Owner of the Roseland Plantation Tim West speaks during a Black History Month celebration at the Roseland Plantation in Ben Wheeler, Texas, on Monday, Feb. 25, 2019. (Chelsea Purgahn/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

Red, white and blue banners fluttered in the wind and the sun shined through the clouds on the front yard of Roseland Plantation. The front porch of the large white house served as a stage and backdrop Monday for a Black History Month celebration.

Organized by veterinarian Dr. Dwayne Collins, the program featured retired Lt. Col. Allen West, a political commentator and former Congressman, as keynote speaker and the plantation’s current owner Tim West. 

Joan Hubert, a Texas Southern University music professor, spoke about tracing her family lineage to the slaves who worked on Roseland Plantation.

Hubert said she spent the past 30 years researching her ancestry. She said she discovered her ties to the plantation through talking to relatives and coming to Roseland, where she discovered she was the great-great-great-grandniece of a woman listed as one of the original plantation owner’s favorite slaves.

She said she finally felt like she had roots when she was able to trace the woman’s history to Madagascar.  

Hubert thanked her family for supporting her in her research. 

“Thank you for planting the seed to know things and for giving me the will to find out,” she said, before she broke out into a song that she said she believed her ancestors would have sung when they learned they were free. it included the lyrics “Give Me Jesus.”

West told of his childhood in the same Atlanta, Georgia, neighborhood where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived. 

He told the crowd of 200 people about his family’s military service and how his father wanted him to become a military officer. 

West read Booker T. Washington’s “Cast Down Your Bucket” speech, a Sept. 18, 1895, speech that became known as the Atlantic Compromise speech. 

West said he chose to read the speech because it’s about triumph of the individual spirit.  

“Everyone has equality of opportunities, not outcomes,” West said. “Booker T. Washington stood before a predominately white administration and 38 years prior to that he was a slave. His words show unity and that’s what we need to bring us together today and not divide us.” 

A small group of students from Van High School and John Tyler High School attended the event. 

Karla Rainey, Van High School assistant principal and career and technical education director, said she was very pleased to be invited and thought the students were inspired by the program. 

“I think Mr. West’s words were very moving,” she said. It was a history-rich event and inspirational. It shows the students that opportunities are there for them if they are dreaming that dream whatever dream it may be.” 

Plantation owner Tim West, who is not related to Allen West, spoke about the plantation’s history, how it was split up by the original owner and given to his slaves when the Civil War ended and how it received a Texas historical marker in 1966. 

The Angelic Voices of John Tyler High School sang several spirituals at the event and the high school’s Junior ROTC honor guard presented the colors.  

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