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Harrisburg native Thomas Morris Chester, America’s first Black Civil War correspondent, was recognized in a ceremony Wednesday afternoon in which the city designated the location of his monument through a wreath-laying ceremony and officially renamed a section of Walnut Street in his honor.
It’s now also called T. Morris Chester Way.
The dedication took place on what would have been the 188th birthday of Chester, a journalist, lawyer, soldier and educator who was born in 1834 and died in 1892. Standing by the “Gathering at the Crossroads” Monument at Fourth and Walnut streets, Harrisburg Mayor Wanda Williams gave a speech and then joined City Council President Danielle Bowers in unveiling the new street sign.
“Thomas Morris Chester backed up his words, reporting on the front lines of the Civil War all the way to the confederate surrender,” Williams said. “He never backed down from a fight.”
Williams along with state and county leaders, plus representatives from the Commonwealth Monument Project and Dauphin County Library System, were in attendance to commemorate the legacy of Chester.
T. Morris Chester Way will begin at the corner of North 5th Street all the way down to the Susquehanna River. Along the newly named street, drivers and pedestrians will pass the Commonwealth Monument and McCormick Public Library’s soon-to-open T.Morris Chester Welcome Center, which is also in collaboration with the Commonwealth Monument Project.
“The library board of trustees and staff are proud and humbled that the T.Morris Chester Welcome Center now under construction on this very street will serve as an inspirational and educational connector and keystone to heritage, to discourse and to community,” said Annie Garner, president of the Dauphin County Library System’s board of trustees.
Lenwood Sloan, executive director of the Commonwealth Monument Project, said he wants residents to be able to visit and immerse themselves in the knowledge of Chester and the 100 voices of the Old 8th Ward.
“[The area] will be designed for you to be able to walk from this monument to the new Chester Research Center as part of the McCormick libraries expansion. As you walk this block every day we ask that you look up for a moment at the history you are passing through and place yourself in the center of that history,” said Sloan.
The new street is part of a series of events that have occurred since the start of the Commonwealth Monument Project in 2017.
T. Morris Chester Way will begin at the corner of North 5th Street all the way down to the Susquehanna River.
In 2020, the first phase of the monument commemorating the Old 8th Ward, a predominantly Black and immigrant neighborhood that the state removed when Capitol Park was expanded in the early 20th century, was unveiled at Fourth and Walnut streets near the Irvis Office Building in the Capitol Complex. The monument was completed later that year.
Also in 2021, the Commonwealth Monument Project and the city placed a donated bench within the K. Leroy Irvis Equality Circle in honor of Toni Morrison. The “Bench by the Road” monument is among 30 donated and placed across the world by the Toni Morrison Society.
At the conclusion of the program, Garner welcomed those in attendance to visit the McCormick Library to view the construction and progress of the future research and welcome center.
READ MORE:
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