Civil war presentations planned

staff report

YOUNGSTOWN — There will be two community history presentations Saturday.

At noon there will be a Civil War Walking Tour at Oak Hill Cemetery featuring local historians Steffon Jones, Kenneth King, Sonya Justice, Bill Wall, Ron Johnson and Ajamu Shivers.

At 6 p.m. at St. Augustine Episcopal Church, 614 Parmelee, the program will feature Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) by historian Larry Crowe. Call (330) 727-3262 for more information about the walking tour and (330) 747-1307 for more information about the evening program.

Crowe is a producer and interviewer for the HistoryMakers, www.thehistorymakers.com/aboutus/, a massive online oral history collection of well-known and unsung makers of black American history.

Crowe is also a member of the Kemetic Institute (Chicago) and President of the Mid West Region of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations.

He has organized and led pilgrimages to the grave site of Delany at Massie Creek Cemetery in Wilberforce, Ohio, and played a role in helping to secure a new marker memorial for Delany’s grave.

Delany was many things during his lifetime, including an abolitionist, Harvard-trained physician, trial justice, inventor, Civil War field officer, leader of Niger Valley Exploring Party, journalist, editor (co-founder with Frederick Douglass of the North Star newspaper), author and Freemason. Biographer Dorothy Sterling titled him the Father of Black Nationalism.