As an agricultural community with no major cities, Wayne County has had a different civil rights experience than places like Rochester or Syracuse. Its location on Lake Ontario made it an important hub for abolitionists like Perry B. Lee and Samuel Cuyler. In the 20th century, migrant workers and their allies worked hard to secure good living conditions and access to basic services.
Read on to learn about their lives and accomplishments and consider the lessons that can be applied in the fight for equality today.
With multiple ports on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, Wayne County was a natural location for abolitionists. Black and white people worked together to help freedom-seekers make their way to Canada. Perry Lee, a formerly enslaved man, helped people from his barbershop on the Erie Canal in Palmyra.
In Pultneyville, abolitionist Samuel Cuyler would drive freedom-seekers to the port and call out to Horatio Throop, captain of a lake steamer: “Captain Throop, I have some passengers for you.” Throop would reply: “My boat runs for passengers,” and take them across to Canada.
Not everyone in Wayne County was an abolitionist, though. The 1810 U.S. Census showed 43 people enslaved in the county in places like Sodus, Palmyra and Lyons. Robert Rose, Daniel Dorsey and William Helm enslaved dozens of people in Wayne County. One of them, Austin Steward, described nearly starving while being forced to clear the forest there.
David Cooper escaped enslavement in Sodus in 1811. He later returned and founded a lasting community for Black people known as the Maxwell Settlement.
Thousands of migrant farm workers, mostly Black people from the South, made their way to Wayne County in the mid-20th century. They were promised good pay and fair conditions, but the reality was often different. They often slept in barns or chicken coops and had no access to health care, child care or education. These conditions became a national controversy when U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy visited in 1967.
People like Ivory Simmons and Stuart Mitchell were among many who worked hard to help migrant farm workers and other poor Black people gain access to fair housing, health care and other services.