Speech and Testimony
County Executive Leggett’s Remarks at the Warren Historic Site Preservation
22625 Whites Ferry Road, Dickerson
As prepared
Thank you to Heritage Montgomery and the Warren Historic Site Committee for putting this event together, and specifically Ms. Elsee Thomas for her leadership and dedication.
I would also like to acknowledge and thank you Ms. Ninah Clark [almost 100 years old], here with us today, who was actually the teacher at the Martinsburg Negro School.
Warren Historic Site was part of the African American crossroads settlement of Martinsburg. After freed Nathan Naylor purchased 97 acres here in 1866, other former slaves followed. By 1879 the population reached 75.
The first Warren Church was built in 1866 facing Martinsburg Road and a small cemetery was established. A decade later, oxen pulled the church to the present site. In 1886, the one-room Martinsburg Negro School opened for 40 to 50 students in grades one to seven. After closing in 1939, the school became a church hall and community center.
Today, Warren is a rare, African American site that retains the three anchors of the historical community – church, school, and benefit society lodge.
We are here to honor and celebrate the collaborative work that has led up to the beginning of the preservation of more than one and a half centuries of this example of African American life, history and culture.
There is no doubt that the world has changed since these buildings comprised what was the nucleus for most African American communities founded in Maryland following the end of the Civil War through the beginning of the 20th century.
I’m here before you today, someone who was raised in a shotgun shack in Louisiana and who was told he would never get into college.
We have since seen an African American president. Many people thought we would have a woman president before a black president.
If the history of African Americans in the U.S. has taught us anything, it is that progress is not a smooth path that always moves in the right direction.
Yes, we had an African American president; and I am your County Executive. That is progress.
Yet, at the same time, we have demonstrations protesting that Black Lives Matter as we saw controversial cases from Florida to Missouri to New York over recent years. We have the violent, and deadly, white supremacy protests that occurred in Charlottesville just this past August.
By all means we should celebrate the preservation of a century of African American life, history and culture.
We must fight to preserve it while taking pride in progress and supporting those who work so hard to maintain our history so that we, and our children’s, children’s, children never forget the lessons of the past.
Thank you!
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Release ID: 17-102
October 7; 1 p.m.