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Our binder. |
Sometime this spring, teachers received an e-mail from the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, inviting us to participate in a 3-day course examining Maryland slavery from the 1600s to the mid-1800s. The course was only $30 (the cost for the field trip to the Eastern Shore to explore Underground Railroad sites), and even offered an MSDE credit; along with a friend and colleague, I jumped at the chance to learn more about my adopted home state, as well as to give myself better context about the legacy from which some of my favorite authors to teach -- Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, August Wilson, Lucille Clifton -- were writing. I also just love history, and the thought of a guided Underground Railroad field trip was very exciting to me.
Wednesday was at the first day of the course, entitled
Colonial and Early African American Experience (1600s-1860s) and organized by
Reginald F. Lewis Museum Manager of Education Programs Terry Nicole Taylor. Our first presenters were Allison Seyler and Ryan Cox from the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis; both are research historians with the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Project, and their presentation focused on "Tobacco and Slavery in Maryland."
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These ads ran in the newspaper. |
Mr. Cox began by describing the
Legacy of Slavery in Maryland project, which has a goal to study, preserve, and promote experiences that have shaped Maryland's African American population, from slavery to now. He then began discussing tobacco, the crop which made slavery different in Maryland than other states; in fact, tobacco was so prominent here that it is officially named a form of currency in March 1638 by the Maryland General Assembly. The price of tobacco steadily declined between 1620 and 1680, but was just as popular, which necessitated more land and more servants, which fueled the slave trade here. Maryland, indeed, owes her entire existence to tobacco, but the crop is inedible and sensitive to climate changes, so it is a picky crop.
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Maryland was mostly built on debt because of the tobacco crop. |
At this point, Mr. Cox and Ms. Seyler began describing the Labor Force demographics of Maryland. Through the 17th century, most servants in Maryland were indentured Europeans, or convict laborers. The Headright System, in place between 1634 and 1680, encouraged settlement of the lands by these individuals to the tune of 50 acres/person, and this helped isolated settlements crop up, in which owners, servants, and slaves worked alongside each other. He offered the case study of
Anthony Johnson, a slave who was brought to America in 1621 and sold to an Englishman in Jamestown. Mr. Johnson (who was brought up twice more in our sessions by other scholars) worked for 12 years as an indentured servant / slave, and he was allowed to work his own land as well; after the 12 years, he continued to work the land as a free man, eventually acquiring 250 acres of land and living a successful life, passing down the land to his wife and then his kids.
So, while it was possible for an indentured servant to make a good life for himself in Maryland in the 1600s, there is a moment, however, around 1695, when the slave trade really heated up in Maryland, and 3000 slaves were imported in five years, as many as in the previous 20 years. By 1700, most unfree laborers were black, and that only happened after efforts to bring in more whites became unsuccessful. The landowners and planters of tobacco took advantage of the fact that slaves were for life, and the owners could choose age/gender, whereas the previous indentured servants were only for a set number of years.
Laws regarding slavery also became prominent in the 1600s, allowing Maryland's workforce to shift primarily to slaves. In the 1663/1664 administrative session, the
Durante Vita was passed, which made legal lifelong slavery if a person's father was a slave (in most states, slavery followed the mother, but not in Maryland until later). In 1681, owners and priests who facilitated interracial unions were fined 10,000 pounds of tobacco. All of these laws were facilitated because the landowners, the gentry, in Maryland started taking control of the state legislature, which led to agricultural dominance and more slavery. Whereas in the 1600s, slaves and landowners would work together, this shifted in the 1700s.
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This image shows the changing relationship between growers and servants. |
Ms. Seyler took time to show us an image from the Maryland State Archives Special Collections, showing tobacco growers dresses to the nines, being served and fussed upon by black servants. This was a marked change in the relationship between growers and slaves, and it continued into the 19th century. This is when the African American community and the white community first began to get very segregated. Mr. Cox made the point that many of these growers were "second sons," meaning they were not going to be getting their parents' inheritance in Europe, and came to America with a chip on their shoulder, and wanted to show themselves to be rich and powerful, which contributed to their separation from their slaves and harshness of their image.
The two researchers began getting into something that we investigated later as well: Maryland had a very large population of free Black people, and more and more became free as the tobacco industry diminished and slaves were freed by their owners, but the state of Maryland did whatever it could to discourage these free black people from staying in the state: they weren't allowed to testify in court; they were faced with strict vagrancy laws; black people could not vote or purchase firearms, and couldn't even meet in church without a white minister. All of this was designed to discourage free black people from staying in state.
Our second speaker was Baba Olumiji, an 8th grade Social Studies Teacher at Mount Royal Elementary/Middle School of the Baltimore City Public Schools. Mr. Olumiji demonstrated a lesson called "Triangular Trade and the Middle Passage," and his lesson involved having students analyze primary source documents about the lesson's topic,
which is one of the lessons developed by the Reginald F. Lewis Museum Education team.
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The engraving work of Boss Hammond. |
Next, we were given a tour of some exhibits by Director of Collections and Exhibits Charles Bethea. His exhibit "Now, That's Cool!" features some of the museum's most recent acquisitions. He showed us one of Boss Hammond's stone-carved grave markings; Mr. Hammond was able to buy his freedom by carving dozens of headstones around Maryland, and he was known for his deep etchings and calligraphic style, which he learned despite not being able to read or write. Now, that's cool, indeed.
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Charles Bethea describes the collection's Frederick Douglass artifacts. |
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BMore Than a Story: More than Freddie Gray |
Mr. Bethea also showed us a number of other cool items, including a couple of Frederick Douglass's books, as well as a letter of complaint from a slaveowner whose purchased slave had died 6 months after purchase. Mr. Bethea's had a contagious enthusiasm for the items in this section of the museum, and it seemed everyone loved listening to him speak.
During lunch, I had the opportunity to walk around the powerful exhibit "Bmore than a Story," which showcased a timeline of police brutality against black men that helped create the Freddie Gray unrest. It also did an awesome job of giving black youth in Baltimore a voice, as high school kids created art work comparing the use of helicopters and blue light cameras by law enforcement to vultures. It was arresting and moving, particularly when paired with the soundtrack -- a spoken word and rap video by the students calling attention to their plight in Baltimore.
"BMore Than a Story" is only running until September 4, so go quickly if you want to see it!
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Dr. Swann-Wright on a live video feed. |
Dr. Dianne Swann-Wright was our afternoon speaker, and she holds a Ph.D. in American and African American History from the University of Virginia. Dr. Swann-Wright has worked was the director of African American and special programs at Monticello, founding curator and director of the Douglass Myers Maritime Museum in Fell's Point, and a consultant for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is opening later this year. After a recent knee surgery made her unable to travel, Dr. Swann-Wrigth joined us via Skype, and focused on three key questions: Why was slavery so important in Maryland? (Africans made the state so rich and prosperous); How was slavery different in MD than other states? (industrial slavery was centered around the water, and agricultural slavery was centered around tobacco), and what famous Marylanders were enslaved and why should we know them? (she mentioned Mathias de Sousa, who came to Maryland as an indentured servant and later served in the state assembly; Anthony Johnson; Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman).
Dr. Swann-Wright's talk was enthusiastic and funny. She would love to have met Harriet Tubman, she says, because she met and married a good-looking man 22 years her junior, and she wanted to know how she did it. She said that slaves' cost varied, like cars, and she said if someone owned 50 slaves, it would be like owning 50 cars today. She repeated an interesting fact we had learned earlier in the day: that Frederick Douglass was the most photographed man of the 19th century. All in all, Dr. Swann-Wright was a wealth of information about the era and it was a joy to hear her speak.
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Mr. Sampson at the Dorchester County Visitor Center. |
Our second day was what I was most excited about: a trip to Maryland's Eastern shore for an Underground Railroad Bus Tour. The tour was centered in Cambridge, MD, a town formed by the Choptank Indian Reservation and made a port of entry in 1684. Our bus left Baltimore at around 9:30 a.m., and we arrived at the Dorchester County Visitor Center at around 11. There, we were met by a delightful tour guide named Royce Sampson, who is also Tour Director of the
Harriet Tubman Museum in the same town. A transplant from Baltimore, Mr. Sampson shared a wealth of knowledge and passion for his subject matter, which was Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.
Mr. Sampson told us how recent renewed interest in Harriet Tubman has rejuvenated the economy in Dorchester County, with President Obama signing into law the Harriet Tubman National Park, the first national park named after a woman. It seems like the park itself is a number of sites,
but the crown jewel of it, the visitor's center and new museum, isn't opening until March 2017
Mr. Sampson pointed to the water behind him, the Choptank River, and described how Harriet Tubman used it to free herself in 1849 when, at that time, if a slave crossed to the north, he or she could stay in the north; however, in 1850, the bounty hunter law was passed, so slaves could be brought back. That's what makes Tubman's repeated trips back to free slaves -- more than 300 -- so courageous.
Mr. Sampson first took us to the
Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center, a modest storefront museum with beautiful artwork related to Tubman, several portraits, and a wealth of information; there, we watched a short and informative video about Harriet Tubman's life. Then, Mr. Sampson took us to several sites in Tubman's life, as well as surrounding the African American community in the area, describing them with gusto. Photos below.
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The Dorchester County Visitor Center had an awesome display about the Underground Railroad. |
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"A Railroad Without Tracks" |
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Show from back of Visitor Center, describing history and culture of the river. |
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Mr. Sampson described an awesome escape that Harriet Tubman choreographed from the front of this courthouse. |
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Mural inside Harriet Tubman Museum.
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Harriet Tubman grew up at this spot. Apparently, this is where the Harriet Tubman Memorial Park would make the most sense, but the owners of the land don't want to sell.
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Harriet Tubman worked at this site, and it was here -- now the Bucktown Village Store -- that she was hit in the head with a weight by the site's owner, which left her with lifelong dizzy and fainting spells. Apparently, she was operated on at the age of 80 for it, and bit a bullet instead of anesthesia. |
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Mr. Sampson took us to the Stanley Institute, a one-room school house restored in recent years. It served the African American community of the area and was open from 1867-1962. We were treated to an informative |
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Report card at the school |
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Inside the Stanley Institute, we heard about the school, which served up to 84 students at once. |
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Reconstructed outhouse in the back. They sure got up close and personal. |
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The first teacher at the Stanley Institute School, Emma Piper. |
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The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center opens in March 2017. (Not my photo.) |
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These markers allow you to journey in Harriet Tubman's footsteps. |
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Black-eyed Susans at the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center. |
On the third day, we were presented a session entitled "Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad" by Dr. Cheryl LaRoche, who teaches in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland and wrote a book called
Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance (2013).
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Dr. Laroche shows us the anecdotal Indiana map of Black churches |
A dynamic speaker who probably could have spoken for the entire day rather than just her allotted hour, Dr. LaRoche began by discussing her preference for casting slaves in a light that emphasizes their ingenuity; she showed images of Box Brown, who uses the Adams Express company -- which advertised that it would ship anything anywhere -- to ship himself to freedom. Dr. LaRoche compared it to the government's inability in trying to crack Apple's security code to get data; here, the company, Adams Express, also refused to let the government interfere with its technology, so Box Brown (as well as Lear Green, a young woman who shipped herself to Baltimore's President Street Train Station) both displayed technological savviness in engineering their escapes. (This reminded me of Edward P. Jones's wonderful novel
The Known World, which features a character who ships herself to freedom in New York City.) Dr. Larouche also stated why most slaves ended up running away on Good Fridays or over the holidays: they knew they would get a 4- or 5-day headstart on their masters even knowing they had left.
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A reward for an escaped slave. |
Dr. Laroche also detailed some of her experiences as an archeologist, and spoke about the importance of oral histories, especially when recounting cultures that the landscape has erased. For example, she argues that I-95 bifurcated most successful Black communities along the east coast. In Baltimore, the building of things like casinos and convention centers was done without archeologists, so experts like her were not able to study what lies beneath. Oral history has to make up for what the landscape has forgotten (a woman in our session brings up that the McDonald's on Baltimore's North Avenue used to be a cemetery that she and her neighbors used to play in).
Related to this, Dr. LaRoche told us a story about how an anecdotal map of all the Black churches in Illinois helped "cracked the code" for her in establishing the connection between black churches and the Underground Railroad, something she knew was true but couldn't prove it. She overlayed several other maps on the anecdotal map: Wilbur Siebert's published Underground Railroad routes, Known Underground Railroad sites, Black settlements, and Locations of AME churches. Dr. LaRoche found that the black churches matched up almost perfectly with the previously known routes and sites, which established that connection she was researching for her book.
Dr. LaRoche concluded with some discussion of Josiah Henson, two infants, two young kids, and his wife. The person believed to be Harriet Beecher Stowe's inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin, a huge reduction of his actual role in history. After Douglass and Equiano, Henson had the 3rd best selling slave narrative of all time. She closed by stating her belief, and a belief that she wants us to emphasize with our students, that to be literate is an act of sedition itself. Dr. LaRoche cited James W.C. Pennington's narrative, Josiah Henson's narrative, and Frederick Douglass's narrative, stating how all didn't understand the depth of what was missing in their lives until they learned to read.
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Dr. Mitchell describes her Harriet Tubman curriculum. |
Our second speaker on Day 3 was Dr. JudyLynn Mitchell, an administrator in the Wicomico County Public Schools. Dr. Mitchell's presentation, a lesson demonstration, was entitled "Harriet Tubman: A Journey to Freedom." She began by telling us to emphasize Harriet Tubman's beauty with students, because she has had students say things like, "Ew, she looks like a man," and it's important to hear how beautiful she is, and provided us with several ideas for how to teach Harriet Tubman, primarily aimed at the elementary school level.
Lisa Crawley, Resource Center Manager for the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, spent a few minutes discussing books that our students would be interested in for learning Maryland Black History and Culture. At the high school level, I was most interested in
From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of the African American Family by James H. Johnston , Freedom's Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America by Myra Young Armstead, and Stealing Freedom by Elisa Carbone.
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Ms. Harris shows us a trailer for the film Birth of a Nation, for which she wrote the curriculum. |
Our last speaker of the three-day course was Stephanie James Harris, M.A., who is the Executive Director of the New Jersey Amistad Commission and CEO of a non-profit organization called Imani-Grace Cultural Consulting, which has been commissioned by the producers of the highly anticipated Nate Parker film, Birth of a Nation, to create curriculum and educational resources for the film (as it did with the film Selma, Race, and Belle).
Ms. Harris spent a little bit of time describing how she found herself writing curriculum for movies in recent years, and told a fascinating story about Jesse Owens, the subject of the film Race: it was his idea for the 3rd stripe on his sneakers -- Adidas's design -- but of course he nor his family never received any credit for it, and Owens died penniless, without any endorsements.
Ms. Harris has seen Birth of a Nation twice, and described it as an "amazing experience" and she cried while watching it. Often, she says, history books have postulated Nat Turner as a "religious nut," but this film gets down to the actual man and his goals. Nate Parker, the star and director, has a degree in African American Studies from Penn State, and he has invested almost a decade of his life as well as a wealth of passion and research into the film. Through Jackie Bazan's BazanEd, all teachers will be receiving free teaching materials surrounding the film, which comes out in October 2016 and
"electrified" audiences at Sundance. Official trailer
here.
Randomly, Ms. Harris repeated a discussion about whose version of "Strange Fruit" is better: Billie Holiday's or Nina Simone's. Sorry, Billie,
but it's Nina Simone's that sears my soul.
We were able to read a draft of the curriculum materials that Ms. Harris wrote for the film, and they look thorough, and full of critical thinking and discussion. I hope that, like with
Selma, we are somehow able to bring our students for free again.
At the conclusion of Ms. Harris's presentation, we were dismissed. My mind was brimming with information, and I really appreciated the chance to to hear so much scholarship about African American history in Maryland, and can't wait to explore the Eastern Shore more. Much credit to Ms. Terry Taylor's deft hand in organizing it all. More information about the Education Programs for teachers offered by the Reginald F. Lewis Museum is
here.
from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2aDcpHO Colonial and Early African American Experience (1600s - 1860s) at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum [Summer Institute for Educators] -
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