Acting Governor Blair Lee, Opening Remarks from 
"Family, Community, Preservation: History, Sources, Methods."
Second Conference on Maryland History, 24 May 1978 
Maryland State Archives

     Mr. Haley, Rhoda Dorsey, Ed Papenfuse, ladies and gentlemen, and all of you history buffs, I want you to know I'm one of you.  A long time ago (and it was a long time ago), I majored in American history at Princeton, and at the end of my senior year, when we had all written our senior theses, I came off with something known as the C. O. Joleen Prize for beautiful writing in history.  And I'll tell you how I pulled this coup, because I was the envy of my competitors and it came pretty close to being dirty pool.

     I was born on a two-hundred-acre farm in what is now downtown Silver Spring.  This place had been originally acquired, and the house built, in 1842 by Francis Preston Blair, who was my great-great-grandfather.  Mr. Blair was a Kentuckian and a newspaper editor who was fetched up to Washington by Andrew Jackson when he discovered that all of the metropolitan press, then as now, was against him and he darn well wanted a paper he could call his own.  So Mr. Blair became the editor of the Washington Globe, which was sort of the administration house organ.  The paper thrived for quite a number of years, and Mr. Blair was very close to General Jackson and a member of the Kitchen Cabinet.  He ultimately ended up as Jackson's literary executor, and he had trunks and trunks and trunks full of original manuscripts that had never, apparently, seen the light of day.

     In the summer between my junior and senior years, when a young man is normally expected to light out for other and more interesting activities, I, with a view to this thesis that I had to write, took a notion to go look in those trunks that were tucked away in the second floor of an old stable that had been converted into a garage.  I got into those manuscripts, some of them quite hard to read, and I ended up spending the entire summer reading and cataloging and digesting all that material.  I found letters signed by six men who had been, or were, or were getting ready to be, presidents of the United States; it was a veritable treasure trove.

     So I ended up writing my thesis on the decline of the Jacksonian Democracy during the period leading up to the Civil War.  And with my access to all of this original material, it swept the field.  I mean the other guys tried hard but they were out of it from the word go.  So I came off with the Joleen Prize, and it's the only prize I've ever won for scholarship in my entire life.

     I really think it's wonderful that all of you have been here for these three days coming to grips with this array of interesting problems, and you've heard from some great people and you've got a great one coming up this morning.  There's nobody but nobody alive who has sent more people rushing to the genealogical records than Alex Haley with Roots.  He has made all America "roots-happy," and I think that's a tremendous achievement on his part.  It's good to have him here in Annapolis because he is a very busy guy; you'll be interested to know that he flew in from Los Angeles this morning.  This is the town where his ancestor, Kunte Kinte, first set foot on American soil‑‑right here in Annapolis, Maryland‑‑and so we share a little bit in the celebrity of it all.
     In the course of executing my official duties I get to hand out an extraordinary number of proclamations and awards and certificates of distinguished citizenship and all kinds of things like that.  But I've got some today that are going to knock your eyes out.  These are very unusual.  I think it is most appropriate to give to two gentlemen the strange, wonderful designation of Admiral of the Chesapeake Bay‑‑that's the State of Maryland's answer to a Kentucky Colonel or an Arkansas Traveler or whatever.  Now I have two large certificates here, making Alex Haley and William Warner both Admirals of the Chesapeake Bay.  I would say that they are both entirely entitled to the honor:  Alex because his ancestor got here by way of the Chesapeake Bay and Bill because he's gotten to know so many watermen.

     The certificates read:      “Whereas, the Second Conference on Maryland History, sponsored jointly by the Maryland Hall of Records Commission of the Department of General Services and Goucher College, is being conducted May 24, 25, and 26 at St. John's College in Annapolis; whereas the citizens of Maryland stand indebted to Pulitzer Prize winners William W. Warner,      author of Beautiful Swimmers, and Alex Haley, author of Roots, for their outstanding      contributions to the study of community and family through their writings and their      participation in the Second Conference on Maryland History; now therefore, I, Blair Lee      . . .” etc., etc., etc.  All under the Great Seal of the State of Maryland.

     Alex, friend, I want to give you one of these.  I'm sure you have collected hundreds of certificates as you roam around the world, but I bet you'll never get one as pretty as that.  Alex, great-great-grandpa may have come in the hold of the slave ship, but, man, you're going out an admiral!