Out and About

Mahan Hall, U.S. Naval Academy.

Last week, the Maryland State Archives hosted a War of 1812 workshop for Anne Arundel County. I attended the morning tours to Fort Nonsense, the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, and the Maryland State House, all places I had never visited previously. The tours were all very informative and helped me learn more about Maryland history. In the afternoon, I went to the Banneker-Douglass Museum, the state’s official repository of African American material culture, with other staff to help install our exhibit, Flee! Stories of Flight from Maryland in Black and White. The exhibit opening date of November 1 commemorates the ratification of the 1864 state constitution, which abolished slavery in Maryland. (Because Maryland was a border state during the Civil War, Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves there.)

On Saturday, I visited the Sojourner Truth Room, an African American research collection at the Oxon Hill Branch of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. The room is named for the Sojourner Truth Elementary School which formerly occupied the site. It’s a rare reminder of the black schools that were too often demolished and forgotten during the era when black students were usually integrated into white schools and not vice versa.

Ms. Ginny Moore standing next to a case of rare books.

Back to my visit, a friend of mine had met Ginny Moore, the collection’s librarian, at an ALA conference and highly recommended that I meet her when I got to Maryland. Before joining the staff of the Sojourner Truth Room, Ms. Moore had been a librarian in the D.C. public schools. Ms. Moore welcomed me like a member of her family before giving me a tour of the collection. We spent two hours talking about her work at the Sojourner Truth Room, her career as a librarian, and her life growing up in the South. She was familiar with the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland since Sojourner Truth staff had attended a workshop on the project at the archives.

One of the things I miss about being a student is having access to a research library. Therefore, I was thrilled to learn about the varied holdings at the Sojourner Truth Room. Collections include rare 19^th century slave narratives, autographed first editions by authors such as Coretta Scott King, the 42-volume set of the WPA Slave Narratives, the Journal of Negro History, a variety of encyclopedias, and scholarly works on African American history and culture. I enjoyed my visit to the Sojourner Truth Room, and look forward to returning!

Cultural Adventures

Last week, I went to the Anacostia Museum for a fascinating lecture by Ida E. Jones, Ph.D., a historian and assistant curator at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, on her new book, The Heart of the Race Problem: The Life of Kelly Miller. Miller was the first African American admitted to Johns Hopkins University, where he studied for a Ph.D. in math, physics, and astronomy. Unfortunately, he was forced to drop out after two years due to an increase in tuition fees. He went on to earn a master’s degree in mathematics and a law degree, both from Howard, where he became mathematics professor and later dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Jones described Miller as a conciliator in the debates between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. Miller was a proponent of Washington’s self-sufficiency while also supporting a DuBois’ insistence on a classical education as the path to African American social and economic advancement. Miller also made important contributions to the burgeoning field of sociology, including his establishment of a department at Howard. Later in life, Miller clashed with Howard President Mordecai Johnson who vowed to block any campus recognition of Miller’s contributions to the university. Sadly, Johnson’s efforts were so successful that Miller’s 50 years of service to Howard were forgotten from Howard’s collective memory.  With her book, Jones’ is attempting to rectify this and to complicate the concept of race men and black intellectual history beyond the simple binary of the Washington-DuBois debates. After the talk, I met several interesting people, including some members of the National Association of Black Women Historians, who recommended local happenings for me to see and groups to join.

Hampton Mansion, on a hill overlooking the estate

Restored Slave Cabin

Over the weekend, I visited the Hampton plantation, which is now managed by the National Park Service. Unfortunately, the interpretative tour on the African American experience at Hampton had been postponed so I spent some time exploring the grounds and going on the tour of the mansion. The wealthy and well-connected Ridgeleys owned Hampton for over 200 years, at one time amassing 25,000 acres on the estate where 350 slaves toiled. I was aware of a famous photograph of Nancy Davis, an enslaved woman, pictured with her charge but just discovered that the little white girl was a Ridgeley from this plantation. According to the NPS website, Davis is the only African American buried in the family cemetery. Following Emancipation, Davis remained on the plantation working for the family until her death in 1908. After the Civil War, the family’s wealth, which was rooted in the agricultural output of the plantation, gradually declined until the last resident sold it a non-profit foundation which then donated it to the National Trust. 

Week Four at MSA

The current phase of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland program, which is funded by a Department of Education grant, is focused on five counties of the Eastern Shore (Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne's, and Talbot). To support our research of this region, I'm beginning to strip US census records for data about African Americans living in Dorchester County. This information forms part of a database that helps us cross-reference enslaved and free blacks in various state, local, and federal records.

As you know, another project I'm working on is the records of the Maryland State Colonization Society. One of my goals will be to find out who was being successfully recruited to emigrate, what their motivations were, and what the socio-political environment was like in Maryland. As the below letter from a recruiting agent shows, the Society was very particular about recruiting "the right kind" of black person to Liberia. The Society was focused on recruiting industrious, tee-totaling Christians. However, in correspondence from Liberia, Society officials frequently complain about the emigrants' lack of industry. None of the secondary sources that I've read have interrogated this label of laziness, accepting this as an apt description of many of the emigrants. On the other hand, scholarship on freed people in the United States has interpreted this perceived resistance to long-term work commitments in other ways such as a desire to be mobile in order to find dispersed family members or an attempt to avoid exploitative working arrangements. I hope my work with the Society's papers will uncover more of the voices of the black emigrants who exiled themselves from their native United States in hopes of a better future for themselves and

families.¹

From the first paragraph: "The visit of Jackson to this neighborhood has produced a happy influence in behalf of Colonization, and quite a disposition to emigrate on the part of the [illegible] people of color; The probability now is, that we have twenty, at least, from hereabouts, (and these too), of the right kind. By tomorrow we shall have, as many names as it is desirable should go this fall from one portion of our state." (emphasis added)

In my free time, I went to a wonderful panel about race in America organized by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I had the opportunity to meet Spencer Crew, former director of the National Museum of American History and former president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Dr. Crew, a professor at George Mason University, is teaching a course on the Underground Railroad and I hope the Legacy of Slavery website will offer him useful primary sources for Maryland. I also met Nell Irvin Painter, professor emerita at Princeton, who signed my copy of The History of White People.

Nell Irvin Painter, Rex M. Ellis, and Spencer Crew at the NMAAHC panel "America in Black and White"

1.  John H. Kennard to Dr. Easter, October 9, 1838, Maryland State Colonization Society Papers. Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 5977. http://mdhistory.net/msa_sc5977/scm013227/html/msa_sc5977_scm13227-0008.html