The Heyward Shepherd monument is a monument in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, constructed in 1931. It commemorates Heyward (sometimes spelled "Hayward" or "Heywood") Shepherd (1825 – October 17, 1859), a free black man, who was the first person killed during John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. The monument was constructed to promote the pseudo-historical Lost Cause of the Confederacy myth, by falsely claiming that Shepherd was opposed to freeing the slaves.
The monument was erected in 1931, after decades of controversy, by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and, to a lesser extent, by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A series of plaques have been added, sometimes over opposition, in an attempt to shape viewers' interpretations. The monument, because it was so controversial, was removed from public display from 1976 to 1980, and then shrouded in plywood until 1995.
Black people's response to John Brown
See also Blacks in John Brown's raid
The monument was intended to publicize the Lost Cause allegation that the enslaved were happy and did not want freedom; the UDC had a "Faithful Slave Memorial Committee". However, the grand jury Bill of Indictment lists 11 Black enslaved men who were allegedly incited to revolt by the accused. One was locked up in the Charles Town jail together with Brown, Green, and the others. The owners of two submitted claims for their losses. Some slaves were observed with weapons inside the Arsenal. The story that Washington and Allstadt's slaves were there only because they were forced to be there is what the slaves had said, after Brown's raid had failed, and their owners wanted to believe that.
A different view is provided by Osborne Perry Anderson, the only Black in Brown's party who escaped:
However, the official view, in the reports of the Virginians Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee and Governor Henry A. Wise, was that no Blacks participated voluntarily at all. Lee's report did not become public until the report of the Senate Select Committee investigating the incident, over six months later. But Wise's views were widely known, as he stated them clearly in speeches, which appeared in many newspapers.
There is no evidence that Shepherd was opposed to John Brown's plan to end American slavery, or even that he had heard of it. He thought he was dealing with robbers. Nevertheless, the monument was intended to be a reply to Blacks' glorification of Brown, in whose honor Storer College had been established in Harpers Ferry; the college placed a plaque on the Armory in 1918. There was no better place, from the UDC's point of view, for a monument to the "happy slave" than Harpers Ferry.
Heyward Shepherd
Heyward Shepherd was a Black man; according to one source he was born free, but another source says that he had been the property of station master Fontaine Beckham. He was over 6 feet (180 cm) in height, and lived in Winchester, Virginia, about southwest of Harpers Ferry, which two communities were served by the Winchester and Potomac rail line. He owned a small house there, had a wife and five children, according to the 1860 census, and had money in the bank.
He had worked for nearly twenty years as a porter or baggage handler with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, whose trains went back and forth through Harpers Ferry. In Harpers Ferry was the first interline rail junction in the country: there was frequently baggage or freight to move to or from the trains of the Winchester and Potomac Railroad, whose northern terminus was the Harpers Ferry station. The stationmaster was Fontaine Beckham, the popular mayor of Harpers Ferry; when he was absent, Shepherd was in charge of the station. Beckham, who also was killed, "liked him very much."
What happened, as described by Shepherd to the physician who treated him, John D. Starry, was "that he had been out on the railroad bridge looking for a watchman who was missing, and he had been ordered to halt by some men who were there, and, instead of doing that, he turned to go back to the office, and as he turned they shot him in the back." He rejected his assaulters' claim that this was to begin a slave rebellion. He thought they were robbers and refused to keep quiet as they requested.
A bill was introduced into the Virginia Legislature to provide a pension for his widow Sarah.
He was buried in the Winchester–Fairfax Colored Cemetery, on what is today Route 11, with "honors of war by the military companies of the town, accompanied by the mayor and other citizens." However, in 1932 no one could find his grave.