{"id":49436,"date":"2016-10-14T19:12:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T19:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49436"},"modified":"2016-10-14T19:52:48","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T19:52:48","slug":"one-mans-quest-to-preserve-the-haunting-black-history-of-pocahontas-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49436","title":{"rendered":"One man\u2019s quest to preserve the haunting black history of Pocahontas Island"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/virginia-politics\/one-mans-quest-to-preserve-the-haunting-black-history-of-pocahontas-island\/2016\/09\/26\/b79f9b2c-7abf-11e6-beac-57a4a412e93a_story.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>One man\u2019s quest to preserve the haunting black history of Pocahontas Island<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Washington Post<\/a><br \/>\n2016-09-26<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/schneiderg\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Gregory S. Schneider<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/video\/c\/embed\/0253d552-8353-11e6-b57d-dd49277af02f\" width=\"480\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pocahontas_Island\" target=\"_blank\">POCAHONTAS ISLAND, Va.<\/a> \u2014 He roams from house to house along the quiet streets of this little neighborhood, giving voice to its history and spirits. The collection of modest homes, tucked between an empty lumber factory and an abandoned rail yard, doesn\u2019t look like a rare and haunted place.<\/p>\n<p>But in Richard Stewart\u2019s eyes, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pocahontas_Island\" target=\"_blank\">Pocahontas Island<\/a> is alive with an unexpectedly dramatic past. Using a black magic marker, Stewart scrawls the words of 12 generations of ancestors on old porch rails, doorways and window frames.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAin\u2019t no looking back master I\u2019m at the promised land.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Outside, Stewart has bought the small house next door, which he said was built in the early 1800s by a mixed-race man whose white mother sold him into slavery as a child because she couldn\u2019t be seen with him. Stewart painted it pink and yellow and covered it with words and pictures related to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nat_Turner\" target=\"_blank\">Nat Turner<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>At least one man who helped <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nat_Turner%27s_slave_rebellion\" target=\"_blank\">Turner\u2019s bloody slave rebellion<\/a> in 1831 in nearby <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Southampton_County,_Virginia\" target=\"_blank\">Southampton County<\/a> hid, for a time, in the woods on Pocahontas Island, Stewart said&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Stewart talks about slavery in an offhand way that can seem jarring. He credits his stature and strong build to what many regard as the myth of selective breeding. In colorful terms, he tells how mixed-race children were sent to live on the island: \u201cWe had a lot of out-of-wedlock <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=451\" target=\"_blank\">mulattos<\/a> over here. You might have seen a child walking along over here white as snow, and [the] mama walking along dark as a bag of coal.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/virginia-politics\/one-mans-quest-to-preserve-the-haunting-black-history-of-pocahontas-island\/2016\/09\/26\/b79f9b2c-7abf-11e6-beac-57a4a412e93a_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One man\u2019s quest to preserve the haunting black history of Pocahontas Island The Washington Post 2016-09-26 Gregory S. Schneider POCAHONTAS ISLAND, Va. \u2014 He roams from house to house along the quiet streets of this little neighborhood, giving voice to its history and spirits. The collection of modest homes, tucked between an empty lumber factory [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,6940,20,693],"tags":[25193,25194,25196,25195,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-49436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-gregory-s-schneider","tag-gregory-schneider","tag-pocahontas-island","tag-richard-stewart","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49436"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49440,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49436\/revisions\/49440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}