This is Black History Month, a good time to recall that the creation of West Virginia was somewhat a black history event. The Mountain State was born because the Civil War erupted over Northern efforts to curb slavery.
In the early 1800s, the Kanawha Valley's economy depended partly on slaves working in salt furnaces at Malden and manning plantations. Charleston once had more slaves than Charleston, S.C.
Across America, passions against slavery swelled. John Brown's famous 1859 raid at Harper's Ferry failed in its attempt to ignite a slave uprising, but it polarized emotions and hastened the North-South conflict.
Institute, which later became the state's largest African-American community, originated because a stormy plantation owner privately took a slave woman as his lifelong mate, had 13 children with her, and wrote several wills leaving them his wide bottomland. After white neighbors murdered him, the site became a refuge where blacks felt safe.
As the Civil War raged, Union and Confederate troops repeatedly surged up and down the Kanawha Valley. Charleston changed hands four times. Some Charleston figures such as lawyer George S. Patton fought for slavery. Two future presidents, Rutherford Hayes and William McKinley, were commanders of a Union camp at the mouth of Ferry Branch.
Northern residents clamored to sever the western half of Virginia into a separate state loyal to the United States. President Abraham Lincoln signed the state-creating law, effective June 20, 1863.
After the war, blacks were outcasts, left to struggle for survival however they could. One ex-slave was Booker T. Washington, who walked 200 miles to Malden as a boy, then walked 500 miles to attend school in Virginia, and became America's top black educator as head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
A son of ex-slaves, Carter G. Woodson, came to work as a Fayette County coal miner, then earned college degrees and became the second black American (after W.E.B. DuBois) to earn a doctorate from Harvard University. Woodson also became a top educator and championed black history. Indirectly, he became the founder of Black History Month.
West Virginia State University at Institute became a bastion for black advancement, educating numerous U.S. generals and other leaders. For example, 1920s Institute photos in the Library of Congress show Austin Curtis Jr., who went on to earn a doctorate in chemistry from Cornell University and became top aide to agriculture scientist George Washington Carver.
As you can see, black history and West Virginia history are entwined in a common narrative.
