by David Baker | Aug 15, 2026 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights, Events, FeaturedEvent
The Caroline County Public Library and the Caroline County Historical Society are honored to welcome speakers Nicole King (University of Oxford) and Celeste-Marie Bernier (University of Edinburgh) for a program that explores the remarkable lives of the Douglass...
by Kennedy Thomason | Jul 26, 2024 | A.M.E. Church, Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights, Civil Rights & Racial Justice, Kennedy Thomason Project, Quakers, The River is the Center by Kennedy Thomason, William Still, Women
Introduction The Choptank’s waters, once pathways for the arrival and auction of enslaved African people, later became lifelines guiding daring escapes to freedom. Throughout America’s earliest years, Caroline County and the Choptank River bore witness to...
by Don Barker | Oct 11, 2023 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights, dbarker, Women
She was born free in Caroline County. He was born across the river in Talbot, enslaved. They followed separate paths to Baltimore. Anna met Frederick for the first time at the city wharves. He was 19, she was 24. Frederick was an enslaved shipbuilder. Anna had a...
by Don Barker | Feb 22, 2017 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights, dbarker, Schools, Women
The first woman president of the NAACP, Dr. Enolia P. McMillan, started her professional career as a teacher in Caroline County in 1927, when she taught at the Denton segregated black high school. The following year, she served as a school principal in Charles...
by Don Barker | May 22, 2014 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights, Churches, dbarker
Who made you free, young Alexander? Your enslaved father? Your freed mother? How were you free, Alexander? Free to sit beside the Tuckahoe, read holy books and toss pebbles into the water, listen to Aunt Hester’s screams on the other side? Free to walk away from...
by Don Barker | Feb 8, 2014 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights
Frederick Douglass wrote: “The old cabin, with its rail floor and rail bedsteads upstairs, and its clay floor downstairs, and its dirt chimney, and windowless sides, … was MY HOME–the only home I ever had; and I loved it, and all connected with it. ...
by Don Barker | Feb 8, 2014 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights
The Search for Frederick Douglass’s Birthplace Markers in the Landcape Douglass wrote: “[My life] began in the family of my grandmother and grandfather, Betsey and Isaac Baily. They were quite advanced in life, and had long lived on the spot where they...
by Don Barker | Feb 8, 2014 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights
The Search for Frederick Douglass’s Birthplace Markers in the Landcape Douglass wrote: “Down in a little valley, not far from grandmammy’s cabin, stood Mr. Lee’s mill, where the people came often in large numbers to get their corn ground. It...
by Don Barker | Feb 8, 2014 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights
The Search for Frederick Douglass’s Birthplace Markers in the Landcape Douglass wrote: “As I grew larger and older, I learned by degrees the sad fact, that the “little hut,” and the lot on which it stood, belonged not to my dear old...
by Don Barker | Feb 8, 2014 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights
The Search for Frederick Douglass’s Birthplace Markers in the Landcape Douglass wrote: “My master was the [overseer] on the home plantation of Col. Edward Lloyd; had overseers on his own farms; and gave directions to overseers on the farms belonging...
by Don Barker | Feb 8, 2014 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights
The Search for Frederick Douglass’s Birthplace Markers in the Landcape Douglass described the day his grandmother led him to Wye plantation, where he would begin life as a working slave: “The distance from Tuckahoe to Wye river–where my old master...
by Don Barker | Feb 7, 2014 | Black History & Culture, Champions of Freedom & Civil Rights, dbarker, Historic Sites Mapping
The Search for Frederick Douglass’s Birthplace Markers in the Landcape Frederick Douglass told a Baltimore audience in 1877: “I am an Eastern Shoreman, with all that name implies. Eastern Shore corn and Eastern Shore pork gave me my muscle. I love...
