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The Maryland History and Culture Bibliography

Floyd, Bianca. Records and Recollections: Early Black History in Prince George's County. Bladensburg, MD: Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, 1989.

Haley, Alex. "In Search of 'The African.'" American History Illustrated 8 (1974): 21-32.

Harrold, Stanley. "Freeing the Weems Family: A New Look at the Underground Railroad." Civil War History 42 (December 1996): 289-306.
Notes: The author examines conventional and scholarly interpretations of underground railroad by looking at the escape of the Weems family from the Chesapeake region of Maryland. By using the Weems family as a case study, the author challenges thirty years' worth of scholarship on the underground railroad. By examining a family that escaped from a border state, the author is able to explore both black self-determination and white assistance found in the records of this family's escape. In addition, the author examines a bi-racial network of non-Garrisonian abolitionists who raised money to purchase the freedom of slaves, or if that was not possible, to channel the money raised into effecting an escape plan.

Harris, Richard E. "Blacks of Maryland's Caroline County Thrive Throughout the Slavery Period." Journal of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society 8 (Winter 1987): 157-60.

Heinegg, Paul. Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware: From the Colonial Period to 1810. Baltimore: Clearfield, 2000.

Hurry, Robert J. "An Archeological and Historical Perspective on Benjamin Banneker." Maryland Historical Magazine 84 (1989): 361-69.
Notes: The author provides a survey of the Banneker family farm in southwestern Baltimore County. While most scholarship has focused on Benjamin Banneker's career and achievements as a mathematician, surveyor and astronomer, since the 1970s, scholarship and public funding have helped to illuminate his life as a land-owning farmer. The Bannekers were one of the first African-American families to own land in the Piedmont region of Maryland; Benjamin's father, Robert purchased one hundred acres in 1737.

Ives, Sallie M. "The Formation of a Black Community in Annapolis, 1870-1885." Geographical Perspectives on Maryland's Past." Edited by Robert D. Mitchell and Edward K. Muller, 129-49. College Park, MD: University of Maryland Department of Geography, 1979.

Jacob, Grace Hill. The Negro in Baltimore, 1860-1900. M.A. thesis, Howard University, 1945.

Jensen, Ann. "'Do You Know What I Have Been?:' A History of Blacks in Annapolis." Annapolitan 5 (April 1991): 36-42, 78, 92-94.

Kent, George Robert. The Negro in Politics in Dorchester County, Maryland, 1920-1960. M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 1961.

Kimmel, Ross M. "Free Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Maryland." Maryland Historical Magazine 71 (Spring 1976): 19-25.

Klein, Mary O. "'We Shall Be Accountable to God:' Some Inquiries into the Position of Blacks in Somerset Parish, Maryland, 1692-1865." Maryland Historical Magazine 87 (Winter 1992): 399-406.
Notes: The author examines the conversion of free blacks and slaves in Somerset Parish. While a 1664 Maryland law stated that baptism had no effect on the status of a slave, the Anglican church worked towards conversion of the enslaved. However, Christian education and baptism varied depending on individual slaveowners. In some cases, the enslaved themselves refused to be baptized. Evidence of African religious practices remained alongside the practice of Christianity.

Klingelhofer, Eric. "Aspects of Early African-American Material Culture: Artifacts from the Slave Quarters at Garrison Plantation, Maryland." Historical Archaeology 21 (1987): 112-19.
Notes: The author examines the objects excavated from the slave quarters at Garrison Plantation near Baltimore, Maryland. Various groups of objects represented early black material culture which reveal aspects of Africanisms. Archaeology is particularly useful for the study of Africanisms found in material culture as patterns of found objects may be compared chronologically and geographically.

Krech, Shepard, III. "Black Family Organization in the Nineteenth Century: An Ethnological Perspective." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12 (Winter 1982): 429-452.

Kulikoff, Allan. "The Beginnings of the Afro-American Family in Maryland." In Law, Society, and Politics in Early Maryland. Edited by Aubrey C. Land, Lois Green Carr, and Edward C. Papenfuse, 171-96. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Levy, Peter B. "The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland, during the 1960s." Viet Nam Generation 6, nos. 3-4 (1995): 96-107.

Levy, Peter B. "Civil War on Race Street: The Black Freedom Struggle and White Resistance in Cambridge, Maryland, 1960-1964." Maryland Historical Magazine 89 (Fall 1994): 290-318.
Notes: The author examines Cambridge, Maryland in order to gain a local perspective on the civil rights movement. The author sets out to understand the movement at the grass roots level, instead of focusing on national leadership and civil rights legislation. Cambridge has been consistently overlooked in studies of the civil rights movement, and the author wonders if this has been the case since events in Cambridge do not fit neatly into typical historical narratives of the movement.

McElvey, Kay Najiyyah. Early Black Dorchester, 1776-1870: A History of the Struggle of African-Americans in Dorchester County, Maryland, to be Free to Make Their Own Choices. Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland at College Park, 1991.
Notes: The author examines selected events relating to Dorchester County's black population between 1776 and 1870 and their struggle to make their own political, economic, religious, and educational choices. The author also focuses on the enslaved and free leaders who led the fight for self-determination. The author hopes that her text will be used in high school classrooms as a local history of black Dorchester County.

Millner, Sandra Y. "Recasting Civil Rights Leadership: Gloria Richardson and the Cambridge Movement." Journal of Black Studies 26 (July 1996): 668-87.
Notes: The author examines the neglect by scholars of civil rights leader Gloria Richardson. Richardson was not part of the established civil rights movement, nor has she been celebrated in the same manner as other civil rights leaders. The author examines the possible reasons for Richardson's marginalization in histories of the movement, which stem, in part, from scholars not questioning the language and the conceptions of gender and class used to describe Richardson in the press. Richardson also focused her attention on economic issues while the established civil rights leadership continued to focus on civil rights. She was also one of the first leaders to openly question the tactic on nonviolence. These additional factors also contributed to a lack of recognition of Richardson's role in the Cambridge Movement.

Morrow, Diane Batts. The Oblate Sisters of Providence: Issues of Black and Female Agency in their Antebellum Experience, 1828-1860. Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1996.

Nevile, Barry, and Edward Jones. "Slavery in Worcester County, Maryland, 1688-1766." Maryland Historical Magazine 89 (Fall 1994): 319-27.
Notes: The authors examine slavery in Worcester County, Maryland, before the American Revolution, in order to paint a different picture of slavery than that which is portrayed in popular culture, the large, gang-labor-based institution of the cotton South. Ultimately, the authors set out to identify changing patterns of slaveholding in the county before the Revolution. The increase in the use of slaves corresponded with the decline in the use of indentured servants.

Plummer, Nellie Arnold. Out of the Depths or the Triumph of the Cross. New York: G. K. Hall, 1997.

Rollo, Vera F. The Black Experience in Maryland. Lanham, MD: Maryland Historical Press, 1980.

Scalia, Rosalia. "Maryland's Freedom-Fighters: The Mitchell Family." Maryland 28 (February 1996): 34-36.

"Selected Readings on Afro-Americans and Maryland's Eastern Shore." Maryland Pendulum 5 (Fall/Winter 1985): 6-7.

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