Pictured, Ed Nizalowski gave a talk on Black History in Tioga County at the Historical Society in Owego on Feb. 21.
Ed Nizalowski gave a talk on Black History in Tioga County at the Historical Society in Owego on Feb. 21. He feels very certain that an abolitionist from Owego, Hammon D. Pinney, was a stationmaster on the Underground Railroad. Nizalowski is filing an application with the National Park Service to list the site of Pinney’s home on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
Nizalowski’s research has also found that Owego had its own “Rosa Parks” over a century earlier. In 1851 Richard W. Thompson, a Black barber from Owego, was removed from a train because he didn’t sit where he was told. Thompson’s train was in Elmira, traveling toward Watkins Glen, where he hoped to catch a boat to Geneva. He sued and won damages.
Nizalowski believes that this is the first challenge to discrimination on public transportation. The earliest documented case to date was that of Elizabeth Jennings Graham who sued a New York City trolley car company in 1854. She won her case, leading to the eventual desegregation of all New York City transit systems by 1865.
Nizalowski also spoke about the CCC camp that was established in Tioga County for Black veterans of WWI.
