The Institutions Preserving Black History In Northeastern Pennsylvania
Photos by Aimee Dilger | Video and Article by Kelly Dessoye
Glynis Johns rifles through cardboard boxes, heaving binders weighted with ghosts of Scranton’s past onto a solid wood desk. “Oooh I was looking for them! I was like ‘where are my portraits’,” she squeals in delight, protective plastic sleeves crackling as she turns the binders’ pages housing the likenesses of early 20th century Black Scrantonians.
“I started The Black Scranton Project because I felt there was a need to retell, share, and archive the local Black history here in the city - reminding people that it deserves dignity. This deserves space.”
Scranton and the greater Northeastern PA Area (NEPA) is predominantly white. Irish, Italian, German, Polish, and Greek progeny laud their forefathers for planting their feet firmly on the shores of the Susquehanna River. Festivals and parades shut down city centers - booze and food abundant - in reverence and revelry of how we all wound up here.
Thanks to Glynis, Scranton’s Black culture and history - long forgotten or ignored - is getting due course.
Archiving and Retelling Scranton’s Black History
“The standard idea is that most Black people have been here for a short amount of time or are transplants - and that’s true - but there are also families and folks that have been here since 1800,” says Glynis.
People like George Keys Jr. - son of a former slave turned coachman for Ira Tripp - bonafide Scranton royalty. Keys and his father would serve in the USCT - or United States Colored Troops - in the Union Army during the Civil War. Although his father would die of battle wounds, George Jr. would build a life in Northeastern PA - becoming one of the founding members of Bethel AME Church. Holding up a photo of Keys, Glynis muses, “I wonder where his relatives are. If they know about their ancestors.”
Keys is one of a plethora of Black figures whose history Glynis is pulling from the shadows - the contributions which span medicine, infrastructure, politics, civil rights, and - notably - business. “We had some of the most successful businesses in the Northeast,” she says - recalling Charles and Louisa Battle - the first Black hoteliers in Scranton - or George Brown and Louise Tanner Brown - whose company G.W. Brown Draying Co. is responsible for hauling the titanic stone and marble that would be chiseled to form Scranton’s monuments and institutions.
Glynis leafs through a copy of Black History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, dead stop at the page documenting Charles Battle and his wife Louise. “This is the first time I saw a photo of his wife and I almost passed out.” She’s animated here - her joy palpable. Photography is a precious medium in her growing catalog that currently stands at over 100 objects. “That’s one thing that’s sad about the Black community here - things get tossed away because nobody knows what to do with it.” This is especially true for Black women, whose lives and achievements were rarely documented in newspapers during the 19th century. Citing a partnership with the Lackawanna Historical Society, Glynis encourages archivists and antique foragers alike to send any photos of Black people to their local historical societies and also to reach out to her through Black Scranton.
“Living in a predominantly white city, it’s important to acknowledge the other cultures and ethnicities that are a part of the cultural fabric of the space, and the Black community was very much that. I felt like it was important to remind people that we are foundational to the city of Scranton.”
Transcribing the Past for Future Research at Wilkes University
On February 15, 2022, twenty-six miles down 81 South, sets of eyes squinted toward computer screens and the click click click of fingers dancing over keyboards punctuated the air in room 105 of Wilkes University’s Breiseth Hall.
“Today we are helping to make history,” Amy Sopcak-Joseph states from her perch at the front of the classroom. The assistant professor of history is talking about Wilkes’ Douglass Day Transcribe-A-Thon, where university volunteers pour over texts from The Colored Conventions - a series of meetings initiated by Black activists in the 19th Century.
The event is a relay race between institutions such as Wilkes University, Penn State University, and the general public that aims to make documents more word searchable for historians. Documents from the Colored Conventions are available for transcription starting on Douglass Day, which marks the birthday of renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Douglass Day celebrations began after his death in 1895 and are a precursor to Black History Month - observed throughout February.
“It's just nice to give a voice to people who may not have been heard throughout history,” says Wilkes history and education student Adam Piston as he scans documents for names, recording them into the Zooniverse database for future research.
The database of documents from The Colored Conventions was gathered by researchers at Penn State and is hosted on Zooniverse - a portal that allows volunteers to contribute to academic research through activities like transcription and data gathering. For the Transcribe-a-Thon, the transcriber is provided with a digitized document and adjacent blank text window for transcription.
“This [meeting] looks like something Frederick Douglass was actually a part of - this is actually really cool,” observes Kathrine Ermeus - a sophomore. The database is organized by region, and the self proclaimed Jersey girl chose to transcribe documents from New York to “keep it close to home.”
A glance at the tiny cursive print - sometimes sloppily scanned and marred with page bleeds - displays why a computer OCR (optical character recognition) is no match for discerning human eyes and critical thinking. Another point for team human eyeballs is vocabulary. It’s changed a lot since the 19th century.
Erika - an assistant professor at Wilkes - stares into her computer, thinking out loud “is shrow, S-H-R-O-W, a word?” Kathrine chimes in “back in the day it was.” Amy and another professor clamored to Erika’s desk and determined the word was indeed “throw” - whether the ‘s’ or ‘t’ was misspelled or simply sloppy is up for debate. Afterall, the original documents were created by humans in an era before spell check.
When Wilkes grabbed the Transcribe-a-Thon baton at 11am on February 15, 2022, 58% of the available documents had been transcribed. By the end of a 2 hour shift, they put a 340 document dent in the catalog, bringing the number up to 61%. To date, all available documents from the Colored Conventions have been transcribed and a new batch will be released for transcription on February 14, 2023.
Building Traditions
“Black is not a monolith, we come from all over the world but our origins all kind of rest in Africa.” Glynis sits in front of the gigantic bank vault of the Black Scranton Project Center For Arts and Culture - an art deco behemoth of gilt gold and marble granted to the Black Scranton Project by PNC Bank in Spring 2021.
The first of its kind in Scranton, it’s open to everyone in the community and focused squarely on Black culture. It will be host to after school programs, art installations, a music studio, and more. Most of all, it’s a space that Black people in Scranton can claim as their own. Where they can fully express themselves and feel safe.
“With the Black Scranton Project the foundation that I’m trying to instill is traditions and legacy… I never felt like there were these bold markers of assertion in the city, so I thought it was time to be Black and proud. Say it loud.” Glynis approached Scranton mayor Paige Cognetti with a radical proposal. “Let’s raise the Pan African Flag at City Hall and let the flag fly the entire month.” The mayor concurred and it’s been an event embraced by the community. “I just thought raising the flag at city hall would be a good marker of inclusion, celebration, and remembrance of our Black Community in a way we’ve never done before.”
The Pan African Flag raising ceremony and Ice Fest in Scranton ran simultaneously and a sculpture was made for the event.
A young girl stands with adults holding the Pan African flag during the flag raising ceremony in Scranton, PA.
For three years running, members of the community from all cultural backgrounds have huddled together during the first Saturday in February, waving tiny Pan African Flags in mittened hands at the steps of Scranton City Hall.
This year’s ceremony was especially frigid - the temp topping out at 17 degrees in the sun - as onlookers listened to speeches and renditions of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “Amazing Grace” before Glynis hoisted the black, red, and green flag, fist triumphantly raised. The flag - created in 1920 - is chock full of symbolism. “Red for the blood of ancestors lost during the diaspora and the era of slavery, green for prosperity, and black for the Black people of the world,” Glynis recounts.
“I’m just so grateful and hope our ancestors are so proud of what we did today,” Glynis choked back tears as the crowd cheered.
“I’ve just seen so many beautiful things, and I’ve seen it since literally 1800. I’m just so happy our history is being brought to the forefront.”
— Glynis M. Johns, MA