North Hills Ebony Women celebrate Black history with special meal, keynote message

North Hills Ebony Women Inc. held its annual Black History Month celebration March 2 at La Roche University’s Zappala Campus Center to further the 45-year-old nonprofit’s mission of “recognizing and promoting African American identity, heritage, education and unity.”

During the event, guests shopped with several local vendors, heard musical performances by local flutist Gemma Stemley and ate a traditional African American “Sunday dinner.”

According to NHEW President Geil Wesley Williams in her welcoming remarks, “Sunday dinner represents a celebration of unity, love and joy of sharing a meal with loved ones.”

“During slavery, Sunday was often the only day off where enslaved (people) could get together, rest and engage in communal activities. This became a time that African American cooks began to transform meager rations into flavorful meals to share,” she said. “Over time, Sunday dinner became a way for families to gather together frequently after church to share stories.”

After the meal, guests heard from keynote speaker Robert Hill, who served as University of Pittsburgh’s vice chancellor for public relations from 1999-2013.

Hill recounted a piece of Black history in what he called “the story of the slave and the diplomat”— the story of Harriet Tubman and William Seward — ”an unlikely 19th century criminal collusion between two friends who were unequal in book learning, wealth and status, but well-matched otherwise.”

“William Seward was a patrician, Caucasian lawyer and New York state senator,” Hill said. Seward also went on to become Abraham Lincoln’s “compassionately loyal” secretary of State.

“Illiterate — but Civil War nurse, Union spy, inaugural female battle leader and later suffragette — Mrs. Tubman was at once a celebrated escaped slave and notorious freedom-seeking fugitive,” Hill said. “In pedigree, the antebellum pair could not be more dissimilar.”

Hill’s recounting of the story was inspired by his 2016 trip to South Street in Auburn, N.Y., where Seward and Tubman lived as neighbors. There, he visited the Tubman homestead and Seward’s “historic safe house” mansion, specifically “the basement and kitchen locations where the Sewards hid countless liberated, freedom-seeking slaves on their way to other New York State locations and to Canada in the 1850s and ’60s.”

“The highest-ranking cabinet secretary in the Abraham Lincoln White House was a serial criminal who mercifully violated the draconian 1850 Fugitive Slave Act,” Hill said. “More than once, Harriet Tubman was … furtively hosted and aided by the Sewards” during her Underground Railroad missions.

Hill said the pair might be regarded as “the most potent white man/Black woman nonamorous pairing in the bizarre political and social history of America.”

“This, in an America that once criminalized the actions of two patriots, one white, one black, one a man, one a woman, and ultimately two heroes that advanced American freedom.”

Joy Maxberry Woodruff, first vice president of NHEW, said she was happy to see the community come out to celebrate Black History Month “because we were a part of American history.”

“It’s just heartwarming that so many take the time out of their day to recognize that we are part of history, and they want to know about our history,” Maxberry Woodruff said. “I also thank Robert Hill from the University of Pittsburgh, who did so many remarkable things to recognize Black history there, for coming out to speak to us.”

State Rep. Arvind Venkat, D-Allegheny, and his wife, Veena, also attended the celebration and said they were “thrilled” to be there.

“Now more than ever, we need to celebrate the diversity in our community, and Black history is American history. Too often, we overlook the contributions of the Black community to the advancement of our country,” Venkat said. “I’m always proud to come here to La Roche in McCandless, in my community, in my district, to really recognize this important group and what they do to make sure we are aware of all of our history.”