On July 4, 1905, William Matthews started at second base for the Burlington Baseball Team of the Northern League – at the time the only black professional baseball player. He was later known as “the Jackie Robinson of his age.”
Freed during the Civil War and brought north by a Vermont infantry officer, George Washington Henderson had a distinguished career as a scholar, educator, and pastor.
A life-size statue of Port Huron, Michigan native and sax player Big Joe Burrell graces the Church Street Marketplace.
At age 100, Daisy Turner of Grafton – daughter of freed slaves, gifted raconteuse – told her family stories to folklorist Jane Beck.
