TASK FORCE TO STUDY
THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND
(Final Report) 1999/12/31
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY
THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND
(Final Report) 1999/12/31
MdHR 991422

MdHR 991422, Image No: 27   Print image (42K)

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18 I also wrote an article entitled "Abolitionists Free Blacks and Runaway Slaves Surviving Slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore." This article was written as a result of someone asking me about slavery. I presented the article in Philadelphia at a meeting to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. There were so many people at the meeting. They wanted to know had I run across any family names related to them. The idea was that they were searching for some information about their own families. Other than that, it's not there, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, that was it. Well the perception, as I stated before is that the Eastern Shore is basically "an outhouse." Nothing has happened on the Eastern Shore. Look at the history of Maryland. Maryland has always been divided and the Eastern Shore has simply been ignored. The Eastern Shore is neither as slave and black as Southern Maryland, nor as free and white as Northern Maryland. Just prior to the Civil War, 20% of the people were slaves and just fewer than 40% were black. However slavery still depended on several factors. It depended upon how many slaves were in the area; the religious factors of the individuals involved the political issues; and temperament of the overseers of slaves as well as their owners. The Eastern Shore was totally