Booker T. and We
#611 / Flood Time Capsule: 2002
A Juneteenth at Hurricane’s Valley Park in Putnam County got a blast of Civil War-era tunes from Joe Dobbs and Charlie Bowen at an event 24 years ago this week.
A national organization was honoring educator Booker T. Washington, who was reared in Malden, WV, in neighboring Kanawha County in the years after the Civil War.
The group created “The Freedom Trail” extending from Franklin County, Va., where Washington was born a slave, to Malden, where he arrived at war’s end in 1865 and spent his young adult years, to Tuskeegee in Alabama, where he taught for most of his career.
“This was the only Putnam County stop by the caravan,” Charlie told his mom in an email the next morning, “and Joe and I were asked to play background music for the do, period pieces from the Civil War to the turn of the century.”
The two played for about an hour, while folks visited and ate box lunches, then they were fed and invited to stay and listen to the historical program.
Joe Bundy
Impersonator/interpreter Joseph Bundy entertained and educated people about Washington. A Marshall University graduate and Bluefield native, Bundy had been presenting Washington impersonations for 10 years by then, including on two previous Freedom Trail treks, in 1997 and again in 2000.
Bundy said Washington became a national leader following his speech, “Cast Down Your Buckets Where You Are,” adding, “He received accolades from everyone, including President Grover Cleveland, and that’s when he became, as they called him, ‘the Moses of Negro America.’”
Washington’s power of persuasion, Bundy said, was elevated to superstar status four years after his autobiography, Up from Slavery, was published in 1901. A best-seller, the book was ranked at No. 3 in The Modern Library’s list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century.
“Pretty interesting stuff,” Bowen told his mom in the later email. “I didn’t realize that West Virginia figured so prominently in the educator’s life.”