A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland's Eastern Shore

A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland's Eastern Shore PDF Author: Carole C. Marks
Publisher: Delaware Heritage Press
ISBN: 9780924117121
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland's Eastern Shore

A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland's Eastern Shore PDF Author: Carole C. Marks
Publisher: Delaware Heritage Press
ISBN: 9780924117121
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description


Stolen

Stolen PDF Author: Richard Bell
Publisher: 37 Ink
ISBN: 1501169440
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This “superbly researched and engaging” (The Wall Street Journal) true story about five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice belongs “alongside the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edward P. Jones, and Toni Morrison” (Jane Kamensky, professor of American history at Harvard University). Philadelphia, 1825: five young, free black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home. Their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War. “Rigorously researched, heartfelt, and dramatically concise, Bell’s investigation illuminates the role slavery played in the systemic inequalities that still confront Black Americans” (Booklist).

The 1997 Genealogy Annual

The 1997 Genealogy Annual PDF Author: Thomas Jay Kemp
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780842027410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
The Genealogy Annual is a comprehensive bibliography of the year's genealogies, handbooks, and source materials. It is divided into three main sections.p liFAMILY HISTORIES-/licites American and international single and multifamily genealogies, listed alphabetically by major surnames included in each book.p liGUIDES AND HANDBOOKS-/liincludes reference and how-to books for doing research on specific record groups or areas of the U.S. or the world.p liGENEALOGICAL SOURCES BY STATE-/liconsists of entries for genealogical data, organized alphabetically by state and then by city or county.p The Genealogy Annual, the core reference book of published local histories and genealogies, makes finding the latest information easy. Because the information is compiled annually, it is always up to date. No other book offers as many citations as The Genealogy Annual; all works are included. You can be assured that fees were not required to be listed.

Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware. Second Edition

Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware. Second Edition PDF Author: Paul Heinegg
Publisher: Clearfield
ISBN: 9780806359281
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
In this second edition, Mr. Heinegg has assembled genealogical evidence on 390 Maryland and Delaware Black families (90 more than in the first edition) with copious documentation from the federal censuses of 1790 and 1810 and colonial sources consulted at the Maryland Hall of Records, county archives, and other repositories in Maryland and in Delaware.

Together Let Us Sweetly Live

Together Let Us Sweetly Live PDF Author: Jonathan C. David
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025207419X
Category : African American Methodists
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Together Let Us Sweetly Live THE SINGING AND PRAYING BANDS By Jonathan C. David UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS Copyright © 2007 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-252-07419-6 List of Hymn Notations...............................................................................ix Preface..............................................................................................xi Map..................................................................................................xxi Introduction.........................................................................................1 1. Alfred Green (1908-2003)..........................................................................43 2. Mary Allen (b. 1925)..............................................................................59 3. Samuel Jerry Colbert (b. 1950)....................................................................75 4. Gertrude Stanley (b. 1926)........................................................................100 5. Rev. Edward Johnson (1905-91).....................................................................128 6. Cordonsal Walters (b. 1913).......................................................................149 7. Susanna Watkins (1905-99).........................................................................164 8. Benjamin Harrison Beckett (1927-2005) and George Washington Beckett (b. 1929).....................176 9. Gus Bivens (1913-96)..............................................................................197 Sources..............................................................................................209 A Note on the Recording..............................................................................215 Index................................................................................................221 Introduction IN THE EARLY YEARS of the twentieth century, according to the older people of today, many African American residents of tidewater Maryland and Delaware would, in late summer, set aside their tools, leave their cornfields just when the tassels on each stalk turned golden and the tips of each blade changed from green to brown, abandon their tomatoes when a soft blush of red appeared on the hard green fruit, allow, for a time, their beans and sweet potatoes and melons to mature on their own, and make their way by horse and wagon, by car, or by bus to a Methodist camp meeting to attend to their sacred work. Those who had moved to the nearby cities of Baltimore, Wilmington, or Philadelphia in search of the higher wages and the excitement that urban life seemed to offer returned home by land or by water, traveling perhaps on one of the ferries that plied the Chesapeake or Delaware bays from city to town, from shore to shore, and back again. If the camp meeting was nearby, some individuals, families, or groups of unrelated church members might attend nightly services and return home to sleep, to work the next day perhaps, but then steadfastly to make their way right back to that same camp meeting for the next night's service, and the next, until that camp meeting's final, cathartic day. During several of the old-time country camp meetings, however, many would unhitch their horses, arrange all the separate wagons into a circle around a wooden-roofed tabernacle, arch a sheet of canvas over each wagon, and stay right there on the church ground for the duration of the meeting. Women would bring baskets and cheese boxes filled to the brim with fried chicken, home-smoked ham, biscuits, cabbage, and green beans. Men and boys would dig up old pine stumps and pile them high on the campgrounds, to be placed on fire stands and set ablaze to give light to each evening's spectacle. In the heat of the summer, when the ground might be parched and dust might billow-when you couldn't even walk across the ground barefoot, it was so hot-everyone lived in the shade, and "everyone had a good time," as one person recounted later. For two weeks, an intense but relaxed, joyful, communal "laboring in the Spirit" manifested itself in a day-after-day pattern of an exuberant testimony service, followed by a rousing preaching service, followed at last by a climactic, regionally distinct Singing and Praying Band service. During this latter service, in a maneuver that scholars might refer to as a "ring shout," participants formed a circle with a leader in the center; singing and clapping their hands, stamping their feet, and swaying their bodies all the while, they slowly "raised" several hymns and spirituals to a raucous, rejoicing, shouting crescendo, concluding the meeting with an ebullient march around the entire encampment. Although these bands shocked some outsiders and reminded other observers of Africa, committed participants considered them to be the foundation of the church. Camp meetings were not unique to this area or to that time at the dawn of the twentieth century. Drawn by the heady combination of religious salvation and spiritual democracy advocated in these festivals, Americans of various backgrounds had been making such yearly treks to camp meetings for over a hundred years. Those early meetings gave form to a religious movement attuned to the ethos of the new nation. In the frontier areas of Tennessee and Kentucky where they began, camp meetings sponsored by various Protestant denominations became temporary sacred cities, places of equality of souls and social solidarity that tempered the struggle to survive in the wilderness. In the states of the upper South and in Pennsylvania, these meetings also thrived. Here, where the camp meetings were predominantly organized by Methodists, both free and enslaved African Americans participated in large numbers along with English- and German-speaking European Americans. Perhaps because of Methodism's original antislavery witness, in Maryland, for example, this denomination received most of the black converts, while in 1800, approximately one-fifth of the Methodists in Virginia were black. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, white and black people alike frequently attended the same religious services, though often in segregated and unequal seating arrangements. Yet that century witnessed a complex and powerful movement to establish separate religious institutions for black Methodists. First came the effort to set up separate churches for Africans. Eventually the Methodist Episcopal Church organized a separate conference for all black churches within its denomination. A related movement led to the founding of independent, African Methodist denominations. Finally, beginning before Emancipation but accelerating after freedom, a similar but less-remarked effort saw African American Methodists starting camp meetings of their own. In the mid-Atlantic region in particular, these large, outdoor, African American religious events were the meetings that the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's participants built and today's older people witnessed when young. These camp meetings continue even in the twenty-first century. The camp meetings that the old soldiers of today recall were not unique; they were merely one echo of the religious festivals that became a new secular democracy's first religious mass movement. Yet the old-timers of today recall, above all other things, those aspects of their camps that were unique. That is, they speak mostly about the Singing and Praying Bands, for whom the camp meetings in this area became the primary regional showcases; these bands made these meetings special. They tell of the prayer meetings from which the camp meetings originated. They speak also of the march around Jericho, in which the Singing and Praying Bands led those at the camp meeting in a grand march around the entire campground on the final day of the meeting. * * * The Singing and Praying Bands of this area were special not just for the generations of participants in the African American camp meetings of the Atlantic coast states of the upper South. The antecedents of the twentieth-century bands seem to have played a clandestine but significant role in the development of African American culture in general. Therefore, the bands can stake a claim as important forces in the cultural and social history of America as a whole. Here is how it happened. At the end of the eighteenth century, when enslaved Africans in this area began to take to Methodism in a big way, the process of culture building by which Africans of various ethnic backgrounds began to transform themselves into one people was well underway. Yet that process was still incomplete. The new African American identity became consolidated throughout the South only during the first half of the nineteenth century, when hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were traumatically sold from the states of the upper South to cotton-growing areas of the Deep South. In the eighteenth century, prior to this mass transfer of human property, there had been two primary centers of slavery on the Atlantic coast of North America: coastal South Carolina and the Chesapeake Bay area. The ethnic mix of Africans imported into the two areas differed somewhat, leading to the possibility that the emerging African American cultures of these areas might also have differed. Of these two centers, the Chesapeake area had the larger number of slaves. In 1790, of all thirteen states, Virginia had the largest population of Africans, with 305,493 people. Maryland was second, with 111,079. Virginia also had the largest number of enslaved Africans-292,627-while Maryland's enslaved population of 103,036 was third largest. These two states also had the largest population of non-slave Africans at the time. In 1790, nearly 53 percent of the African population and 58 percent of the enslaved Africans in the country were in the upper South, in the states of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The nearby black populations of southeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern New Jersey had extensive cultural ties to their brethren in the upper South. This area where the upper South meets the mid-Atlantic states seems to have been one of several areas central to the formation of African American culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among the Africans in America of that time, for example, those who lived in the mid-Atlantic region and upper South were pioneers in building specifically black institutions. In 1787, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others founded a mutual aid organization in Philadelphia called the Free African Society, initiating, in the words of W. E. B. DuBois, "the first wavering step of a people toward organized social life." Numerous other grassroots benevolent and mutual aid organizations sprouted up at this time, aiming to provide members financial assistance in case of sickness or death in the family. Under the leadership of Richard Allen in Philadelphia, a group of black Methodists established the Bethel African Church in that city in 1794. In 1816, Bethel joined ranks with other independent black Methodist churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Baltimore to form the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) denomination. In Wilmington, the denomination called the Union Church of Africans was established just prior to the founding of the A.M.E. Church. Along with new institutions, a distinctly African American expressive culture was emerging in the upper South and mid-Atlantic region at the dawn of the nineteenth century. In 1819, for example, a white minister named John Fanning Watson, who lambasted many Methodists for what he saw as excesses in their worship, gave us one of the earliest reports of a specifically black religious song tradition, writing that "the coloured people get together, and sing for hours together, short scraps of disjointed affirmations, pledges, or prayers, lengthened out with long repetition choruses." In the same paragraph, Watson's description of these sacred performances by black worshippers is strikingly evocative of outdoor singing circles that the Singing and Praying Bands continue to this day. This account predates by over twenty-five years the earliest known description of a ring shout from the Atlantic coast area of the Deep South. Another writer, a Quaker schoolboy from Westtown School outside Philadelphia, described black worshippers at an outdoor camp meeting in 1817 marching around an outdoor tabernacle, singing a spiritual chorus and blowing a trumpet, in a reenactment of the march around Jericho by Joshua and the Israelites that is similar to the march that the Singing and Praying Bands continue to do today. If we look at these historical references with minds informed by the bands of today, we can project the current tradition to have been already thriving two hundred years ago, in the early years of the nineteenth century. This nascent African American expressive culture articulated new belief systems that were forming among Africans in this area, also to a certain extent in the context of Protestant evangelism. Africans in America developed a variant of this branch of Protestantism that expressed protonationalist African American identity. According to this theology of resistance, African American Christians began to associate their experience in America with that of the Israelites in Egypt, and the person of Jesus took on some of the qualities of Moses, who would not fail to liberate the enslaved. It was to some extent in the religious meetings of the upper South and in the language of this distinctive African American perspective that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner situated their rebellions in Virginia. (Continues...) Excerpted from Together Let Us Sweetly Live by Jonathan C. David Copyright © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic

Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic PDF Author: Michael J. Gall
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817319654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
New scholarship provides insights into the archaeology and cultural history of African American life from a collection of sites in the Mid-Atlantic

Delaware Naturalist Handbook

Delaware Naturalist Handbook PDF Author: McKay Jenkins
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1644531992
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
The Delaware Naturalist Handbook is the primary public face of a major university-led public educational outreach and community engagement initiative. This statewide master naturalist certification program is designed to train hundreds of citizen scientists, K–12 environmental educators, ecological restoration volunteers, and habitat managers each year. The initiative is conducted in collaboration with multiple disciplines at the University of Delaware, the University of Delaware Cooperative Extension, the Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN), the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (DNREC), the state Division of Parks, the state Forest Service, the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, and local nonprofit educational institutions, including the Mount Cuba Center, the Delaware Nature Society and Ashland Nature Center, Delaware Wildlands, Northeast Climate Hub, Center for Inland Bays, and White Clay Creek State Park. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Commercial Poultry Production on Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore

Commercial Poultry Production on Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore PDF Author: Solomon Iyobosa Omo-Osagie II
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761858776
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Commercial Poultry Production on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore traces the beginnings and development of commercial poultry production in this very important region. African Americans were mainly involved in poultry production on the labor supply side, which was crucial to the expansion of the industry. Commercial poultry production expanded through vertical integration, acquisitions, mergers, and consolidations and became the dominant economic activity on the Lower Maryland Eastern Shore in the 1950s. Throughout the years, the industry has intermixed with public health and the environment. These integrations were problematic on several fronts, as the industry sought to maintain a much-needed economic lifeline for the region and yet protect public health and ensure a sustainable environment at the same time. In all, commercial poultry production has continued to fuel the local economy of the Lower Maryland Eastern Shore since its inception in the 1930s.

Black America [2 volumes]

Black America [2 volumes] PDF Author: Alton Hornsby Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1573569763
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1031

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Book Description
This two-volume encyclopedia presents a state-by-state history of African Americans in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. African American populations are established in every area of the United States, including Hawaii and Alaska (more than10 percent of the population of Fairbanks, Alaska, is African American). Black Americans have played an invaluable role in creating our great nation in myriad ways, including their physical contributions and labor during the slavery era; intellectually, spiritually, and politically; in service to our country in military duty; and in areas of popular culture such as music, art, sports, and entertainment. The chapters extend chronologically from the colonial period to the present. Each chapter presents a timeline of African American history in the state, a historical overview, notable African Americans and their pioneering accomplishments, and state-specific traditions or activities. This state-by-state treatment of information allows readers to take pride in what happened in their state and in the famous people who came from their state.

Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895

Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895 PDF Author: Paul Finkelman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195167775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1556

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Book Description
It is impossible to understand America without understanding the history of African Americans. In nearly seven hundred entries, the Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895 documents the full range of the African American experience during that period - from the arrival of the first slave ship to the death of Frederick Douglass - and shows how all aspects of American culture, history, and national identity have been profoundly influenced by the experience of African Americans.The Encyclopedia covers an extraordinary range of subjects. Major topics such as "Abolitionism," "Black Nationalism," the "Civil War," the "Dred Scott case," "Reconstruction," "Slave Rebellions and Insurrections," the "Underground Railroad," and "Voting Rights" are given the in-depth treatment one would expect. But the encyclopedia also contains hundreds of fascinating entries on less obvious subjects, such as the "African Grove Theatre," "Black Seafarers," "Buffalo Soldiers," the "Catholic Church and African Americans," "Cemeteries and Burials," "Gender," "Midwifery," "New York African Free Schools," "Oratory and Verbal Arts," "Religion and Slavery," the "Secret Six," and much more. In addition, the Encyclopedia offers brief biographies of important African Americans - as well as white Americans who have played a significant role in African American history - from Crispus Attucks, John Brown, and Henry Ward Beecher to Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Sarah Grimke, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, Phillis Wheatley, and many others.All of the Encyclopedia's alphabetically arranged entries are accessibly written and free of jargon and technical terms. To facilitate ease of use, many composite entries gather similar topics under one headword. The entry for Slave Narratives, for example, includes three subentries: The Slave Narrative in America from the Colonial Period to the Civil War, Interpreting Slave Narratives, and African and British Slave Narratives. A headnote detailing the various subentries introduces each composite entry. Selective bibliographies and cross-references appear at the end of each article to direct readers to related articles within the Encyclopedia and to primary sources and scholarly works beyond it. A topical outline, chronology of major events, nearly 300 black and white illustrations, and comprehensive index further enhance the work's usefulness.