slavery – BAAHGS–Baltimore Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society

The enslaved black people of the 1960s who did not know slavery had ended

By AdminJul 07, 2018

Originally published May 16, 2018. By Ismail Akwei >> The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 which changed the status of over 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the South from slave to free, did not emancipate some hundreds who were slaves through to the 1960s.

Georgetown Memory Project

By AdminJul 07, 2018

Originally published April 28, 2018. By Terrence McCoy >> The search for the lost slaves began with a simple question. Every month for two years, Richard Cellini, founder of an organization looking for descendants of the slaves sold to save Georgetown University, had updated a spreadsheet. It showed consistent progress: More and more descendants were learning the truth — that the Jesuit priests running Georgetown had sold their ancestors in 1838 to two Louisiana plantation owners to pay university debts.

Common Place: The Lemmon Slave Case

By AdminJul 07, 2018

Originally published Fall 2013. By Marie Tyler-McGraw and Dwight T. Pitcaithley >> In May of 1837, William "Billy" Douglas, a prosperous farmer and landholder in Bath County, at the southern end of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, died. A man of large appetites and little schooling, he was well-adapted to Virginia's mountain frontier in the early nineteenth century and he acquired property and children with equal energy. His will, which he signed with an X, described his extensive acreage along the Cowpasture River in Bath County that included at least two farms, and 30 slaves, all of which he distributed among the thirteen children…

Slavery and the American University

By AdminJul 07, 2018

Originally published February 7, 2018. By Alex Carp >> From their very beginnings, the American university and American slavery have been intertwined, but only recently are we beginning to understand how deeply. In part, this can be attributed to an expansion of political will.