Hampton's Sixth Annual African American Symposium

Early 19th century slave cabin at Hampton National Historic Site

Hampton National Historic Site hosts an annual African American history symposium at Goucher College each March. It attracts quite a mixed audience, from archivists and historians to members of the general public and sisters of the Oblate Sisters of Providence (the first religious order of women of color). Christopher Phillips, the symposium's keynote speaker and a professor at the University of Cincinnati, spoke about term slavery, an arrangement that was not common in slave states but was largely confined to Maryland. I was familiar with the large number of gradual emancipations from my research, so it was extremely helpful to have Dr. Phillips put this phenomenon into context. Many other states only allowed manumission through a will or by having the slave holder request special permission from the state legislature. However, term slavery through manumission, a legal document and enforceable contract, was unique to Maryland and gave slaves slight access to legal recourse if the manumission was violated. Even though it would have been quite challenging for slaves to muster the funds and legal representation needed to contest a violated manumission in court, Phillips found cases where they did so and the law ruled in their favor. This is another example of Maryland's ambivalent and contradictory attitudes toward slavery. Based on Dr. Phillips’ presentation and the recommendation of one of my colleagues, I’m adding Dr. Phillips’ book, Freedom’s Port: The African American Community in Baltimore, 1790-1860, to my reading list.

Kathryn Deely was another speaker whose research is relevant to my work. Kathryn is a doctoral student in archeology at the University of Maryland. She has been excavating backyards in Annapolis and is looking at the differences in archeological artifacts based on the race and class of the homes’ inhabitants during the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the properties that she has excavated was owned and rented out by William H. Butler, a wealthy, nineteenth century African American that I am researching. I spoke to her after her talk, and she gave me some good ideas for methodologies to use in researching Butler’s property ownership.

Reproduction iron slave collars and chains

After the symposium, the National Park Service provided a tour of Hampton’s slave quarters, which date from the early to mid-1800s. Angela Roberts-Burton, one of Hampton’s park rangers, gave an excellent, balanced tour and used primary sources, reproduction artifacts, and the built environment to support her historical narrative. Although I had visited Hampton before, it was well worth going on the guided tour as well as experiencing the tour as part of a diverse group. Audience questions were indicative of the larger public’s perceptions and misconceptions of slavery in America. Some people knew quite a bit about slavery while others had a hard time believing that sadistic brutality was endemic to the institution.

Failed Runaway Attempt?

I continued researching and writing case studies of slave holders in Dorchester County. I may have found evidence that one of the fugitive families was unfortunately recaptured. William Still recorded their safe arrival in Philadelphia in 1857 but the names of Daffney Cornish and her children appear on an 1864 listing of slaves in Dorchester County.  In 1867, the Maryland General Assembly ordered that a county-by-county register (commonly known as the Slave Statistics) be made of slaves owned prior to November 1, 1864, when slavery was abolished in Maryland. Slave holders hoped that the federal government would reward them for their loyalty to the Union by compensating former slave holders for the value of slaves that they had held at that time. Daffney’s family appears on this list, pointing to the likelihood that their runaway attempt was unsuccessful. Another possibility is that Reuben Phillips and Jane Cator falsely claimed that they still owned the Cornishes in 1864 in order to recoup the loss of their property. According to the federal census, it does not appear that any of the Cornishes lived with either Phillips or Cator by 1870. There is still more digging to do in this case.

I’ve been working on a presentation that I’ll be giving at the Laurel Historical Society about African Americans in Maryland during the 1870s and 1880s. This is an area that our department has not yet focused on and which is understudied in African American historiography. Therefore, I have a lot of research to do!

Slavery and Segregation in Maryland and Virginia

Montpelier, James Madison's home

I spent much of last week working on case studies of slave holders in Dorchester County associated with an advertisement offering a reward of $3,100 for a group of 26 runaways. William Still, a noted Underground Railroad conductor, documented this escape in his 1872 book. The fugitives also faced severe rainstorms and a lack of provisions. Also complicating this remarkable 1857 escape, was the fact that approximately 20 of the runaways were children and infants. Nevertheless, all but one of them reached the North safely. Around this time, Dorchester County was plagued (from the slave holder’s point of view!) with several instances of slaves running away. According to historian Kate Larson, although Harriet Tubman, a native of Dorchester County, did not lead this particular escape, her knowledge of Underground Railroad routes likely helped this group make it safely to the North.

This year, LOSIM will be participating in Washington, D.C.’s annual Emancipation Day celebrations in April. For background information about slavery in D.C. and the commemoration of freedom, we watched and discussed, Enslavement to Emancipation, a documentary produced for D.C. public television. It was really interesting to analyze the documentary as a public historian and to think of things we would have done the same or differently if we were doing something similar for our project.

On Saturday, I visited Montpelier (above), James Madison’s Virginia plantation. Like many of the founding fathers, Madison was a slave holder and recognized the contradiction of owning people while espousing freedom for a new nation. Currently, Montpelier has done much to include the stories of the enslaved in the site’s interpretation. Behind the main house, the site has built the frame replicas of the quarters for the domestic slaves. In sight of the mansion, these would have been better built and more attractive than the field slaves’ quarters. One of the interpretative panels featured a familiar sight to me–a runaway ad placed by James Madison.  Dolley and James Madison were probably more benevolent than many slave owners. For example, they gave their slaves Sundays off (something uncommon even for white paid servants), even if they had guests staying with them. Yet, because their slaves were considered property, the Madisons sold them as they wished, without regard for the bonds of family and friendship that they were breaking. Paul Jennings, the slave who helped Dolley save George Washington’s portrait from the White House, expected to be freed in Dolley’s will. However, the impoverished Dolley sold the 47 year old Jennings away from his family at Montpelier to an insurance agent in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, Senator Daniel Webster purchased Jennings shortly thereafter and allowed him to pay off his purchase price for his freedom.

Slave cemetery, Montpelier. Although the graves are unmarked, depressions have formed in the ground above each burial. The depressions are particularly visible in this photo where they are filled with snow. Photo from Montpelier interpretative panel.

One particularly ground-breaking form of interpretation at Montpelier is the recreation of the segregated train depot at the edge of property. Built in 1910 by William DuPont, then-owner of Montpelier, the depot features separate colored and white waiting rooms. This spatial restoration is a stark example that separate is not equal. The colored waiting room is much smaller, did not have direct access to the ticket agent, and did not provide a view of the railway tracks.

On Sunday, I went to the Walters Art Museum to hear Representative Elijah Cummings speak about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rep. Cummings discussed growing up in segregated Baltimore. He was among a group of schoolchildren, led by civil rights attorney Juanita Jackson Mitchell, who desegregated a neighborhood pool. Cummings still has a scar on his forehead from a milk bottle thrown at him by a segregationist. That experience, orchestrated by a role model (Juanita Jackson Miller), inspired Cummings to be a lawyer.  He faced many obstacles to this goal. He had been tracked in special education classes. He vividly described visiting the school counselor as a sixth grader, wearing crisply ironed but patched clothing, to discuss his career goals. Unfortunately, he was crushed by the counselor, who, after seeing that his parents were sharecroppers and that Cummings was tracked in special education classes, asked him, “Who do you think you are?” Those words have haunted Cummings throughout his life. Luckily Cummings also had a teacher who believed in him and with the help of the Enoch Pratt Library (the only non-segregated institution in his neighborhood), Cummings raised his reading level and got out of special ed. These incidents reveal why Cummings is so passionate about education and the well-being of children. He closed by challenging the audience to find a way to improve the world for others in the spirit of Dr. King.

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Larson, Kate Clifford. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. (New York, Ballantine Books, 2004), 149.

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.