February with OWR: Jeanine Donaldson and OAAGHG
Upcoming Events
Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Theater Project: Historical Narrative on Stage
Playwright Ifa Bayeza and Dramaturg Caroline Jackson Smith, of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Theater Project Creative team, will share their progress on researching this play-in-progress. They will be working together with members of the Oberlin African-American Genealogy & History Group (OAAGHG) to brainstorm and answer some important questions:
How might we together research historical figures from Oberlin? How can we research links between past and present?
What events can we design to inform, inspire, and invite reflection on why this history should be told here and now?
Debra Wise will also share a brief update about upcoming events in April and June.March 5, 11am | Zoom link will be emailed out beforehand
Contact: OAAGHG President Jordann Sadler <jsadler@oberlin.edu>
Sitting with Jeanine Donaldson
This month is Black History Month, an annual celebration of the African diaspora including African American history. As many of you may know, one reason the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Theater Project was established was to uplift and celebrate the unique history of Lorain County and its role in the Underground Railroad. As part of our ongoing commitment to this mission we’re working with a number of community members, established professionals and experts in their respective fields. One of these members is Jeanine Donaldson, Executive Director of the Elyria/Lorain YWCA.
Community-Based Research Fellow and Dramaturgy Intern Cora López sat down with Jeanine Donaldson to interview her about the history of Black abolitionism in Lorain County and her role in the project.
Cora: So, let's start at the very beginning. Who were your parents and where were you born?
Jeanine: My parents were Henry Sherman Potter and Frieda Orr Potter. I grew up in Sandusky, Ohio.
I consider myself fortunate to be able to go back a few generations in my family, but of course it stops because of slavery. My recollection, though, is growing up in Sandusky and being a child in the 1950s and 60s. Almost like today, little is talked about with Black history, with the exception of slavery. The history that I got was from my church.
Cora: Could you give a brief description of the history of Black abolitionism in Lorain County?
Jeanine: In Lorain County, the narrative is usually about Oberlin, and that’s because African Americans have always been an afterthought. No one has thought to document our existence in Lorain County, except for Oberlin. So frankly when you talk about Oberlin and the Underground Railroad movement, it’s about the Oberlin-Wellington rescue.
There’s been a couple of names mentioned in Elyria, but they’ve all been white; in Lorain we have the different stops that were operated as the Underground Railroad sites, but no one really attributes any African Americans to that effort. I can’t really tell you about the history because no one’s documented it.
image description: Jeanine Donaldson (left) and Cora López (right) on Zoom. Both are smiling at the camera.
C: Did Black abolitionism differ specifically in Oberlin, historically, versus in the surrounding areas?
J: I don’t think so. It was still a very dangerous prospect. I think that African Americans, Africans, former slaves… they felt comfortable coming to Oberlin because they could walk around in the open. A majority of the townspeople were against slavery and thought that it was evil, and so once the slaves did reach Oberlin they at least had some freedom to walk around, have jobs. But they always had to be alert and on the lookout for slave catchers.
C: Pivoting to the project. Do you think that the history impacts the way we should move forward with our work?
J: Of course it should. But will it? I don’t know.
On one end, you’ve got folks that are looking at this like a history documentary project. And on the other end, there’s folks that are looking at this as entertainment, because it will bring people into Lorain County.
So when you have that aspect going on, a lot of times you’re going to do what’s most expedient to get people in seats as opposed to creating something that folks are going to walk away from feeling moved or knowing more about their history. I mean, both can be achieved. But it'll be very interesting to see how we deal with that.
“I find a lot of what I’ve read about the Underground Railroad tells the story of the white abolitionist. And I think what’s interesting about our project is that in Oberlin, many of the abolitionists were African American. So there’s a real story to be told there.”
C: Are there any groups that are continuing the legacy of black abolitionism and working out of Lorain County? How could someone get involved if they don’t know how?
J: It’s pretty popular right now. You’ve got historical societies that are getting more engaged in it, so that’s a good thing.
I don’t know what the end product is going to be, which makes this project important. Because if it is an entertainment product and brings tourism to Lorain County, from all across the United States, then clearly folks will learn more about the history of the abolitionist movement and equity in America.
C: Can you speak a little bit to the methods on which the history of Black abolitionism is documented? Is it storytelling, or was it institutionally recorded?
J: There’s very little that has been institutionally recorded. I’m from Sandusky. The church that I grew up in, founded in 1849, is the oldest African American church in Northeast Ohio. It was founded by free men and women of color and former slaves.
The pastors were very educated, typically from historically black seminaries in the South. My pastor, the Reverend Richard Ashford, graduated from Virginia Union Seminary, and so many of his sermons he would preface with maybe a little story about something that he had read in Langston Hughes's literature. He would also reference people like W.B. Dubois or Booker T. Washington, and Harriet Tubman. What this did for seven-year-old Jeanine, was it made me want to go to the library and read about these characters.
When you have a heritage that you come from, you just kind of know. You can look around and see things, see the people who contributed to the growth of the church and what their ties were to the abolitionist movement.
From the Archives:
Charles Mercer Langston, abolitionist, activist, and one of the heroic Black members of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, was the grandfather of renowned Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. He was also the older brother of John Mercer Langston, another prolific abolitionist and activist, who was the first (and only, for nearly a century) Black person elected to congress in Virginia.
C: Is there anything else you’d like to address?
J: My role with this project is to make sure that there’s folks from Elyria, from Lorain, black and white, that can have a role in it. Not a singing or acting role, but I mean a role in bringing it to the community and hosting it at different sites around the county. Because it’s not an Oberlin story, it’s a Lorain County story.
Oberlin has done a great job in documenting what’s in Oberlin, but even there we need to dig deeper because there’s some really remarkable African Americans that contributed to the quality of life for those refugee slaves that did come north to Oberlin to the shores of Lake Erie.
Sitting down with a font of knowledge such as Jeanine Donaldson was such a pleasure. Getting to know her made me realize how much of a communitarian effort this project is. The work of a dramaturg is to provide the cast and crew with integral information about the theatrical work. Any and all details, from the history of past productions to specifics about time, place, setting, are incredibly important to the rehearsal process.
I didn’t anticipate that in the process of mining for information, I’d be following the paths carved out for me by community members, collecting collected stories and not just sitting behind a screen or behind the pages of a book. This work is the toil of historians and researchers all over the community, all born from a desire for the truth of Black abolitionism and sanctuary in Lorain County. We hope that this project adds to and honors the legacy of solidarity in the community.
—Cora L.
Stay involved!
We're asking for your help growing this project and our community. If you have any suggestions or are otherwise interested in helping during this period of research, please reach out to us!