Archives Radio

This past week was more eventful than usual inasmuch as I was involved with two events–a radio interview on the Eastern Shore and a presentation in Annapolis. On Thursday the 16th, senior Legacy of Slavery in Maryland employee Maya Davis and I traveled to Cambridge, MD in Dorchester County to be interviewed by Dr. Kay McElvey on WCEM-AM 1240. A little over two months ago the Maryland State Archives help desk forwarded an unsolicited interview request from the station’s administrative assistant; my supervisors Chris Haley and Emily Oland-Squires recommended (and I agreed) Maya join me because she was with the program longer than anyone.

Cambridge Radio

Since Maya works in a separate office, I do not know her well personally. During the one hour and ten minute drive (which became 1 1/2 for unknown traffic congestion reasons) she talked about the various internships and projects she performed for work and school. One of them included a survey of various sites associated with Harriet Tubman who was from Dorchester County. The Eastern Shore’s highways were nearly level with the expansive cultivated scenery unlike the Western Shore where landscaping, walls, and trees give the feeling of being boxed in. It was pleasant to see many names of families and roads familiar to me through examinations of the Strong and Martenet maps on the LOSIM Website.

Despite my fears of tardiness we arrived moments before Dr. Kay herself. Although it was a warm day regardless, the woman before me radiated her own warmth as we shook hands and started our pre-interview; her information packet about me included a clipping from a periodical concerning my first public presentation on Kent Island in February. She was so friendly yet officious that I felt like we learned equally as much about her in just ten minutes of talking. Once we entered the studio she and the technician ran us through the time blocks for content and commercials, what aspects of ourselves or LOSIM’s work would be covered, and the meaning of time signals given by the technician behind the sound-proof glass.

The hour went incredibly fast and it is difficult to remember what exactly was said over the air. It felt more like the three of us were simply continuing our conversation from earlier. At some point Dr. Kay proclaimed I had an excellent voice and, just barely over her breath, claimed she would tap me for a play she was involved with. I took the lead by providing LOSIM work samples including runaway ads pertinent to the Cambridge, MD area. She had me read two; the first concerned a runaway from a community Dr. Kay lived in while the other was a $3,100 reward for two dozen escaped slaves whose owner’s were thoroughly researched last year. Since it would not make great radio to simply read the slave owner case studies which I brought, we closed with a discussion about the broad definition that LOSIM uses to fit under the Underground Railroad umbrella and the importance of identifying slave agency.

Dr. Kay was concerned that too few black children understand slavery partly because they see it as a source of shame and degradation. The majority of the slaves researched by the LOSIM however were fighting against their bondage or the bondage of others–demonstrating the opposite perspective of blacks as the beneficiaries, pawns, or victims of the white male establishment. I closed the interview by borrowing a page from my former colleague’s David Armenti’s book and played up the value of local resources to education local populations. On the Eastern Shore, where people are very proud of their local cultures and ways, that could make all the difference.

Know Your Rights

Saturday May 18 was my final presentation for LOSIM. Arranged earlier this year, Allison Seyler, Tanner Sparks, and I presented on Maryland slave and slave ownership history as they concerned the legal system. I again talked about Indian Moll and her descendants’ claims against John P. Paca, the son of a Founding Father William Paca, but also shared the stories of Negro Adam (1789) and the descendants of Edward Green (1808).

Whereas the descendants of Moll used over a century of precedent stemming from a 1681 law stipulating that the civil rights condition (slave or free) follows the mother, I presented Adam as a slave attempting to use Delaware law to be freed. The court records do not say how he argued for his freedom but my research into secondary sources and finally the laws of the General Assembly of Delaware yielded two key laws that would work to Adam’s advantage. These laws, in 1787 and 1789, heavily restricted interstate slave trade and horribly punished citizens who broke the law and Delaware-based merchants who participated in even the international slave trade. Adam lost his petition because the defense convincingly argued that, although he lived with his mistress in Delaware for several years and she still resided there, he was legally entailed to the unsettled estate of her late husband.

In the case of Edward Green I used his 1801 manumission by Edward Strong to highlight Maryland’s efforts to regulate manumissions at the county and agency level. Because Green’s manumission did not contain the required information and was entered into evidence, the defendant appealed the case on a technicality. Thankfully for Green’s descendents the appeals court sustained the lower court’s ruling and they were freed. My regret about the Green case study is that I will probably never learn why his descendents submitted his manumission into evidence; as far as I know there is no legal consequence of having a free male relative.

Allison Seyler spoke of the resurgence of slave owner petitions to retrieve slaves following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Using the case study of Edward Prigg, Allison explored the role Maryland played in the most significant piece of pre-Dred Scott slave jurisprudence in Prigg v. Pennsylvania. Prigg was hired by the widow of miller John Ashmore to retrieve Margaret Morgan who, having never been claimed a slave by Ashmore’s estate, had moved to Pennsylvania where she had several children with a free black. In violation of Pennsylvania’s personal liberty laws, Prigg disregarded their civil rights under the presumption they were chattel and brought them to Maryland. Pennsylvania demanded he return for punishment and Maryland refused to extradite him. The United States Supreme Court voided Pennsylvania’s charge against Prigg but did not demand states or municipalities assist slave catchers if prohibited by law. This safety valve eventually closed with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857; people in free states felt they were losing sovereignty to slave interests in the national government and people in slave states were reminded of the looming danger to property and way of life in a country half free and half slave.

Tanner Sparks presented on his work with the United States Colored Troops, a topic I’ve previously written about. This time he showed different pension paperwork that included a 1901 medical examiner’s description of whip scars on pensioner and Grand Army of the Republic member Robert Riley. Tanner has worked with scores of USCT research subjects but never previously encountered such detail.

The audience surveys which followed the presentation were very encouraging. Of the fifteen, the two most negative comments I found were 1) despite running nearly two hours with Q&A it was “too short” and 2) we talked too quickly. A handful of people (3) wrote that they learned only a little, a grade below “Learned A Lot” (12) but a grade above “Nothing New” (0).