Blackfork is in northern Lawrence County, just a few miles south of Oak Hill.
Here is some information I found:
What a great story and a great representation of our local Ohio University students and Instructor Dave Lucas. Way to go!
Students tell Blackfork story
May 30, 2008 @ 11:58 PM
By DAVID E. MALLOY
The Herald-Dispatch
IRONTON -- Several Ohio University-Southern students who took home top honors from Ohio University's annual research and creativity expo earlier this month will hold a press conference today to unveil research artifacts and data compiled about the community of Blackfork and the part it played in the Underground Railroad.
Cary Williams of Ironton and Candace Fyffe of Coal Grove, Ohio, were team leaders who represented the work of about 550 undergraduate students participating in the research and creativity expo at the main campus in Athens earlier this month.
A press conference has been set for 10 a.m. Saturday, May 31, in Room 106 of the Dingus building at the Ironton campus.
The two students, both majoring in communication, were project directors during the spring quarter in the Capstone Course of Dave Lucas. The class had students talking to residents in Blackfork, about 27 miles north of Ironton.
"We had no idea that we would discover such dramatic and spellbinding truths," Lucas said Wednesday. "We knew that African Americans had settled there. We heard rumors about Native Americans dwelling there, but we had no idea we would uncover a model for diversity, acceptance and social harmony."
A number of students were involved in the field research, Williams said. Over the past five months as many as 18 students have used a quantitative research method known as folknography on the project by talking to local residents about the oral history of the areas of Blackfork and Poke Patch, also called Polk Patch.
What the students found was an area in northern Lawrence County where African Americans, Native Americans and Euro Americans lived and worked in the 1800s. Runaway slaves trying to get north of the Mason-Dixon line were among the settlers in the community. When the iron, clay and brick industries moved into the area, the multicultural workers in Blackfork worked alongside each other and were paid the same at a time when most other areas of the country separated races and cultures.
"It turned into more that what we bargained for," Fyffe said. "It was a great experience, a good life lesson."
"To run and present this type of research as an undergraduate is just fantastic," Williams said. "It's so different that what you get in a classic classroom setting. That's the point of folknography, to get their story through interviews then write narrative in the present tense."
Lucas called the project "a great milestone in the research we've been doing at the Southern Campus. The students have taken the lead on this. It's their project. Everyone was excited about the results of the expo. It was proud of them. They did a good job."
The students have their own Web site,
http://www.blackforkstory.com.
