Introduction

We’ve put together this historiography to help frame this project in a broader context of writing, research and public programming related to black history in Baltimore and the history of Civil Rights. What is a historiography? A historiography is the history of history — helping us to understand how approaches to writing the history of Baltimore have changed from past to present. This review covers publications, programs, and educational efforts from the 1830s through the 2010s.

  • 1831 – 1870
  • 1870 – 1905
  • 1905 – 1929
  • 1929 – 1954
  • 1954 – 1968
  • 1968 – 1976

1831 – 1870

Before the Civil War, there are no formal histories describing the lives and experiences of African-Americans in Baltimore. Instead, African-American voices appear in “slave narratives,” biographies and memoirs of abolitionists and in the writing of enslaved and free blacks who lived in the city. One of the earliest examples of these works is the Life of Elisha Tyson, the philanthropist a biography of Elisha Tyson, a prominent Quaker abolitionist, published a year after his death in 1824.

The narrative of Charles Ball, born into slavery in Calvert County in 1781, is another example. Ball escaped from Georgia in 1809, and returned to Maryland where he lived and worked as a free man in and around Baltimore between 1810 and 1830. Writing for the Documenting the American South project, Harris Henderson summarizing the significance of Ball’s memoir published in 1836:

”Ball’s Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball was published in 1836 and written with the help of Isaac Fischer. Fischer declares in his preface that he has edited the oral narrative Ball had dictated to him to omit any beliefs or feelings Ball may have expressed about slavery. This declaration of presumably significant editing has led scholars to debate the authenticity of Ball’s narrative, but most agree that the narrative represents a true story. The popularity of Ball’s story is well-documented. Slave narrative scholar William Andrews notes: “Ball’s narrative was reprinted often in the decades following its initial publication; it directly influenced the manner and matter of later fugitive slave narratives.” Fifty Years In Chains; or, The Life of an American Slave, (1859) was an abridged and unauthorized reprinted of the earlier Slavery in the United States.”

An even more significant work appeared in 1845 with the publication of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass just seven years after his escape from slavery in Baltimore. Writing for Documenting the American South, Patrick E. Horn observed:

”Frederick Douglass is one of the most celebrated writers in the African American literary tradition, and his first autobiography is the one of the most widely read North American slave narratives. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave was published in 1845, less than seven years after Douglass escaped from slavery. The book was an instant success, selling 4,500 copies in the first four months. Throughout his life, Douglass continued to revise and expand his autobiography, publishing a second version in 1855 as My Bondage and My Freedom.”

A number of examples blur the boundaries between history, memoir, journalism and travelogue as in the example of British writer Joseph Struge’s A Visit To The United States In 1841 published in 1842. On his visit, Struge visited Baltimore as Francis Mohammed summarized for the Landscapes of Slavery and Freedom project:

”This is a narrative written by a British abolitionist who came to the United States to witness the horrors of the slavery. He met the, apparently, charismatic and charming Hope Slatter who gave Sturge a tour of his Baltimore Slave Pen. Sturge reports feeling both appalled by the treatment of people held in captivity by Slatter and also enamored of Slatter himself. The two main maintained a correspondence.  The sections of the book that depict the relationship between the two men raise interesting questions about the political climate of slavery and abolition in the 1830s and early 1840s.”

In 1847, Boston-based John P. Jewett and Co. published Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey, Who Died in the Penitentiary of Maryland, Where He Was Confined for Showing Mercy to the Poor— an account that Susan Philpott observed is “not a proper memoir but a collection of letters and other original writings of Charles Torrey which provide valuable insight into the beliefs and character of an influential if now overlooked member of the abolitionist movement.” While not focused on Baltimore, the work certainly captures a significant moment in the 1840s, as Philpott summarizes:

”Although their affidavits do not include reference to Torrey, he was imprisoned in Baltimore Jail (401 E. Eager Street) in 1844 in part because of accusations that he participated in the flight of the Webb family. He was also indicted on the charges of having “enticed, persuaded, and assisted” Hannah, Judah (or Judae), and Stephen Gooseberry in their escape from William Heckrotte of Baltimore City. The complete trial transcripts are included in the memoir. Torrey was convicted and sentenced to Maryland State Penitentiary (954 Forrest Street) where he died of tuberculosis.”

In 1859, J. F. Weishampel, Jr. published a memoir by Baptist minister Rev. Noah Davis - “A Narrative of the Life of Rev. Noah Davis, a Colored Man. Written by Himself, at the Age of Fifty-Four.” Meredith Malburne-Wade, summarizing the book for Documenting the American South, writes:

”Indeed, he wrote (and sold) his story in an attempt to raise the funds necessary to free two of his sons, the last of his children remaining in bondage, in 1859… He decides to write and to publish his narrative, “setting forth the trials and difficulties the Lord has brought me through to this day, and offer it for sale to my friends generally, as well as to the public at large; and, I hope it may not only aid me, but may serve to encourage others, who meet with similar difficulties, to put their trust in God” (p. 72).”

1870 – 1905

The memoirs and narratives popular within the abolitionist community prior to the Civil War continued to find a popular audience in the decades that followed. Frederick Douglass continued to revise and expand his autobiography in the years after the Civil War as DocSouth summarizes:

”The third version of Douglass’ autobiography was published in 1881 as Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, and an expanded version of Life and Times was published in 1892. These various retellings of Douglass’ story all begin with his birth and childhood, but each new version emphasizes the mutual influence and close correlation of Douglass’ life with key events in American history.”

Other memoirs in this period include Sketch of the Life of Truman Pratt: The Centenarian, Including the History of the Orchard-Street M. E. Church, Baltimore, Md. : Also, an Appendix Containing an Account of the First Colored Methodist Episcopal Conference, with Brief Sketches of Its Members, Father Pratt’s Centennial Tea Party, &c. - a 24-page biographical profile of Truman Pratt who founded the Orchard Street Methodist Church. The profile was written by Magnus Lewis Robinson and published by James Young in 1876.

In the 1870s and 1880s, new works by local historians, notably the prolific writer John Thomas Scharf, included brief encyclopedic profiles on African-American institutions (although African-Americans, women and working-class individuals were largely excluded from the book’s collection of biographical profiles). In The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of “Baltimore Town” and Baltimore City published in 1874, Scharf includes a few dozen mentions of African-Americans with references to the court decision about segregation on the City Passenger Railway and to the organization of the Douglass Institution. In the History of Baltimore City and County, from the Earliest Period to the Present published in 1881, Scharf expanded his account to include numerous profiles on African-American churches and other institutions (such as a mention of The Lyceum Observer - the city’s first black newspaper). Other related works by white historians produced in this period include John Lee’s Maryland in Liberia published by The Maryland Historical Society in 1885.

Other publications on local history in this period give very little attention to the African-American population of the city or any aspect of Civil Rights or injustice. These include the Official History of the Fire Department of the City of Baltimore (1898) by Clarence H. Forrest and the History of the Baltimore Police Department.

Unfortunately, this period also saw the growth of the “Lost Cause” mythology that obscured the causes and context of the Civil War. City leaders honored Supreme Court Roger B. Taney, author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, with a sculpture by William Henry Rinehart erected at Mount Vernon Place in 1887.

This skewed presentation of the past is also found in works like the Memoirs of Margaret Jane Blake of Baltimore, Md.: and Selections in Prose and Verse a biography of Margaret Jane Blake written by Sarah R. Levering and published in 1897. Patrick E. Horn summarized the significance of the work, noting how the work “seems designed to support the paternalistic Southern theory of the loyal, happy slave,” for Documenting the American South:

Little is known about the life of Margaret Jane Blake beyond the biographical information recorded by Sarah R. Levering and reproduced here. Blake was reportedly born in 1811 to Perry Blake, a free African American and U.S. Navy marine who served during the War of 1812, and Charlotte, his wife, enslaved to Jesse Levering of Baltimore, Maryland. Although Mr. Levering granted Charlotte freedom long before the Civil War, her children remained slaves (allegedly at her request). After the birth of Sarah Levering in 1825, Margaret Jane (whom Levering also calls “Margy”) helped to raise the eventual author of her Memoirs.… Few historical records of the author, Sarah Levering, have survived, but the Memoirs reveal her to be a dedicated Christian, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church of Baltimore, active in social causes, and inclined to dabble in poetry…. Memoirs of Margaret Jane Blake was published in 1897, although several critical sources have mistakenly listed its publication date as 1834. In the preface, Levering states that proceeds from the book would support the construction of “a manual labor school for the benefit of the Afro-American citizens, as they prefer being called” (p. v). …

Sarah Levering’s account of Blake’s life reveals more about the white families whom Blake served than about the woman whose “Memoirs” Levering supposedly records. There are only four direct quotations of Blake’s own words in the narrative, and all four explicitly counter the opinions of “mischievous” abolitionists (p. 9) and “impudent” northern whites (p. 16). Levering’s account of Blake’s life seems designed to support the paternalistic Southern theory of the loyal, happy slave (or servant), “Faithful unto Death”—as they plan to inscribe her gravestone (p. 21).

1905 – 1929

In the first few decades of the 20th century, Confederate veterans and their descendants continued their efforts to celebrate the Confederacy. In 1903, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, created by sculptor F. Wellington Ruckstuhl, was erected on Mount Royal Avenue at Mosher Street. In 1918, the Confederate Women Monument by J. Maxwell Miller was erected at W. University Parkway and N. Charles Streets.

Memoirs and more scholarly histories supported this effort in other ways by presenting the Civil War as a distinct history from slavery and by offering racist interpretations of the Antebellum and Reconstruction history of Baltimore and Maryland. Examples include The Self-reconstruction of Maryland, 1864-1867 by William Starr Myers published in 1909, Henry E. Shepherd’s Narrative of Prison Life at Baltimore and Johnson’s Island, Ohio published in 1917 (also summarized by DocSouth), and Early Lee Fox’s The American Colonization Society, 1817-1840 published in 1919.

Henry E. Shepherd also advocated for changes to how the Baltimore students learned about the Civil War, according to an account published in The Sun on June 7, 1902:

Ideal weather favored Confederate Memorial Day, and a large company assembled in Loudon Park Cemetery yesterday to pay tribute to the memory of the men who fell fighting for the Southern cause. […] Captain Shepherd then took up the histories which are used in the public schools of Baltimore, and protested that the children should not be taught that the South was wrong because unsuccessful. He asked that something be done to put aside “the cold and even hostile method of teaching the history of the Civil War in the school.” He appealed to the ladies to take up the question, saying that the men have been powerless to secure justice for the South and its leaders in the schoolbooks.[…] Continuing, he said that the name of Taney is mentioned but once in the history used in the two Female High Schools of Baltimore, and that other famous Marylanders were entirely omitted.

Not all works by white historians fit into this category. The popular Baltimore: Its History and Its People, in Three Volumes (1912) by Clayton Colman Hall did not match John Thomas Scharf for his encyclopedic breadth but included a short history of the politics of African-American suffrage in the early 1900s.

Jeffrey R. Brackett, The Negro in Maryland: A Study in the Institution of Slavery (1889) and the supplementary work Notes on the Progress of the Colored People of Maryland Since the War was an important work by a white historians followed by similar regional studies such as John H. Russell’s Free Negro in Virginia (1913) - a work remembered as the “first exhaustive study of the subject by a trained historian” - and James M. Wright published The Free Negro in Maryland, 1634-1860 (1921).

In 1901, E. C. Morris (1855-) profiled Dr. Harvey Johnson in Sermons, Addresses and Reminiscences and Important Correspondence, With a Picture Gallery of Eminent Ministers and Scholars. Karen Ruffle describes the work, writing: “Sermons, Addresses, and Reminiscences is a collection of sermons, addresses, question and answer formatted lessons, catechisms, and other documents addressed to the members and officers of the National Baptist Convention.”

In 1902, Bishop James A. Handy, a Baltimore writer and leader within the AME Church, published Scraps of African Methodist Episcopal History in an effort “collect, condense, and render easy of access important information which has been scattered through years.” Brent Kinser wrote for Documenting the American South that:

”The book’s first five chapters describe the organization and formation of the church, the rise of Methodism, and the establishment of the A.M.E. Church in the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York areas. Handy then provides a history of the Church’s annual conferences, which played an essential formational and organizational role for the A.M.E. Church. These vignettes are loaded with names and administrative details, and provide insight into the interesting historical preoccupations that dominated some of the conferences.”

George F. Bragg published a series of historical studies in this period, including Afro-American church work and workers (1904), the First Negro Priest on Southern Soil, Men of Maryland (1914) followed by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, by the Rev. George F. Bragg, in Honor of the Centennial of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Which Occurs in the Year 1916 (1915) and the History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church (1922).

Men of Maryland published in 1914 is a representative example of how these works focused on individual men and religious leaders, as writing for Documenting the American South, Christian Richter summarizes:

”Men of Maryland is a catalogue of biographies of prominent African American individuals, both free and slave, from the state of Maryland. The work is composed of three different categories of writing: a series of essays that help to establish the cultural and historical conditions surrounding slavery in Maryland; supplementary materials such as poems, lectures and letters; and twenty-eight biographies, each differing greatly in scope and depth.”

Richter continues to note the “abundance of clergymen whom he deems notable. Nearly half of the biographies chronicle the lives of pastors, reverends or missionaries.“ The work also focuses on individuals, as Richter writes:

In Bragg’s work, he often describes the groundbreakers: men who were the “first” of their kind. For instance, Bragg makes specific mention of Daniel Coker as being “the first colored man ever elected as a Bishop in America” (p. 38-39), Prof. Richard T. Greener as “the first colored person to graduate from Harvard University” (p. 61), and James Theodore Holly Bishop Holly as “the very first man of the African race to be made a Bishop, on American soil, by any of the historic Churches” (p. 81). Bragg emphasizes these individuals because their accomplishments helped to break race barriers and expand the acceptable role of African Americans in American society. By being the first to enter a new field, these groundbreakers opened closed doors for the African Americans that succeeded them.

Churches played an important role in observing anniversaries during this period, as on January 8, 1910, the Afro reported on “The Negro Semi-Centennial” describing:

“a very largely attended meeting of the citizens of Baltimore on last Monday night, in Sharp St. Memorial M.E. Church to hear addresses from the Hon. C. J. Bonaparte, and Minister Ernest Lyon with respect to the proposed celebration to be held in 1913, in honor of the first century of freedom of the American Negro.

In 1914, Dr. Carter G. Woodson established The Journal of Negro History (now The Journal of African American History (JAAH) founded in January 1916). Woodson’s wide-ranging scholarship included some mention of Baltimore figures, as in 1921, Carter Godwin Woodson profiled Rev. M.C. Clayton - “A Baptist preacher of power in Baltimore before the Civil War” - in The History of the Negro Church. For Documenting the American South, Bryan Sinche summarized the significance of the work and Clayton’s inclusion:

”Following the Civil War, the church took on a new, more important role in the black community. Church organizations and benefactors both domestic and foreign helped establish schools and churches to educate the newly freed blacks. Woodson argues that the church served as a Chamber of Commerce, educational facility, and a social center. Additionally, the ministry was one of the highest stations to which a black leader could aspire; the visibility and education available to the clergy was notable in a community that was often denied opportunity. To emphasize this fact, Woodson includes numerous short biographies of church leaders who were instrumental in the development of various denominations or were significant members of the religious community.”

Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s most significant legacy is as a founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Woodson co-founded the organization with Jesse E. Moorland in 1915.

The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History organized a two day conference in Baltimore in early April 1923, holding presentations and meetings at Morgan College, Bethel Church, the Douglass Theater, and the Druid Hill Avenue YMCA. Participating scholars included Professor Mason A. Hawkins, Dr. J.O. Spencer, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Dean Kelly Miller, Professor John R. Hawkins, Professor Leslie P. Hill and Dr. William Pickens. John R. Hawkins served as the president of the association and S.W. Rutherford as the secretary-treasurer.

According to an account in the Sun, goals of the 1923 meeting included: “a campaign for collecting facts bearing on the negro before the Civil War and during the reconstruction period “ and “to stimulate interest in the collection of negro folklore.”

1929 – 1954

Three years later, in 1926, ASNLH established Negro History Week - scheduled for February to coincide with the birthdate of Frederick Douglass (born in February 1818) and Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809). After a recommendation by F. M. Woods, superintendent of Baltimore’s black schools, the school board voted to observe “National Negro History Week” in black schools beginning on February 7, 1927, with the comment that the program would “contribute rather than detract from the regular work of the schools.”

Over the next several years, Baltimore public schools, Morgan State University and, later on, local libraries, museums and broadcasters began to use Negro History Week as a way of highlighting African-American history (although such programs often focused on figures and themes of national significance rather than focusing on Baltimore). Helen Whiting assistant supervisor of Negro education for the ASNLH led this expansion at a national level and, in Baltimore, by women working in city schools, like Vivian Cook, a junior high school teacher and Negro History Week chairman in Baltimore , that scholar Julie Des Jardins, describes as:

“one of thousands of frontline soldiers in the campaign to promote race history. She and her committee members created extensive lesson plans, radio spots, museum exhibits, library displays, and publicity to education the community about the African American past. Not surprisingly, her volunteers were also mothers and women educators in the local Baltimore environs.”

For example, in 1932, Dr. Carter G. Woodson spoke at Douglass High School. In 1934, Randolph Edmonds directed a production of “three one-act historical Negro plays” by the Morgan College Players on February 15 at Douglass High School for Negro History Week. The plays included “Attucks the Martyr” by Willis Richardson about Crispus Attucks, “Harriet Tubman—Black Moses” by Mae Miller, a teacher at Douglass High School, and “Nat Turner” by Edmonds himself. In addition to directing the plays, Edmondson volunteered as the president of the Negro Intercollegiate Dramatic Association. In May 1936, WCBM radio broadcasted a recording of a “Negro History Week” program. These efforts continued to expand in 1937 with the creation of the Negro History Bulletin (NHB) by the ASNLH. Julie Des Jardins writes that the NHB was:

“…a reader issued every month that elementary and secondary schools were in session. It contained pictures and short passages suited to younger readers… Within five years of the NHB’s first printing, its editorial board and writing staff were made up almost entirely of women writers and educators.”

The document of folklore and collection of oral histories also played an new, important role in the 1930s, most notably through the Works Progress Administration Slave Narratives program that collected oral histories in Maryland between 1936 and 1938. Here is the link to that publication.

As in the 1920s and 1930s, Negro History Week continued to serve an important role in promoting education and discussion of black history. By 1947, programs and exhibits for Negro History Week had expanded to include “an exhibit at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, portraying the Negro’s contributions to the world” and an exhibit at the Municipal Museum sponsored by the Harmon Foundation with “life-size portraits of leading American Negroes.”

In 1947, the Baltimore Museum of Art hosted a “Negro Art Show” and, that same year, the play “Deep Are The Roots” was presented to integrated audience at Morgan State College after the playwright refuses to permit production at segregated Ford’s Theatre. In February 1952, Martha Thurlow organized a talk on “Books for Negro History Week” along with a screening of a film “Booker T. Washington” at the Enoch Pratt Free Library Hollins Branch, located at Calhoun and Hollins Streets.

In 1953, Benjamin Quarles joined Morgan State University to teach as professor of history and the new chair of the history department. The website ChickenBones: A Journal summarizes the significance of his work, writing:

Quarles’ second book, The Negro in the Civil War, appeared in 1953, the year he moved to Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland, to chair the department of history. In this work he set out to show the deep flaw in the traditional picture of slaves as passive pawns in the fight against slavery. On the contrary, he asserted, 3.5 million African Americans had been major participants in the struggle for democracy, 180,000 of them working as soldiers, and the rest as orderlies, spies, and laborers.

“Milliken’s Bend,” said Quarles, “was . . . (near Vicksburg, Mississippi) one of the hardest fought encounters in the annals of American military history.” Its lesson was not lost on the Union high brass: “The bravery of the Blacks at Milliken’s Bend,” observed Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, “completely revolutionized the sentiment of the army with regard to the employment of Negro troops.”

In his next major work, The Negro in the American Revolution, Quarles enlarged upon the theme of black Americans as major players in their own search for freedom. He was the the first to cast any light at all on the topic of the African American contribution to the revolution itself. “Unlettered, they put very little down on paper. If they are to be understood, it must be primarily by what they did. Hence, especially in the pages of this work dealing with the Negro acting of his own volition, my approach has been to state the facts about his activities, indicate the documentary sources, and as far as possible avoid conjecture as to his unrecorded thought,” he continued.

After Quarrels retired in 1969, he continue teaching up until 1974 as a professor emeritus.

1954 – 1968

While research on the history of African-Americans and Civil Rights in Baltimore was limited in this period, Baltimore provided a home to scholars like C. Vann Woodward who taught at the Johns Hopkins University from 1946 to 1960. In 1954, Woodward wrote “The Strange Career of Jim Crow,” a work that was first published in 1955 and was a pioneering scholarly effort to fight the claim that segregation was a long-standing Southern tradition by uncovering the roots of Jim Crow in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Woodward’s combination of scholarship on African-American history and active involvement in the Civil Rights movement made a powerful impression on his students, including distinguished historian James McPherson who remarked in a 1999 interview:

“There is one thing that I remember pretty clearly from the very beginning of our contact. I came to Baltimore fresh out of college in September 1958. This was the time of the school desegregation crisis. At some point Woodward was called down to Washington to testify. That made a big impression on me. Here was a historian who had written about history of race relations, being called on for policy issues by the government. That sort of example of the interaction between past and present was not lost on me and taught me an early lesson about just how contemporary history is, even history of many hundreds of years ago.”

Journalists and scholars focused on public policy and civil rights played an important role in documenting and interpreting the history of the Civil Rights movement even as the events continued to unfold. In 1960, Edgar L. Jones and Jack L. Levin produced Toward Equality: Baltimore’s Progress Report summarized the past 10 years of Civil Rights history in Baltimore at the request of the Hollander Foundation. Also in 1960, Homer E. Favor produced his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Pittsburgh on the “The Effects of Racial Changes in Occupancy Patterns Upon Property Values in Baltimore.”, which covers the period 1947-1958.

Near the end of this period is when the Maryland Historical Trust formed in 1961.

1968 – 1976

Steven F. Lawson, writing in Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement (1991) noted that scholars, “writing about the movement in the late 1960s and 1970s focused on leaders and events of national significance. They conceived of the civil right struggle as primarily a political movement that secured legislative and judicial triumphs.” The accessibility of evidence supporting this approach steered Civil Rights historians in this early period away from focusing on the “everyday lives of ordinary people” prioritized by the emerging social historians. (p. 456)

In Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820-1860 (1964), Richard C. Wade includes some mention of Baltimore. In 1969, Margaret L. Callcott produces the landmark study The Negro in Maryland Politics, 1870-1912.

In October 1966, the Education Committee of Baltimore’s Task Force for Civil Rights released a report with “extensive recommendations on how Baltimore schools could improve their teaching of Negro history and the role of the Negro in modern society. In remarks before the 51st meeting of the Study of Negro Life and History, Mayor Theodore McKeldin stated:

”have given an increased emphasis on this integrated view of society, and our Department of Education has been able to make wide use of these materials.”

McKeldin continued to note:

“The vivid lessons of history—the many successes of the Negro people which are either unknown or vaguely remembered—are important tools in rooting out this evil and shaping the minds and hearts of this and future generations.”

Established in 1969, Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture (MCAAHC) is to interpret, document, preserve, and promote Maryland’s African-American heritage; to provide technical assistance to institutions and groups with similar objectives; and to educate Maryland’s citizens and visitors about the significance of the African-American experience in Maryland and the nation.

The early 1970s saw an unprecedented wave of new scholarly and popular publications on the topic, including the Bettye Jane Gardner’s “The Free Blacks in Baltimore 1800-1860.” (1974) Ph.D., George Washington University, 1974. Other more popular works published in this period included:

  • Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. New York: Atheneum, 1974.
  • Rose, Al. Eubie Blake. New York: Schirmer Books, 1979.

The limits of scholarship on African-American history that had been largely dominated by male historians was highlighted in experienced like that of Roslyn Terborg-Penn who began working on research related to the history of black women in the early 1970s after completing her undergraduate degree at Morgan State College. Terborg-Penn later observed:

“At first, some faculty at both Howard and Morgan discouraged me from pursuing my topic… When I gave a talk at Morgan State about a paper I was researching on black men and their views on women’s rights, one of the male professors, criticized me mercilessly for focusing on such an “unimportant” topic until Benjamin Quarrels reminded his colleague about the article on Frederick Douglass and the woman’s movement that Quarrels had published in the Journal of Negro History over thirty years before.”

1976 – 1994

Steven F. Lawson observed that, by the late 1970s and 1980s, a second generation of scholars “sought to reshape civil rights historiography” by rejecting the assumption that the civil rights movement could solely or primarily be “understood as a coalition of national organizations pressuring Washington to correct racial injustices” but instead “suggested that the focal point for investigation should shift to local communities and grassroots organizations.” (p. 457)

In recent decades, visual artists have created a number of public works in Baltimore around the theme of African American history and Civil Rights. In February 1984, artist Nathaniel Gibbs created a painting entitled “Frederick Douglass and the African-American Struggle” for the main lobby of the Frederick Douglass High School, 2301 Gwynns Falls Parkway. In 1990, artist Pontella Mason created a mural with images of prominent figures from African American history on the south side of a building at 1611 Carey Street.

In Baltimore, the National Register of Historic Places provided a new tool for celebrating and protecting African-American landmarks with the designation of Orchard Street United Methodist Church on November 12, 1975, Dorguth Memorial United Methodist Church (Scott and Carroll Street) on August 14, 1979, Public School No. 111 at N. Carrollton Avenue and Riggs Road on September 25, 1979, Cummins Memorial Church (1210 W. Lanvale Street) on October 31, 1979, the Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church and Community House on July 21, 1982, Perkins Square Gazebo on July 28, 1983 and Frederick Douglass High School (1601 N. Calhoun Street) on May 18, 1989.

Other related public history and historic preservation efforts began to gain ground in the 1980s. In Annapolis, the Banneker-Douglass Museum, named for Benjamin Banneker and Frederick Douglass, was dedicated on February 24, 1984. In 1982, the Maryland Historical Trust published a volume on Three Centuries of Maryland Architecture that included a chapter Voices from the Past: Black Builders and Their Buildings by George McDaniel. In 1989, the Baltimore City Life Museums and Baltimore Urban League co-hosted a conference on the Black Church in Early Baltimore.

Dr. Elmer Martin and Dr. Joanne Martin established the The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum in 1983 at a storefront on on Saratoga Street with the stated goals:

  • To stimulate an interest in African American history by revealing the little-known, often-neglected facts of history
  • To use great leaders as role models to motivate youth to achieve
  • To improve race relations by dispelling myths of racial inferiority and superiority
  • To support and work in conjunction with other nonprofit, charitable organizations seeking to improve the social and economic status of African Americans

In 1985, the museum received a $100,000 matching grant that enabled them to expand into their current location on East North Avenue in the late 1980s.

In this same period, the memorialization of Civil Rights history moved forward around the nation with the dedication of Maya Lin’s Civil Rights Monument in Montgomery, Alabama in 1990 and the opening of the National Civil Rights Museum at the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee in 1991.

1994 – 2015

In 1994, Maryland Historical Magazine published a special issue on the theme of “Civil Rights and Race Relations in Maryland”as part of a series on the Maryland Historical Society sesquicentennial. The introduction from editor Robert J. Brugger noted:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 established the Fair Employment Practices Commission and made equal opportunity and equality in public accommodations the law of the land. Few of us who were old enough thirty years ago to read a newspaper or watch television can forget the moral suasion and often violent reaction that went before this example of landmark legislation—whose promises we struggle to keep even today. This issue of the magazine, another Maryland Historical Society sesquicentennial special, explores what one might well describe as the most important theme in Maryland’s post-World War II experience—the civil rights revolution—and the larger, tangled issue of race relations in the state’s history.

Two of the three featured articles in the special issue focused on Baltimore (a third focused on Cambridge) including “We Shall Overcome, Someday”: The Equal Rights Movement in Baltimore, 1935-1942 by Sandy M. Shoemaker and Power from the Pulpit: Baltimore’s African-American Clergy,1950-1970 by David Milobsky. Shorter pieces categorized as Research Notes & Maryland Miscellany include Serena Johnson and Slave Domestic Servants in Antebellum Baltimore, by Frank Towers and Rumors of Rebellion: Fear of a Slave Uprising in Post-Nat Turner Baltimore by Sarah Katz.

At the time the editorial board included two faculty from Morgan State University, Rosalyn M. Terborc-Penn and Roland C. McConnell.

Local archives and museums have made significant efforts to maintain and improve access to archival collections related to African-American and Civil Rights history. The 1960 report Toward Equality: Baltimore’s Progress Report was re-published by the Maryland Historical Society in 2003 and, in February 2012, the Maryland Historical Society installed an exhibit of archival photography, Paul Henderson: Baltimore’s Civil Rights Era in Photographs, ca. 1940-1960.

The digitization of the Afro American newspaper through the ProQuest Historical Newspaper database and the Google News archive has opened unprecedented access to archival materials not available to previous generations of historians. The Maryland State Archives has digitized key sources including the “Coleman Directories” - “The First Colored Professional, Clerical, Skilled and Business Directory of Baltimore City” compiled and published by Robert W. Coleman annually between 1914 until his death in 1946.

Recent historic designations include Mount Auburn Cemetery on September 7, 2001, Union Baptist Church (1219 Druid Hill) on December 30, 2009). The Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation has recently listed two local districts in historically African-American neighborhoods: Sharp Leadenhall and Ashburton.

In 2001, Maryland Public Television and the Monumental Bar Association produced Color at the Bar: a program that examined how African American attorneys secured the right to practice law in Maryland. In 2004, Professor Larry Gibson donated a collection of photographs, pamphlets, speech transcripts and newspaper clippings by and about Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. to the University of Maryland Baltimore, Thurgood Marshall Law Library. This is one of several important collections acquired or donated to the law library in the 2000s. The library also hosts exhibits on the history of black lawyers in Baltimore and on the life of Thurgood Marshall. Between 2005 and 2007, Doris M. Johnson High School partnered with the Maryland Historical Society and had students conduct research on a range of Civil Rights related topics. One of the most recent programs to address these topics was the Baltimore ‘68 conference and related events organized in April 2008 for the 40th anniversary that “offered a close-up examination of the riots—their causes and the short- and long-term consequences.”

There have also been a series of popular publications that have made the 20th century history of the Civil Rights movement in Baltimore more accessible including C. Fraser Smith’s Here Lies Jim Crow: Civil Rights in Maryland (2008), and Antero Pietila’s Not in My Neighborhood (2010).

Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture opened in 2005. In 2010, Maryland established the African-American Heritage Preservation Program (AAHP) to identify and preserve buildings, communities and sites of historical and cultural importance to the African-American experience in Maryland.

Such efforts are not limited to museums but also included historic preservation. A 2010 article by John H. Sprinkle, Jr. — “An Orderly, Balanced and Comprehensive Panorama … of American History”: Filling Thematic Gaps within the National Park System —reflects on the challenges of creating a more inclusive interpretive framework for the National Park Service.

One of the most significant recent changes has been the emergence since 2005 of the concept of the Long Civil Rights Movement - articulated in the 2005 article The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall.