One is “A Place in Time: Harpers Ferry”, by Paskowski,
which is a 20 minute documentary that traces the history of the town on the
Potomac River, where Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland come together, after
the Civil War. There have been several destructive floods, particularly in the
1920s and 1930s, which flooded buildings downtown in the village up to one
whole floor sometimes and required enormous work from the townspeople to
recover. The film mentions Storer
College (wikipedia) which operated from 1865 to 1955 to educate the freed slaves, but was
technically one of the first integrated schools in the United States;
ironically, it closed after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court
decision in 1954. To see the college was a reason for my 70th
birthday visit. It also mentions the Niagara Movement, a predecessor of the NAACP.
The John Brown Museum shows three videos (total about 25
minutes) in three separate rooms called collectively “John Brown’s Raid: Las of
God, Laws of Man”. The second of these
has an interactive map of the raid, resembling a much larger one in Gettysburg.
Brown had actually proposed a constitutional amendment
abolishing slavery, and had wondered how wealth and power could rationalize a
moral outrage.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting offers a short documentary
on Storer College (above). You have to drive to that (from the Bolivar side),
or hike to it along the Appalachian Trail.
Between films, I was outside and chased into a luncheonette
by a sudden thunderstorm. About 50 high
school and college kids came in at the same time. Everyone seemed well educated and well
behaved, but the staff was overwhelmed.
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