LYNN ― Doreen Wade, president and founding member of Black heritage organization Salem United, surveys a wall of artifacts she provided to the Lynn Museum. It’s 10 minutes before the start of her exhibition’s public reception on Thursday and she’s taking a moment to reflect.
“I never thought all of this would come from sitting in a park,” she said.
In 2014, Wade, her 84-year-old mother, Lorraine, and friend Su Almeida went to the annual Black Picnic at Salem Willows. To their dismay, the event had faded from its former glory.
“So my mother and Su Almeida and myself, we said, ‘What can we do to revive this event at this time?'” she said. “When we decided to revive it, we started learning all this history. Since then, Su’s gone, my mother’s gone and I’ve been carrying on.”
The Wades and Almeida incorporated Salem United the following year, and the research they amassed would eventually turn into “Unmasking and Evolution of Negro Election Day and the Black Vote.” The exhibit opened at the Lynn Museum in November.
The Black Picnics of Salem were historical celebrations dating back to the era of slavery, where Black residents would gather and vote for their own representation in the State House. It began as a peculiarity of Massachusetts, but the practice spread throughout New England and even reached as far as New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“I use the terminology ‘unmasking’ because I find a lot of Black history is buried,” Wade said. “My goal is to eventually open up a Black heritage center and museum where I hope to collect Black history and have it all be portrayed one way or another.”
The exhibit was first displayed in Salem’s Hamilton Hall over the summer of 2021, where Wade said that, despite the COVID-19 pandemic and a lack of air conditioning, the installation saw more than 1,100 people in a little less than three months.
One of those people was Lynn Museum Director Doneeca Thurston.
“It was largely put together herself,” Thurston said of “Unmasking.” “This really is a labor of love for her and it’s very much attributed to the person that she is.”
Strolling around the Lynn Museum with her papillon dog, Oliver, in tow, it’s clear that Wade is many things. The editor of the NE Inquirer, she was raised in Cambridge, where she has been an advocate for communities of color for several years. But she is also comfortable in the role of archivist and historian.
“(My research) comes from everywhere,” she said, citing historical societies and Kentucky’s Jim Crow Museum as a few of her sources. “Every record everywhere comes from existing material that was just hidden in the archives of museums, newspapers, libraries.”
While the “Unmasking” exhibit covers all of Black American voting history, her primary focus is on the phenomenon of Negro Election Day, which Salem commemorates yearly with its Black Picnics. However, some may be surprised to learn that tradition actually began in Lynn ― all the way back in 1740. The tradition continued there for more than a century before moving to Salem.
“(The exhibit) also really gives you a better look at the holiday that started here in Lynn,” said Thurston. “When we talk about slavery, a lot of that is concentrated in the South, but it was practiced right here, in where we’re sitting.”
The organizers and contestants in these elections were typically educated, many were freedmen, and some had been members of royalty in Africa.
“They actually went around in their communities and debated,” Wade explained. “Then the last day of the two weeks would be the voting day, and depending on where they were from, which would be the colony or the government who regulated them, they would either be called a Black king or Black governor.”
A Black king from Lynn, known as Pompey, hosted Negro Election Days, or Black Picnics, on his property for many years. As a Black king, it had been his job not just to be a community leader, but to help govern and regulate his people among members of white government in the commonwealth.
“They were discussing rules and regulations in governing,” Wade explained. “They actually made laws for the Black community to follow; they actually did the punishing and they did the rewarding, just like a mayor would do.”
Wade comes by her interest in history and cultural heritage honestly, with a family that can trace its lineage back to the 1600s on the North Shore. However, her exhibit not only has its eye on the past, but the present as well. Part of her mission with “Unmasking,” she says, is to contextualize contemporary Black voter suppression and other issues of systemic oppression looming large.
“We have a whole part of the exhibit that talks about Black voter suppression. We go back to Jim Crow days, we have the jelly-bean test, we have a copy of the literacy tests they used to stop you from voting,” she explained. “In one of the pictures you can see George Floyd, because we believe that the worst voting suppression is our young, Black men being killed right in front of our face. You couldn’t get any more suppression than that.”
Celebration and brutality sit side-by-side in Wade’s exhibit. Even the term “Black Picnic” must be addressed for its complicated past.
“Many people don’t know what this means but (the word is) based upon lynching and burning of Black Americans, so we are asking people to learn this history and realize that we do not want to advocate a word that belongs to the murdering of Black bodies,” she said. “So we’ve gone back to its origin and we’re calling it Negro Election Day. We’re not changing the name; we’re establishing its history and its origin.”
The Negro Election Days Salem United holds serve a variety of purposes. Participants can meet up for voter registration, education, speeches, awards and recognitions, vendors, food and fun ― much like the events held centuries ago.
“The families are still coming after 280 years setting up their grills, cooking, having family reunions,” Wade said.
The organization also keeps with tradition by holding parades for the Black king and queen and two Black grand marshalls. In the future, and with the help of friends like U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, Negro Election Day could even be declared a state holiday (Bill S2083).
“I call this triumph that came from tragedy: The tragedy, of course, is slavery, but from out of the rubble of slavery came this triumph,” Wade said. “And that triumph is built by so many people that we want to make sure that everybody is recognized. Everybody could represent what Negro Election Day stands for.”
