Stories from West Virginia's Civil Rights History: A New Home for Liberty: J. R. Clifford and the Carrie Williams Case

By Thomas Rodd

Why do we call West Virginia "A New Home for Liberty?" What did West Virginia have to do about slavery, in order to become a State in 1863? How did a jury in Tucker County, WV strike a blow for racial equality in the 1890s? Who are the West Virginia heroes J.R. Clifford, Granville Hall, Carrie Williams, and Gordon Battelle and why do we admire them? You can learn the answers to these questions and lots more in this exciting book of stories from West Virginia's civil rights history. The first story in the new book is titled "A New Home for Liberty," and describes the creation of West Virginia through the life of the abolitionist and statehood leader Granville Davisson Hall (1837-1934). Before the Civil War, Hall's father, a tanner in the Harrison County Town of Shinnston (then a part of Virginia), was indicted for distributing anti-slavery literature. The book's second story, "J.R. Clifford and the Carrie Williams Case," tells how Carrie Williams, an African American teacher in a segregated Tucker County school at the head of the Blackwater Canyon, won a landmark equal rights case in the 1890s before the West Virginia Supreme Court. Williams' lawyer was John Robert(J.R.)Clifford, (1848-1933), the State's first African American attorney. As a teenager, Clifford fought for the Union Army in the Civil War, and he is also a character in the "New Home for Liberty" story.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1942294034
• ISBN13: 9781942294030
• Release Date: September 2021
• Publisher: Quarrier Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.3" x 5.5"