Capital, September 5, 2004 (front page)

Is the aftermath of slavery still being felt today? By DIONNE WALKER, Staff Writer

It wasn't being summoned to "the great house" that alarmed William Parker, a 10-year-old slave near Davidsonville in 1832.

Rather, it was the strange white men he saw riding up, and the frantic reaction of the 70 or so men, women and children who made up his plantation family.

"All were crying and general confusion prevailed," Mr. Parker later recalled in his autobiography. "Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters were separated to meet no more on earth. A slave sale of this sort is always as solemn as a funeral ... the meeting no more in the flesh."

Though spared that day, young William was one of thousands of African Americans who were enslaved from the late 1600s through the 1800s in Anne Arundel County.

Judith Cabral of the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation estimated there may have been six slaves to a farmer in the county by the 1700s. At the height in 1800, 646 African Americans were held in Annapolis, she said.

Historians today continue to learn about the local slave experience, including differences in duties and freedoms that varied from city to farm.

But slavery's tremors are still being felt today, say the county's African-American leaders, citing problems centuries in the making, such as urban blight and persistent racism

Current problems with students' performance in county schools can be linked to centuries of forced illiteracy, and the unhealthy diets passed from slaves to their children are striking down modern African Americans, said Clemon Wesley, head of the RESPECT Foundation of African-American community groups.

Elsewhere, slavery's legacy is apparent in negative racial attitudes and seemingly biased hiring in Annapolis.

"Who do you think is cooking in the restaurants?" said local historian Janice Hayes-Williams. "It's the same descendants."

Arrival

At the dawn of the 17th century, Anne Arundel County farmers had too much land and too few laborers. The solution came from Africa.

Though historians haven't pinpointed when the first slaves arrived in Annapolis, records indicate the first city slaveowner died in 1700, said Jean Russo, a historian with the Historic Annapolis Foundation.

Assuming he owned slaves for years, enslaved Africans may have been in the region as early as the 1680s.

Ms. Cabral said back then, local farmers held large tracts in what was mostly wilderness. "There was a major labor shortage," she said. "It was the economics that drove the requirement for the slave population."

By the early 1700s, slaves were arriving from regions near the Senegal River and along the western coast. Contrary to Hollywood portrayals, Ms. Cabral said, slaves were not typically sold in mass auctions.

Rather, would-be buyers in Annapolis often staked out City Dock and boarded slave ships, buying the chattel right off the deck. In other cases, she said, interested parties attended sales at places including Middleton and Reynolds taverns.

"They were usually sold in smaller lots and individual sales," she said. "Some would be sold in groups of slaves, oftentimes listed by age and skill level."

Slave ships' arrivals were listed in advertisements in the Maryland Gazette, the forebear of The Capital.

A Sept. 29, 1767 ad announced the arrival of the Lord Ligionier with "a cargo of choice healthy slaves" from the Gambia River in Africa. The slaves were to be sold "for cash or good Bills of Exchange" on Oct. 7.

The late author Alex Haley used the ad to track down his ancestor, Kunta Kinte, who was aboard the Lord Ligionier. The discovery helped Mr. Haley write the best-selling epic "Roots," which became a famed TV miniseries.

Prime field hands, ideally males age 18 to 30, were the most valuable and could command as much as 50 pounds current money. Ms. Russo said that could have been three-times the annual income of a farmer.

Also valuable were English speakers.

"Slaveowners felt they had more control over their culture," Ms. Cabral said. "If they had a choice ... they would prefer the slave born here in the States."

From city to county

Historians say that unlike the cotton-pickers often portrayed in film, local slaves had different duties from season to season, city to country.

About 90 percent of slaves worked in tobacco fields concentrated largely in south county, Ms. Russo said.

During the warmer months, slaves typically planted, tended and harvested tobacco. In the winter, Ms. Cabral said, they cared for animals and handled farm maintenance.

"Rural slaves would get Sundays off to celebrate and attend worship services," she said. "Others would be required to go ... to their master's house of worship."

Slave life in the city was more varied. There, Ms. Russo said female slaves and children often did domestic work, while men served as gardeners, valets and tradesmen. Some men learned trades like blacksmithing and were rented out by their owners.

Urban slaves even had their own homes, which were extensions of larger households, Mrs. Hayes-Williams said. One example was the Seven Buildings community on South Street where slaves lived, while their masters and families lived separately.

Other urban slaves formed what Mrs. Hayes-Williams called the "black aristocracy" - well-spoken, polished servants who tended homes in Annapolis while their masters met in the State House.

"They wore the silks and the clothes of the mistresses and masters," she said. "Their lives were lived differently."

When the state struck down slavery in 1864 - a year after the Emancipation Proclamation, which affected only Confederate states - those slaves largely benefited. They were armed with marketable skills and street sensibility, and had no problem making a living, Ms. Cabral said.

Their frightened rural counterparts, meanwhile, had a harder time, many choosing to stay on the same plantation for generations to come. "Some of them had never traveled more than 10 miles from home," she said. "They were not even necessarily aware of what was beyond their own world."

Slavery's legacy

Slavery's impact reverberates today, trickling down to African-Americans' health care, education and even family life, Mr. Wesley said.

Long past the official end of slavery, he said, African Americans were barred from local hospitals.

Combine that with the fatty recipes slaves passed down through generations, he said, to get 2004's largely unhealthy community that doesn't like doctors.

"We've developed attitudes that cause us to shy away from preventative care," he said, pointing to high numbers of breast and prostate cancer in African Americans as proof. "Our attitudes are for remedies other than those provided by doctors, because our ancestors were not allowed to use doctors."

African Americans were also deprived of a good educational foundation, something that he said impacts county students today.

The county's 15,000 African American students perform at roughly half the level of their white counterparts on tests measuring skills in algebra, English, government and biology.

"If your great-great-grandparents couldn't read a book because it's unlawful, you don't expect their children are going to automatically start reading books every day," Mr. Wesley said. "The impact of that type of deprivation goes a long way down through several generations."

The ripples even reach to churches and social groups like the Masons and Elks, said Carl O. Snowden , an African-American community leader and special aide to County Executive Janet S. Owens.

"The fact that we have churches segregated by races, that's an ongoing legacy of slavery," he said.

But Mrs. Hayes-Williams said the main legacy of slavery is reflected in ongoing racism. She pointed to '70s urban renewal she believes stripped areas like Clay Street of thriving African American businesses and led to current urban blight there.

More recently, she noted last year's racial tensions in Annapolis High School. And just last month an African-American teen was beaten to death by several white peers, and racially charged fliers opposing the slavery reconciliation walk landed on city doorsteps.

The key to racial progress, she said, is acknowledging our society's racist tendencies and working to fight them. She lauded the Lifeline Expedition for organizing the walk and forcing Annapolis to face its racist past head-on.

"If there's any city that's in need of healing," she said, "it's got to be the city of Annapolis."

--- dwalker@capitalgazette.com