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[00:00:00] Introduction: Broadcasting from the campus of Salisbury University, this is WSDL Ocean City, NPR News Talk 90.7. Putting Delmarva first. It's time for Delmarva Today with your host, Don Rush. [00:00:12][12.5]

[00:00:25] Don Rush: It was called Georgetown, not the one in Delaware, but an African American community quite near downtown Salisbury. Welcome to Delmarva today. This is Don Rush, by one account. Georgetown was uptown, West Main Street was downtown, and there was even a Humphreys Lake community. Ultimately disappeared with the arrival of routes 13 and 50. They cut through the heart of the city. Linda Duyer has authored a book filled with pictures and maps of what once was this thriving African American community is called 'Round the Pond'. And she joins us in the studio this morning. Thank you very much for coming. [00:00:57][32.4] [44.9]

[00:00:57] Linda Duyer: Thank you for having me. [00:00:58][0.8]

[00:00:59] Don Rush: Well, let's start with where this is, right? Because I was not aware that there was such a community or that there a lake as well. How did you wind up, first of all, getting an intrigue or finding out about this? [00:01:12][13.2]

[00:01:12] Linda Duyer: Well, I grew up in Salisbury from the age of two, and still, I am afraid to admit this, I, growing up, I really didn't absorb Salisbury's history. I didn't know much about Salisberry's history, so let alone its African-American history. And I had moved away for college and work in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and then decided to come back and learn more. But I had heard that an old black church was being renovated for use as a cultural center, which became the Charles H. Chipman Cultural Center in Salisbury. And so I thought that, you know, I had barely remembered the church when I was growing up. Boarded up. I might have seen it even just once or noticed it once. So I got curious about what they were renovating. I started attending their meetings. And learned from a woman, Elaine Brown, who was sort of their unofficial historian and retired school teacher from the segregated Salisbury High School, that it was called in Georgetown. And so where's the church, there had to have been a community, and I wanted to document that community. I knew nothing about it. It looked, you got two highways going through it. There are very few landmarks left. That building is probably the- the only public landmark left, although there are a few other buildings. So I just started asking her, I said, Ms. Brown, could you teach me or tell me more about the history of this neighborhood? And nowhere was it mentioned as being Georgetown, the name Georgetown. Just a few people have been telling me that. And so I decided, well, it's not documented anywhere. So I kept collecting information. She invited me. To her home and she, strong arms, she invited several of her older friends, many of whom had lived in that area, to come, and we had these discussion meetings where we talked about, they told me what it was like living, where it was, what it's like living in that community, and what it is like. So if you know where the Chipman Cultural Center is, that was pretty much the center of the whole area. At one point, there had been Humphrey's Lake in Salisbury up until 1909, and it was drained when the dam broke, and they decided not to put it back because they gave them extra property, and so part of that property became part of Georgetown as well. But that little community is one of the oldest in Salisbury. It's associated with Poplar Hill Mansion. And so I decided to research it, to learn as much as I could about it. [00:04:16][183.3][197.3]

[00:04:16] Don Rush: So let me ask you this, so if we just start with the Charles Chipman Cultural Center, as you look south, okay? Towards downtown, before 1909, before the lake was cleaned up, what did that part look like, and what were we looking at in terms of Georgetown? [00:04:38][21.4]

[00:04:38] Linda Duyer: Well, if you were at the church and you were on its front steps and you're looking south, you would have seen Church Street go through, no Route 50, going through about where Route 50 is, and then beyond that, maybe another street or two, and beyond that the lake, which is about where the parking lot is and where Main Street is in that location. Main Street didn't go through that area. So actually, the John Wesley Church was referred to as the church on the hill. So it's up a little bit on the bluff, and then it slopes down towards the bottom land of the lake. And one thing you had mentioned was, when I asked these people, I said, well, what were the black communities in Salisbury? And one friend of mine, Gladys Stewart, said we had uptown, downtown, and around the pond. I said uptown. Uptown, she said, was Georgetown. Downtown was West Main Street area, the west side of Salisbury, sort of the black business district in their residential area. And I said, well, what's around the pond? What really is there is really two little neighborhoods right next to each other in Georgetown. It's always collectively referred to as Georgetown. There's no boundary between the two, but really, the more bottom land along the lake area was really an area called Cuba. Or QB, and some people would think, well, that's a little unsavory area, yet they were right next to each other. Cuba was, I mean, the Georgetown area was different, and yet they're so close and right next each other. What surprised me was that there was a black community right in the downtown Salisbury. I had grown up, I'm a baby boomer, I grew up noticing Salisbury during my youth, is being geographically segregated, uh... With the west side being predominantly the African American area and the rest being predominantly white, uh... You can see that today is the vestige of our uh... Election districts uh... Was too uh... One and two uh... So it was a surprise to me that uh... There had been a neighborhood right downtown, wedged in between Newtown and the downtown business district and the railroad tracks, and before the highways went through. So that was a major surprise to me. And so often I majored in geography and also in the interest in African-American history. And I had always thought of historically communities with their black section, the African-Americans section, as being nearby, but somehow divided by a railroad track or a river or something. And that was true. I know a teacher here, she referred to them as satellite communities, you know? But in fact, you know, George Snow was right downtown. Whites and blacks lived across the street from each other. [00:07:47][189.0]

[00:07:48] Don Rush: So what was the origin of this of this, of this community as we sort of reach back to the Poplar Mansion? [00:07:54][6.2]

[00:07:55] Linda Duyer: I think it was Poplar Hill Mansion because part of that area, most of the area, was on property that had once belonged to Poplar Hill Mansion. In fact, the John Wesley Church was founded by five freedmen. Most or all of them had been enslaved. They were freed at the time in 1830s, 37, and 38. Some of the housing might have been either Freedman's housing or slave housing. So that connection was close to Poplar Hill Mansion, and of course, it grew a little bit, you know. Of course, the area, the neighborhood, was small, but so was all. [00:08:41][46.4]

[00:08:43] Don Rush: So then, as we expand out from there, so is this a community that sort of then develops out of this plantation, for lack of a better word, this mansion area, is that how that works? Well, they were... Yeah, because I know there were... I think you mentioned that in your book that there were some folks who look as if they had been, say, freed slaves who then became involved with the John Wesley Uh, church. [00:09:07][23.7] [286.8]

[00:09:06] Linda Duyer: Correct. Yes, they had, and I imagine they're more so work that way. Some may have been freedmen all along. I don't really know. I just knew that the five founders of the John Wesley Church, some of them, had been enslaved at one point or another. Where one bought their freedom and bought the freedom of his wife. Their children went on to be kind of prominent in the community. That sort of thing. In fact, I was just re-reading my book earlier and there was a quote that one of the members of the community, Solomon Houston, his father, we believe had been, Levin Houston, who had been enslaved and was freed and then was one of members of the founders of the John Weseley Church, Solomon Houston was quoted as having been the richest African-American in this part of the state and he and you know so there were a lot of surprises in my research and he was related So you can see on the old 1877 Atlas, the pond, the lake, Humphreys Lake, and you can see some indication of African Americans living along it, not far from Poplar Hill Mansion. And Poplar Hill Road Avenue was the access drive for Poplar Hill. [00:10:43][96.8]

[00:10:44] Don Rush: So what was this community like at the time? Was it developing into the turn of the 20th into the 20th century? What kinds of business, what kind of people were involved? Did you get a sense at all about that? [00:10:55][11.5]

[00:10:56] Linda Duyer: Yes, I did, and I know that i had i had mentioned to you that uh... Richard Cooper had written it- a book on uh... He's written several books these sur- was a surveyor and is Salisbury historian and had written a lot of books, and he's the only one, actually, up until me had mentioned Georgetown or the area Cuba in Georgetown at all, and uh... It was with a negative connotation as being a slum And, uh... And so I kind of challenged him a bit. But he was very gracious and offered a lot of information to me, which actually countered a lot what he said. Yes, there were rental properties. But it wasn't a slum, or at least the whole thing was not a slump. And I often ask audiences, what do you call a place that had not one, not two, but three churches, and expanded to three churches? An elementary school that was two stories, and a high school, a small high school. A methonic hall, a grocery store, a bicycle shop, a barber shop, a masonic hall, I think I said, and at least two dry goods stores, a funeral business. They had, sure, they had laborers, but they had porters, seamstresses, people that own their own businesses, building houses. Um... Bricklayers, haulers, anything that was needed in salisbury there were many uh... African-Americans that own their own businesses, but they were in a group in a location where they could work here downtown as porters or cooks or whatever, or a work in the service of rep- the residents of like New- Newtown area and um... So this was an area that had two cemeteries, two schools. This was a place where people were born, they were raised, they worshiped, they were educated in two schools, they married, they worked, they served their community in fraternal organizations, they lived, they died, and were buried in Salisbury right in that neighborhood. So I always say to people, what kind of term do you use to describe a small neighborhood or a community like that? And I say neighborhood. It's, you know, it was... It was more than, and I was wanting, I never wanted to write a book initially. I was just researching. But there were two reasons that made me do a book. One was that the people that I interviewed kept imploring me to make sure that the history of Georgetown wasn't forgotten. And it took me a long time to write, publish the book, and many of them had passed. By that time, but also in the meantime, Mr. Cooper had written his book and was saying these things, these brief things about Georgetown. And I knew that I didn't want that to be the definitive history of Georgetown. I know it needed to be in the libraries and available for people who are researching and to be proud of their neighborhood. There is no sign. There is no historical marker for Georgetown. There is one for the building of the John Wesley Church that is now the Chipman Cultural Center, but there's no sign that explains there's a whole neighborhood around here, and there are remnants. Sorry if I went on too much. [00:14:43][227.6]

[00:14:44] Don Rush: No, no, it's fine. So tell me then also a little bit about this lake, or I guess, as I was looking at the book, there's like Humphrey's pond, and there's Humphry's lake, and describe for me how these rivers intersected. Why is it they decided that once the brand- dam broke, they just didn't ... [00:15:01][17.0]

[00:15:02] Linda Duyer: Two prongs to the Wicomico River. Most of Salisbury, the old Salisburys right downtown is between the two and they form the Wicomico river. They both have lakes on them. The North Prong still does, but the East Prong had a Humphrey's Lake and when it drained that when the big storm and the... Dan Burst, some entrepreneurs, and I can't pronounce that very well, decided, hmm, there was some property to be had, and then they decided not to put the lake back in, and they created a realty company for all those properties. That includes the area around the park now, you know, you go through the park and you some low areas in the park, not far from the zoo. There was a lake there, and that's why it's low, you know, if you drive around the park. [00:16:07][65.3]

[00:16:08] Don Rush: That's where the lake was? [00:16:09][0.9]

[00:16:09] Linda Duyer: That's where the lake was. It's harder to imagine that downtown because Main Street ended at Division, and there was a big house there, too, right next to the courthouse, but beyond that house was the lake. So, they extended Main Street. And they graded a lot over the year. But you could tell when you're at Division and Main Street, and you drive down towards Route 13, you're going downhill a little bit. [00:16:43][33.4]

[00:16:44] Don Rush: There's a number of prominent people that come out of this, but one of the ones that jumped out at me was Sergeant William Butler, who's a hero of Water Street. Tell me then a little bit about him, because this was during the First World War, and I guess much of what we know is from this Scott's official history of the African American Negro and the World War. Tell me a little about him, and what do we know about him? Well, how did he? [00:17:08][24.2]

[00:17:09] Linda Duyer: Well, all I'm- mostly what I knew was from the book you referenced, I forget how I came up with the name in the first place, but I did find that book that you talked about. But also, Stephen Genrich from Salisbury University has a big interest in the history of World War I and, in particular, African American involvement. So, I had been in touch with him. Before and after the printing of the book. And he explained, as well as the book, the 369th, I think it was, his heroism in World War I. He did return to Salisbury briefly, and he was honored in the John Wesley Church. Gave a big program honoring him, gave him a gold watch, according to newspaper articles. And he hadn't married a woman who was living on Water Street, right where the uh... The parking lots are, but for some reason, he left the area and divorced and uh... Steven found out that he ended up in Washington- Washington dc had a business, and for many years, and uh... But he- he died, I think in the nineteen fifties, and isn't buried in Arlington Cemetery He committed suicide? Not clear why he was ill, but he also lost his business but you also wonder what effect World War I had on him. It was a very negative people often talk about African-American uh... Veterans coming back after World War II and abuses they felt they experienced, but was even worse for World War I uh... Veterans and uh... But he was so decorated in New York City and, along with the group, got ticker tape parade, so I was rather surprised to find him having been from Salisbury. [00:19:19][130.0]

[00:19:20] Don Rush: Because you mentioned, I guess, that he was actually hit- fired on some Germans, and was able to actually get some Americans who had been captured released. [00:19:29][8.7]

[00:19:29] Linda Duyer: Exactly, exactly. Yes, he did fire. His group was being fired upon, I think several died or something, and he was being fired on. I don't know how he managed to do it, but he did end up firing on the Germans and actually capturing some and bringing them back. So, a few people know that he was, we had a hero here. [00:19:50][21.4]

[00:19:51] Don Rush: So tell me then, by the way, a little bit about Charles Chipman, because he really plays a sort of his prominent role. Some people, later on in his life, were very critical of him, and what kind of role did he play in this community? [00:20:05][13.3]

[00:20:06] Linda Duyer: Well, he was not from Salisbury; he was from New Jersey. He almost went, when he got his degrees; he almost went to Tuskegee to teach. But he got an offer here to not only teach, but be a principal of the Black High School. And he married someone who was from this area. Jeanette Pinkett, she too was related to. The five, one of the five that founded the John Wesley Church, but you have to realize that in the 1940s, Route 13 went through the community. It took the AME Church. And it might have taken the elementary school. Then Route 50 went through and took the Baptist Church and so many other businesses. How the John Wesley building survived might be part geography and in part due to the will of the Chipmans, because there was no community left. All the members were joining a church on the White Chapel on the west side. So it ceased being a church, and he bought the building to save it, with his goal in of one day being a cultural center, in which it did. And so that was his role in saving that building. I don't know what you mean in terms of other roles. [00:21:41][95.4]

[00:21:41] Don Rush: I guess it was prominent in the community. [00:21:45][3.1]

[00:21:45] Linda Duyer: Yeah, he's very prominent in the community. I don't know how he was- how there was controversy I may have heard some along the way sure but any time when there's a, you know, a transfer of a building there's sometimes controversy sure, but you have to have actually was probably his wife's role Mostly she was probably the one that pushed the hardes,t I was told this, for make- to make sure that this was a cultural center, so they were a team and she was from here, so That's pretty good. [00:22:16][30.8]

[00:22:17] Don Rush: So now, also before we leave this, I guess there are two cemeteries. One's Houston, and the other one is Potter's Field. Tell me about those. [00:22:24][7.3]

[00:22:25] Linda Duyer: Well, they're on the other side of the railroad tracks. And there's one cemetery that's long been known as Salisbury Cemetery. It was sort of cut through by the Route 50. And it's right, you can see it on the side of a highway behind, next to the Arby's, you know, and you go under the, come up from under the railroad tracks. And that's a very old cemetery that had been segregated with a colored section. And you can see that on the 1877 Atlas. And I think Levin Houston is buried there. And not many markers. But there's a cemetery right behind it. The property was purchased, I think, 1901. So it's nowhere near as old as the old Salisbury City Cemetery. And that was purchased by Solomon Houston and U.G. Langston, and a number of families as a multi-family cemetery for African Americans that they could control, and it was named the Houston Cemetery, and some people confuse they think they're both the same cemetery, but they're not. [00:23:41][76.4]

[00:23:44] Don Rush: So, by the way, tell me, the person you were talking about, Elaine Brown, tell me a little bit about her, because she seemed to be instrumental and really- [00:23:51][7.3]

[00:23:52] Linda Duyer: She was very involved in the Chipman Foundation and the restoration plans for the building. She had belonged to that church until it moved to the west side, and she continued with Wesley Temple. She always had an interest in the history. She was a retired schoolteacher, English, she taught drama and everything. Um, and she had family, you know, that had lived in the Georgetown area and that sort of thing. She was really nice. Uh, when I asked, I wanted to learn more about this. She was very open. I was virtually a stranger, you know, so that was very kind of her to bring me into her home and invite all her friends, um, to talk openly to me. I didn't, obviously, I could not speak to everyone I could possibly speak to. But thanks to her, I met so many people. She died shortly before the grand opening of the Chipman Cultural Center, but she was thrilled. She knew we had made the money. [00:25:05][72.9]

[00:25:06] Don Rush: Because I think, as a matter of fact, I think it was an account where she talks about, I guess it was a state superintendent coming in and visited the quotas as, so he looked at me and said right in front of the children after he'd been there for a while and listening to what I was saying, he said, you don't look like you're scared of me at all. I just looked at him and smiled, and kept right on until after I was finished and dismissed my class. Yes. [00:25:28][22.3]

[00:25:28] Linda Duyer: Yes, I had forgotten that was in there, but she was... [00:25:30][2.1]

[00:25:30] Don Rush: It sounds like a very strong, uh, film. [00:25:31][1.4]

[00:25:31] Linda Duyer: She was a strong-willed person that didn't always come across well, but she was determined to have her way in the right thing. Yeah, she was a pretty strong-willed person, I have to admit that. She was talkative when we had these discussion meetings in her home. She wanted to talk so bad, and yet she stayed out of the room on purpose so that I could learn. From all these people. She was strong-willed, but she was very generous. Very generous. [00:26:03][32.1]

[00:26:04] Don Rush: So, the one incident occurs in 1931, there was a hanging lynching in Salisbury, and you had not actually asked anybody about this during your discussions, except for one particular man. Except for one man, and- Tell me about that, because it seemed, because as we were talking before we were on the air, that this moment seemed so really dramatic to you in terms of who he was. [00:26:29][24.4]

[00:26:30] Linda Duyer: I believe it was pivotal to the demise of Georgetown. Many may not agree with me, but I believe so. When I grew up, I had heard about the lynching of Matthew Williams, but I never heard of Georgetown, so I just assumed African Americans who may have been trying to run home to the safety of their homes were all going home to the west side. That wasn't, you know, so... But once I was at these meetings and learning all about Georgetown, and I knew that this man Howard Purnell had been a young adult at the time of the lynching, I could not resist asking him. I did not bring up the topic in our meetings because I just had come to know these people. I figured it wasn't my place. If they wanted to bring it up to any of the negative stuff, I'd be happy to talk about it and listen, but I didn't bring it. But at the end of one of our meetings, when everybody was gone. He and another man, James Diley, got up, headed for the door, and I'm sitting there, and I said, Mr. Purnell, where were you on December 4, 1931? And he stopped in his tracks, and he looked at me, and he said, what do you mean, the lynching? And I said yes, I think I said that. And he looked and me, and I guess he must have been shocked by the question, and maybe the timing of the question, and he said, yes. I was there, and what really sticks in my craw, that was my mother's birthday. So he sat down, and he began to tell me about having witnessed the lynching, a lynching of a fellow classmate. He had been in, he worked at the Wicomico Hotel, which was right across the street from the lynch at the courthouse. He usually works nights, but he switched his hours to work. To a movie right on Main Street and while he was in the movie theater word was circulating what was happening outside and everyone was leaving and I just was imagining everyone going to the West running to go home to the west side but no he lived in Georgetown his way to go Home would be to walk past the courthouse down Main Street past the court house past Wecomico Hotel down Main Street all the way to where the railroad tracks were. Turn left. And go into this, he was living with his parents at the time uh... He would have had to go right into the mom as it was, he had to get was the mom to make to Division Street, and study made a quick left, he hurt he heard it, you know, his classmate being uh... Strung up several times and he rushed done uh... Church street to get home uh... When he got to his parents home his father was upstairs at the window with a shotgun to watch what's going on because you never knew during a what might happen to the other people, and he could witness the body being burned because the body was dragged from the courthouse down Main Street to right in front of the Georgetown, Cuba neighborhood for that purpose of showing them the burning of the body. And he was burned right where the parking lot is now where the flea market happens every day. Every weekend, and so it was definitely a terrorizing situation for that community of Georgetown. It was terrorizing for everybody, and it was terrorizing afterwards because Georgetown was so interlocked with downtown. Whites and blacks crossed each other in the street to go to church, go to business every day, and those people had to go into the homes in Newtown to work for those families and look each other in the eye. So it was a very tense time after that, particularly for Georgetown. And I wouldn't be surprised if that happened in 31. So in 1940s, Route 13 cut through and took part of it. And then Route 50 took through, went through. [00:30:45][255.4]

[00:30:46] Don Rush: And one of the things about the about talking about Purnell is that- that he had made the worst sort of [00:30:51][4.8]

[00:30:52] Linda Duyer: It came out of him, it poured out of like he couldn't control it. It's as if I'd bumped into him and the words started to fall out and he couldn't stop it. He sat down on the sofa next to me, Mr. Jolly in the chair opposite and he just, words just poured out what had happened and at one time we all just stopped with our mouths agape. Get out! Couldn't believe what he had just said you know and he couldn't believe what you just said don't think he was used to talking about it certainly not to someone white and virtually a stranger and suddenly he heard something i had a tape recorder between us that i had uh... Had been running for our meeting earlier and i just forgot about it was still running and he heard the word of the other tape recorder and the frightened look on his face. I'll never forget, because it was such a raw, frightened look, as if the lynching had occurred the day before. So that impact of what had happened has impacted him all these years. After I did that interview, I didn't ask him any more questions. I was so grateful that he bothered to talk to me about it. Later on, Cheryl and Eiffel did a book on the courthouse lawn, on this lynching and other lynchings. And she had interviewed him and he refused to talk. He wouldn't talk about it. In fact, she said he took it to his grave. I wrote her, I said, that's not true. He told me. But that just shows you the power of what a lynching can do all those years later. [00:32:35][103.0]

[00:32:37] Don Rush: What do you make of the fact that we, for the most part in Salisbury, really don't know anything about this community? It's almost disappeared from our memories. I mean, obviously, there were people who've been here a long time, but also we have lots of people who are coming in who've never been here before and washing away some of that history that you've... [00:32:58][20.5]

[00:32:59] Linda Duyer: Some people growing up, didn't know African-Americans growing up. I had learned, did not know about the history. It's hard to make something of that. I don't know if there were such bad feelings of having really your neighborhood taken away from you, and the moving to the west side. There might have been some bitterness, and that always brings. A feeling of families just not wanting to talk about things. I don't know if that's part of it. I don't know why. Certainly not in any history books. Oddly, the lynching is. [00:33:39][40.4]

[00:33:40] Don Rush: Right, of course that is. [00:33:40][0.8]

[00:33:41] Linda Duyer: That's in the history books, but not the neighborhood itself. And it kind of perplexes me, too. There really should be memorial to it, as well as books. [00:33:51][10.1]

[00:33:52] Don Rush: We've been speaking with Linda Dwyer. She has authored a book called Round the Pond. It's a book that's filled with pictures and maps of the once thriving African-American community, Georgetown, which is not Georgetown as in Delaware, but Georgetown here, actually in Salisbury. And it's something that, a rich history. And I appreciate you taking time to stop by and talk with us. [00:34:12][19.4]

[00:34:12] Linda Duyer: Thank you very much. [00:34:13][0.7]

[00:34:13] Don Rush: This has been Del Marva Today. I'm Don Rush, and thanks for listening. [00:34:16][2.8]

[00:34:17] Introduction: This has been Delmarva Today, a production of Delmarva Public Radio. Chris Rank produces and is our audio engineer. Don Rush is your host. For podcasts, visit our website, delmarvapublicradio.net, or subscribe to the Delmarva Today podcast in iTunes. Delmarva Today can now be seen on PAC 14. To view the schedule, visit the Daily Times, or visit pac14.org. [00:34:17][0.0][1483.4]