Richard Allen School coalition holds gala

The Richard Allen School Coalition held its 3rd Annual Gala Feb. 3 at the CHEER Center in Georgetown. Of the five people who were honored, three were in attendance, Agnes Williams, Rebecca Dodd and Otelia Oliver. Paul Henry was unable to attend, and Howard "Hobby" Stevenson passed away a year ago.

The 2018 theme - Native Sons of Sussex County - was highlighted by the keynote speaker for the evening. Sylvester Woolford, a lecturer and historian in Delaware, discussed Jabez Pitt Campbell, a minister, activist, philanthropist and the eighth bishop of the AME, the first independent African-American church; and Samuel Eli Cornish, an American Presbyterian minister, abolitionist, publisher and journalist. 

Woolford reminded the crowd that today people don’t know what slavery was like or what Jim Crow was like, or what would have awaited if people protested in those days, but that regardless, win or lose, people need to stand up in 2018. He said it is important that African-Americans write and rewrite their own history, and that it is important to have African-American newspapers, as Samuel Eli Cornish and Jabez Pitt Campbell did while they were alive.