#negro mountain

[blackrevolt]

Signs Marking 'Negro Mountain’ Removed From Maryland Highways

The State Highway Administration took down a total of four signs after complaints that the Negro Mountain signage was racially insensitive.

[yasbxxgie]

Two Pennsylvania state representatives joined forces this month to petition the federal government to rename a controversially named peak in the Alleghany Mountains.

Rep. Rosita Youngblood (D), who is the first African-American woman to hold a leadership position in the state’s general assembly, said she didn’t believe it when her granddaughter and son told her years ago about Negro Mountain.

“I said, ‘There is no such thing as Negro Mountain in Pennsylvania,’” she told The Huffington Post Monday.

Their research proved otherwise. Negro Mountain is a 30-mile-long ridge that stretches from Maryland’s Deep Creek Lake to Casselman River in Pennsylvania. The peak got its name after a black man known only as “Nemesis” sacrificed his life to save soldiers during the French and Indian War in 1756.

Youngblood’s granddaughter told her she had to do something about the name of the mountain.

Youngblood began introducing legislation to change the ridge’s name to Nemesis Mountain in 2007.

“[Nemesis] was a hero,” she said. “He served bravely in helping the white settlers. He gave his life, and I think it’s only fair. We treat all our other heroes when they come home from war, or if they’re in a battle ... equally, and I do believe the same thing should happen with him.”

Youngblood reached across the aisle this month and joined forces with Rep. Seth Grove (R), now a co-sponsor on the bill.

“This commonwealth has a long history of recognizing its heroes by name and Nemesis should not be an exception,” Grove said in a statement. “It’s the 21st century. We should take steps to rename the mountain for the man — not the race of the man — who saved the lives of so many.”

Within the state legislature, there has been a jump in support for the new name. The resolution currently has over 30 supporters from both parties.

“There is growing support, more support than we’ve had in the past, on this resolution,” Youngblood spokesman Bill Thomas said. “The representatives consider the urging to be the first step from a statement perspective, from a support perspective that passing this resolution will send a message … to move forward with the petition.”

The process to change the peak’s name begins with a petition to the U.S. Geological Survey via the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which is acting as a liaison, Thomas said.

After receiving the petition, the USGS would need to reach out the state of Maryland to enlist its involvement in the renaming process, Thomas said, since a portion of the ridge is within its borders.

Youngblood said she plans to reach out to a senator from Maryland and ask that they introduce a similar resolution in the state.

Some residents of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where the peak is located, have pushed back against the name change.

“Even though the world around them has changed, their mindset has not changed,” Youngblood said. “And sometimes it takes something like this to change a person’s mindset so that they understand we’re now in the 21st century. We’re not back in the 17th century.”

Though she hasn’t succeeded in changing the peak’s name just yet, Youngblood said the promise she made to her family is what fuels her fight.

“I think about [how] I made a commitment to my son and my granddaughter that I would get the name changed, and that’s why I’m still working on this,” she said. “It’s important that they see that we can make some changes here in Pennsylvania.”

[yasbxxgie]

Drive west on U.S. Route 40 and travel through Hagerstown, Hancock, Cumberland and Frostburg, and you're sure to see, near Keysers Ridge, a large roadside sign that might surprise you. It reads: NEGRO MOUNTAIN ELEVATION 3075 FT.

The wording of the sign has surprised so many motorists and travelers that the U.S. Board on Geographic Names held a hearing last summer to change the name to Black Hero Mountain. A Pennsylvania man who objected to the name Negro proposed changing it. But enough people testified in support of Negro Mountain, including officials from Maryland and Pennsylvania, private citizens and historians such as Marguerite Doleman, of Hagerstown, that the board refused to act, and the old name was retained.

As Edward Papenfuse, Maryland's state archivist, has pointed out, the name Negro Mountain "reflects an 18th century sensitivity to the important contribution African Americans made that is rarely so publicly demonstrated."

The mountain is part of a 30-mile ridge that runs diagonally from northeast to southwest through Somerset County in Pennsylvania into Maryland's Garrett County. It includes Mount Davis, which, at 3,213 feet, is the highest point in Pennsylvania. Maryland's highest spot is Backbone Mountain, 3,360 feet, at the southern tip of Garrett County.

Negro Mountain is a memorial to a brave man who knew that he was going to die and in dying wrote a gallant chapter in Colonial Maryland history.

The mountain got its name more than 200 years ago in honor of Nemesis, a large black man, according to "MARYLAND-A Guide to the Old Line State," edited by Papenfuse. Nemesis was the servant of Col. Thomas Cresap, who was well known on the pre-Revolutionary frontier, which separated the colonies of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania from wilder country to the west.

Although the Maryland guide gives the year as 1774, Will H. Lowdermilk's "History of Cumberland" sets the date at 1758. But the essential facts are the same. America was still subject to Britain's King George III, but along the edges of the mid-Atlantic colonies, American Indians under pressure from the western migration of settlers, resisted, and a battle ensued.

Cresap, with his sons, Michael and Daniel, (another son, Thomas, had been slain by Indians earlier that year) and a company of volunteers, set off from Oldtown, near Cumberland, to waylay their opponents. The Indians were out to avenge the Ohio River massacre of the family of their chief, Logan. The massacre had been attributed, erroneously, to Cresap and had led to a general border uprising by the Indians.

As they began the trip, Nemesis remarked that something told him he would not return. Cresap offered to leave him behind, according to Hulbert Footner, who gives an account of the story in "Maryland Main and the Eastern Shore."

However, Nemesis said that he was not afraid, that he would go with Cresap and fight alongside him, "but," he said, "Nemesis will not come back."

About 25 miles west of Cumberland, the expedition was attacked on the mountain, and, in a running fight, Cresap's party killed an Indian. The Indians evened the score by killing Nemesis, who was fighting alongside Cresap.

Because of the bravery of Nemesis, Doleman, who opened a black history museum in her home in Hagerstown in 1975, said that she is delighted the name Negro Mountain has been retained.

"You know, when I was a young girl I used to see that name, Negro Mountain, when I was driving up there with my daddy," Doleman said. "It bothered me somewhat, but then it raised the question in my mind: What Negro?

"If it had been named Nemesis Mountain, I probably wouldn't have questioned it," she said. Now 74 years old, Doleman, who two years ago was elected to the Black Memorabilia Hall of Fame, gives talks to elementary school children in Washington County schools about black history and sometimes the mountain. "I even got to Washington and Baltimore," she said. "And those children are up with it; they ask all kinds of questions.

As for Negro Mountain, Doleman said it was important to keep the name so others would learn about Nemesis. "Why lose your history?"

In agreement with this philosophy, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names retained the name. The board, in Reston, is an advisory council to the Department of the Interior. It receives some 300 to 400 proposals a year to change the names of natural features, such as mountains, rivers and lakes.

"We don't initiate name changes," said executive secretary Roger L. Payne, "except, of course, in the case of derogatory, obscene or pejorative names.

"We entertain proposals and hold hearings," he said, "and we were able to determine that it {the name Negro Mountain} had been used historically."

And so Negro Mountain lives on, as it has for more than 200 years. It is not everyone, black or white, who is honored with a monument more than 3,000 feet high. CAPTION: Marguerite Doleman, of Hagerstown, a collector of black memorabilia, holds an old photo. "Why lose your history?" she said of the name change.

[stephanbroadus]

Is it finally time to rename “Negro Mountain?”

Is it finally time to rename “Negro Mountain?”

Your shock is as big as ours if you’ve never heard of a place called “Negro Mountain.” But it is the real and current name of the peak of Alleghany Mountains, a 30-mile ridge that begins in Maryland’s Deep Creek Lake and ends at Casselman River in Pennsylvania. Rep. Rosita Youngblood has been fighting since 2007 to change the controversial name.

Youngblood was appalled when her granddaughter and…

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[nabtab-blog]

Idiocy I tell you..

so they want to change the name of negro mountain because it offends people. 

 During the French and Indian War, in the year 1756, when frontiersman Colonel Thomas Cresap is known to have led a force against Native Americans on the mountain. A member of his force, a black slave or a scout named "Nemisis," was killed in the battle. The mountain was accordingly named "Negro Mountain" in his honor

So basically it's a memorial to a man who died protecting. how in the world is that appalling. 

its rich upperclass white people who find it "...disparaging that we have one of our great works of nature named as such… I find it disheartening for tourists who visit this range to see the plaque with the name Negro Mountain displayed on the mountainside"

who else might it offend? people who are ignorant to the reason it was named. 

 maybe it's indelicate naming but it had strong intentions to honor a fallen warrior.

tell me what you think?