Category Archives: Uncategorized

On May 23rd at the Cottrill Opera House, guest lecturer Tom Rodd told stories from notable cases in Tucker County’s legal history. The historic space of the former theater made a great venue, and we want to thank the ArtSpring team for letting us use the space. One of the key cases covered was Williams […]

J.R. Clifford was one of many soldiers to pass through Camp Nelson during the Civil War. Originally created as a Union supply depot and hospital in Kentucky, Camp Nelson became a recruitment and training center for African American soldiers. It is likely that over 10,000 African American recruits were trained at Camp Nelson. Unlike white […]

The second meeting of the Niagara Movement was held August 15-19, 1906 at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The meeting was attended by J.R. Clifford, as well as other African American luminaries of the era, including W.E.B. Dubois. The Niagara Movement was founded by Dubois and named for the location of its first […]

The DuBois High School in Fayette County was established in 1917 to serve African-American students during the era of segregation in West Virginia. Despite the fact that the school had less space and less up-to-date teaching materials than the white high school, teachers still did their best to make sure that students received a good […]

In 2009, J.R. Clifford’s story was featured in The West Virginia Lawyer, with an article focused on his pioneering law career. When J.R. Clifford was growing up in pre-civil war Virginia, it was illegal to teach African-Americans to read and write, so Clifford went to Chicago for his early education. By the time he took […]

John Robert (J.R.) Clifford was born in 1848, to Isaac Clifford (c.1824 – c.1903) and Satilpa Kent Clifford (c.1816 – c.1850) in what is now Grant County, West Virginia. J.R. had two older brothers, Theodore and David. The ancestors of both Isaac Clifford and Satilpa Kent Clifford can be traced back to the late 1700s […]

In 2009, the U.S. Postal Service produced a set of stamps honoring civil rights pioneers, including J.R. Clifford. We were so excited to see a local hero receive national recognition that we had a celebration, and in the process got to meet some of Clifford’s descendants. The images below show the stamps, and a group […]