Clementa Pinckney honored by Underground Railroad conference

Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney was posthumously honored with the Frederick Douglass Underground Railroad Legacy Award at this year’s National Underground Railroad Conference on Hilton Head Island.

The conference, convened by the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program, presented the award to Pinckney for “promoting social change and work across racial, class, gender, political and other divisive lines to make the world a better place.

The award comes just days before the one-year anniversary of Pinckney’s death, when he and eight fellow churchgoers were killed by a gunman on June 17, 2015, at a Wednesday-night Bible study session at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

The Mitchelville Preservation Project, Heritage Library and Hilton Head Land Trust-Fort Howell partnered with the park service to host the conference, and the Hilton Head-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce helped sponsor the event.

In addition to Pinckney, three others were honored at the conference.

- Emory Campbell received the Wilbur H. Siebert Award for “his pioneering work in researching and preserving the history of the Underground Railroad” and his lifelong work of preserving Gullah communities, culture and language.

- Charles Bogguess was presented the Robert G. Stanton Award for his ongoing work with the Network to Freedom program. Boguess is secretary of the board for Mitchelville Preservation Project.

- And Joyce Wright received the Mitchelville Preservation Project Award for Outstanding Service for her leadership as project manager for the Mitchelville project.

Michael Boulware Moore, the great-great-grandson of Robert Smalls, spoke Tuesday at the conference. He talked about his ancestor’s enduring legacy in the area.

This story was originally published June 15, 2016 at 11:49 AM with the headline "Clementa Pinckney honored by Underground Railroad conference."