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!