Let Us Cross Over the River

The following article was reportedly published by The New York Times on July 30, 1906:

Erected in Negro Church by Contributions from Negroes.

ROANOKE, Va., July 29 -- A memorial window of Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson was unveiled in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church today.  The congregation is composed of negroes.  The window was erected by the pastor, the Rev. L. L. Downing, the money for its purchase coming wholly from negroes.

The Exercises were largely attended by both races, the Confederate camps of Roanoke and Salem and the chapters of the Daughters of the Confederacy.  There were addresses by white citizens of Roanoke.

Downing's father and mother were members of a Sunday school class of negro slaves taught by Jackson at Lexington before the war, and to-day's exercises marked the realization of an ambition Downing has had since boyhood, to pay fitting tribute to the Confederate commander.

The picture presented on the window is that of an army camping on the banks of a stream, the inscription underneath being Jackson's last words: "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."