You remember the feeling. Wednesday was the first true day of summer vacation for the high school seniors at the Syracuse Academy of Science. Their graduation was held that night at Onondaga Community College, but they had basically spent 13 years of their young lives — going back to their first day of kindergarten — earning the right to sleep late that morning.
Instead, shortly after 8 a.m., Ibrahim Abdul-Qadir and three of his classmates were at Loguen Park on East Genesee Street. They were a central part of the unveiling of an historical marker they helped create that honors the Rev. Jermain Loguen, an abolitionist legend.
Still, as they realize now — considering the magnitude of all that Loguen and his wife Caroline achieved — maybe not quite legend enough.
“I didn’t want to wake up,” said Ibrahim, with a bemused smile, contemplating the lost chance to sleep in. But he said the entire point of all the research done cooperatively for many months by this group of seniors would somehow seem empty if the marker went up and “there was nobody here,” meaning an absence of student representatives.
Thinking of that, he rolled out of bed. All four teens at the event from SAS were students of color, each of them keenly aware of how their lives – every day – serve as living testament to Loguen’s put-everyone-else-first fearlessness.
“It’s a perfect ending,” said Bob Searing, curator of history for the Onondaga Historical Association, speaking of the power of the ceremony. “Somewhere Rev. Loguen is smiling down on these children. I can almost guarantee to you that he and his family, at some point, walked past that spot.”
The timing for the unveiling was built on a pragmatic rationale: The Syracuse-based William G. Pomeroy Foundation, which puts up historical and cultural markers across the nation, wanted to be sure the ceremony would include the SAS students, before they take a fast breath after school lets out — and then scatter to colleges or other new endeavors.
Yet as Searing and Mayor Sharon Owens both noted, to do the unveiling this week feels particularly fitting. Juneteenth, the national holiday inspired by the 1865 emancipation of enslaved families in Texas, is officially Friday — accompanied by a Syracuse observance that goes deep into the weekend.
As for Sunday, that’s Father’s Day — and it’s no stretch to say Loguen held a father’s love, pride and concern for the generational fate of millions upon millions of American children, including the ones who honored him from SAS.
The student role in shaping the marker began months ago with a conversation between Bill Brower, a strategic adviser to the Pomeroy Foundation, and Dr. Tolga Hayali, superintendent of the Science Academies of New York Charter Schools. Brower mentioned the foundation’s vision for a new Loguen marker, in Syracuse. Hayali brought the idea back to Donald Dwyer, an SAS history teacher, who turned it into a senior project for 16 students.
Among them: Abdul-Qadir, ZaLeya Derby, November Paw and Adarius Rucker, all in attendance Wednesday. They are bound for college in the autumn, each nurturing big dreams — while intensely conscious that in the United States of Loguen’s time, many in their class would have faced segregated barriers at every turn in the North, and a life of enslavement and oblivion in the South.
Based on their research, ZaLeya and her friends offered a reflection that Searing also emphasized. Growing up, ZaLeya said, she typically heard accounts in history class about four or five major American figures involved in 19th century abolition or the 20th century civil rights movement – such names as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.
Loguen is a reminder, the students said, of how great change actually happened throughout the nation because of the stunning courage of quiet contributors, who risked everything for the cause of freedom – and today are all too easily lost or overlooked.
“I think it is something that should be remembered,” said November Paw, who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after her family, of the Karen community, was forced to flee Burma. She’s now a young woman, bound for college, who dreams of a career in radiology – and who understands what it means to leave all you know, in hope of a new life.
Searing agreed with the teens. He said Loguen is “underrated” in a vast way among the great figures of 19th century America. His early life was “nightmarish,” Searing said: Loguen’s mother was a free Black woman in Ohio who was kidnapped and forced into enslavement in the South. Loguen’s own birth in Tennessee was the result of sexual assault by a white enslaver, Searing said.
As a teenager — at roughly the same age as the students who did the work behind the marker — Loguen knew he was going to be sold away as property, and instead became part of a harrowing escape.
Loguen eventually settled in Syracuse, where he would serve as a bishop in the AME Zion Church. For years, he risked his own freedom by speaking publicly and forcefully against the Fugitive Slave Act, signed into law in 1850 by President Millard Fillmore: It placed full federal muscle behind the pursuit of all escapees on American soil, portraying them as property to be apprehended and returned.
This October, Searing said, marks 175 years since Loguen helped organize the “Jerry Rescue” — the daring and defiant jailhouse raid in Syracuse that freed William “Jerry” Henry, captured during his flight from enslavement. Searing, who finds painful corollaries between today’s world and those times, said some accounts credit Jermain and Caroline Loguen with helping as many as 1,500 people use the “Underground Railroad” to find their way to freedom in Canada.
They all found liberty while Loguen himself was at danger of capture in Syracuse, selfless bravery that Dwyer described as an especially compelling and lasting revelation for his students. They realized – despite all that Loguen accomplished – how his name is all too often forgotten here.
In one of those emblematic civic decisions that won’t ever make sense, the Loguen home at Pine and East Genesee streets — a refuge for so many in flight, and a precious historical site in Syracuse — was demolished in the 20th century, its footprint used for a box-like chain drug store that later closed.
The nearby park, named for Loguen, now serves as a centerpiece of his public legacy. At a time when references to American enslavement, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are being softened or erased federally at many sites, Owens, Searing, Brower and city parks commissioner Syeisha Byrd all reinforced an essential truth during the ceremony:
Loguen’s hope, bravery and fierce vision of freedom, as the nation nears its 250th birthday, represent the highest measure of American ideals.
“Democracy,” Brower said, “depends on memory,” while Searing called Loguen “a beacon of moral clarity” — a guy whose friends and peers included Tubman and Douglass, who was often in awe of Loguen’s work. Byrd said the power of the marker is about tomorrow, not the past: Loguen lives on in “the courage of these students,” she said, as they prepare to navigate the world.
The teenagers suggested the message for the marker, which was reviewed by Pomeroy historians and crafted into these final words:
“Jermain W. Loguen, ca. 1814-1872, lived nearby. Reverend, educator and abolitionist in Syracuse, aided freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.” The marker credits the Syracuse Academy of Science and is the first of its kind to include an engraved badge that reads, “Researched by students,” according to Steve Bodnar, Pomeroy’s associate director of strategic marketing.
Several parents joined the students for the unveiling, including Dr. El-Java Abdul-Qadir, Ibrahim’s dad, and Iris Howard, ZaLeya Derby’s mother. Afterward, in the quiet park, they spoke with emotion about Loguen’s importance — historically, nationally, culturally, personally. Like Byrd, they emphasized how the 21st century resonance is tied directly to these teens who understand the living point.
“It means everything, just to put up something so great at such a young age,” Howard said.
Owens, the city’s first Black mayor, felt her own intense connection. She’s still mourning the recent death of her mother, Rev. Ester Daniels. At 19 — barely older than the students Owens met at Loguen Park — Daniels left behind generations of suffocating Jim Crow conditions in Florida to take a solitary bus ride to the North.
The mayor posed for a photo with the teens, and then — from the dais — spoke of the staggering importance of Syracuse as a 19th century engine of liberty for so many who threw aside their chains. Learning of that work, she said, can change your entire vision about the meaning and potential of everyday life in this city.
That underlines why Owens glanced with surprise at the typically fast-moving, get-to-work traffic along East Genesee, anxious and distracted speed that embodies the pace at which we live our lives.
Look, the mayor said to her audience, with delight: The drivers were already noticing the new marker. On a quiet June morning in Syracuse, after all these years, they slowed down to read the name of Jermain Loguen.
Read more of Central Current’s coverage
Cheers to four years of Central Current
Join us on August 10th at Harvey’s Garden to support our reporting while celebrating our newsroom’s fourth anniversary.
How Andy Mager and the Syracuse Cultural Workers found another way to celebrate July Fourth
Andy Mager and his colleagues designed a poster that celebrates resistance movements in the United States as an alternative way to celebrate July Fourth.
Podcast: How gambling services are partnering with commercial newsrooms
Journalist Judd Legum discusses how local newsrooms across the country are quietly partnering with online gambling companies to attract new users and share in the profits.
Sean Kirst: The passing of Tom Coulter, ‘king’ of boxing, who taught so many youths the great lessons of the ring
Coulter was a national boxing legend, beloved co-owner of the old Remedy tavern and a guy who knew being rich had nothing to do with money.
Bill Simmons to leave Syracuse Housing Authority after yearlong turmoil
Syracuse Housing Authority Executive Director Bill Simmons agreed to retire a year before his contract with SHA is set to expire. Simmons’ last day with the housing authority will be July 10. The housing authority’s board voted to approve a mutual separation agreement with Simmons by a vote of 4-3. Board commissioners Patricia McBride, Quwanka Ellerby and…
