, including Bluefield and Huntington. Boycotts led to the integration of restaurants, department stores, and movie theaters, although some businesses remained segregated until the late 1960s.
The legacy of achievement exemplified by Booker T. Washington continues through other black West Virginians like the Rev. Dr. Leon Sullivan, who founded the Opportunity Industrialization Center, a job-training organization with branches around the world; Tony Brown, host of public television's "Tony Brown Journal;" and Henry Louis Gates, a prolific and renown literary critic.
West Virginia's coal industry experienced a rebirth during the national energy crisis of the early 1970s and employment increased. However, the industry suffered through a severe recession beginning in the late seventies and unemployment reached all-time highs. Blacks again left the state in dramatic numbers. Today, African-Americans represent just over three percent of West Virginia's total population.
In 2000, the city of Charleston named one of its main city streets in honor of its native Rev. Sullivan, changing Broad Street to "Leon Sullivan Way."
In the fall of 1995, the city of Huntington erected a statue in honor of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, "Father of Black History." Woodson had served as principal of Douglass High School in Huntington and dean at West Virginia State College, Institute, WV. After earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, he published the influential "Journal of Negro History," the "Negro History Bulletin," and a series of seminal books. In 1926, he launched "Negro History Week," which has been expanded to "Black History Month."
Dr. Carter G. Woodson
Photo courtesy West Virginia State Archives