Giving history its due: Gravestone fund shines light on desegregation pioneer

Yahoo

28-02-2025

Like many Meadville residents, Sarah Roncolato had driven past the historical marker outside Second District Elementary School on South Main Street too many times to count, even stopping to read it more closely on occasion, but it wasn't until she had been retired for a few months that she thought to investigate further.
A Black History Month page in The Meadville Tribune last year got her thinking about Meadville's role in Black history. It's a role highlighted by that historical marker, which commemorates the 1880 attempt by Elias Allen, a Black resident of Meadville, to enroll the two oldest of his four children in Huidekoper Grammar School, located where Second District is today.
In keeping with Pennsylvania law at the time, Meadville schools were segregated and since only white students were permitted at Huidekoper, Allen's children were denied entry. But when Allen petitioned the Crawford County Court of Common Pleas, President Judge Pearson Church's decision the next spring declared unconstitutional the 1854 law mandating segregation. Soon after, the state Legislature amended the law, outlawing segregation in schools. After being signed into law by the governor, the integrated schools became the law of the land on July 4, 1881.
'Most people don't know that,' Roncolato said after a visit to the marker Thursday. 'This is a story that happened here in Meadville that changed public education in the state of Pennsylvania.'
The story of Allen and Church is hardly unknown, Roncolato acknowledged: The historical marker was erected 25 years ago, after all, as a result of previous research. But at the same time, it's easy to be aware of the history without really knowing it, to grow accustomed to the marker's presence without marking its significance — to drive past from time to time without noticing the sign that has become a familiar part of the background.
As the latest spokesperson for this particular thread of Crawford County history, Roncolato is hopeful of raising the community's collective consciousness of what happened. It's an event that should be as closely identified with Meadville's identity as the development of the zipper, she said.
'This history is our history,' Roncolato continued. 'These stories of our past remind us of our common humanity. This particular story is something that everyone can be proud of that came out of this community.'
On top of greater awareness, Roncolato would also like to see something more concrete — specifically, markers for the Greendale Cemetery graves of Allen and his daughter, Armeado Allen Scott. She is also optimistic that Church will receive long-overdue recognition from the Crawford County Bar Association.
'The whole story can't be told without these two individuals,' she said. On the one hand, there had to be someone like Allen, whose willingness to confront inequality Roncolato compared to Rosa Parks' refusal in 1955 to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated Montgomery bus. All but certainly born into slavery in Virginia in 1844, Allen was in Meadville by 1868, according to tax records. Several years later, he was among the earliest vendors at the newly opened Meadville Market House, paying $6.10 for his stall, according to a newspaper story at the time. Over the years tax and census records describe Allen as as a carpenter, a greengrocer, a teamster, and in his obituary, 'a landscape gardener.'
At the same time, there had to be someone like Church as well — a white child of privilege and a Democrat who might have been expected to tolerate segregation, but who instead chose a path that likely played a role in his failure to be reelected to his position several years after the decision.
'I can see nothing destructive to our institutions in the demolition of the legal barriers that have been erected so long and so high between the Colored Race and their natural civil and political rights and liberties,' Church wrote in ordering that Allen's children be admitted to Huidekoper Grammar School. 'The White Race owe the Colored Race at least fair play in their great struggle for education and improvement and advancement, which they are making and have a right to make in their recently emancipated condition.'
Church also ordered that the school board, which had opposed integrating the school, pay the court costs for the case.
Roncolato's recent presentations on the story of Allen and Church have helped to kick off a fundraising campaign to add markers for the the graves of Allen and his younger daughter, Armeado Allen Scott, who was not involved in the integration case. (The precise locations in Greendale of Allen's wife and his two sons are not currently known; his older daughter moved to West Virginia as an adult and is buried there.)
'The number of people who are stepping forward to get involved in this project is amazing,' said Josh Sherretts, executive director of the Crawford County Historical Society. 'They are not only helping to acquire a cemetery marker, but to give a man who fought for equal rights his legacy back.'
Sherretts said the fundraising efforts were approaching the $2,500 goal for the first headstone. The society hopes to nearly double that amount with additional fundraising to provide a marker for Scott as well as signage.
In addition to hours upon hours spent at the historical society, Roncolato's explorations have drawn upon numerous individuals, like Tom Yoset, who transcribed the original court records from the Allen case, as well as organizations like the Meadville chapter of the NAACP, where she is a member.
The fight over segregation, particularly in a northern state like Pennsylvania, may seem distant, but the lessons of the Allen case are very much relevant today, according to Roncolato.
'We have a shared history,' she said, 'that includes significant African American people that need to be lifted up and recognized.'
You can help
Donations to the Elias Allen Gravestone Fund can be sent to Crawford County Historical Society, 869 Diamond Park, Meadville, PA 16335. Donations can also be made online at bit.ly/elias-allen.