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By ALAN K. STOUT alanks@leader.net
Tuesday, February 01, 2000 Page: 3A
WILKES-BARRE – As a child, Emerson I. Morris noticed that certain members
of the area community of blacks were not given proper recognition for their
contributions to the region.< “You never heard anything about them,''
said Morris. “It just seemed to me that some of the older generation really
fought for their people.''
Morris, author of the book “African-Americans In The Wyoming Valley,”
saw many of those struggles. Throughout his book, first published in 1992, the
81-year-old Wilkes-Barre native writes about the early black inhabitants of
the area, plus social and political attitudes in the area.
Morris’ effort is worth remembering today, the first day of Black History
Month, a national celebration aimed at recognizing the contributions of black
Americans throughout the nation’s existence.
Morris’ book includes four dozen vintage photographs of prominent members
of the community who contributed to its development.
“They were trying to pull the race together,” says Morris of some of the
region’s pioneering African-Americans. “It used to be that all we had was our
churches. The Baptist Church was usually the people who came up from the
south, and the Methodist Church was people from this area and people who came
down from more northern areas.”
Morris says that although some black residents of the Valley often made
positive contributions to its progress, many chose to lead low-profiled lives
due to fear of discrimination.
“They helped as much as they could, but they were always silent,” says
Morris. “They didn’t get out and shout their business or toot their horns by
any means. In the church, as children, we were sort of governed by these older
people who always had their finger out and said `Don’t do this and don’t do
that.’ You were to act in a certain manner and a certain way.”
Morris says he’d like to see more younger blacks become involved in
community activities and government. He says he often becomes disheartened by
some of the behavior of some of the area’s youth, but says he has seen young
blacks make large contributions to other areas.
“I wish that they could band together and be more like some of the areas
where there are more colored people,” he says. “When I worked in Washington,
that’s where I got a real feeling for what the colored people were doing. They
were in government service there, and they were such a part of the Washington
area. And with Washington being the capital city, I really admired an awfully
lot of those people. They were school teachers and working in other parts of
the government. It gave the colored person a chance to really show what he
could do and who he was.”
“To some extent, I’d like to see that change (here).”
Stout can be reached 829-7251