Tag: racism

We owned property in Virginia and we owned property in Maryland, and unfree people were part of that chattel property at the time. There is very little left of the actual plantations in the state of Maryland, but surprisingly, there is a fairly large influence left behind. Our Bailey, Upshaw and Hillary ancestors lived in Maryland in the 1700s and claimed land plats that were very large in comparison to the quarter sections of land in the Southern states. We visited the Largo and Marlboro areas in Maryland to find traces of the former Largo, Meadows, and Beall’s Pleasure, and found essentially nothing like avenues of trees, brick houses or swanky pillars. Instead, we found parking lots, freeway onramps, and a toxic waste disposal unit. But the neighborhoods have traces everywhere, to wit—

Maryland is lousy with Beales and Upshers, with Largos and Marlboros and so on. The very scope of their plantations is astonishing—how much land they must have had in cultivation. Maybe it just seems big, under the parking lots, onramps, and Lowe’s shopping centers. But these plantations were veritable villages. They sprawled. And the markers today, the length of Old Largo Road, for example — it just keeps reappearing on the map. According to my measurements (and Google maps), the Old Largo Road, which was there before the newer Route 202 Largo Road, is more than six miles long. How much of that was within or alongside Largo itself? How large was Largo? I clearly have more exploration to do, but as one of the landowners in the area, Thomas Beall or Beale (Bailey) would have owned a piece or pieces of land that today would be worth millions. Many millions.

Meanwhile, history is underfoot in Maryland in other ways. How do you get to Baltimore from Burtonsville? You take the Old Baltimore Road.

You want a sandwich? Stop at the Sisters Sandwiches & Such, which used to be the Higgins Tavern, built in 1823, or go hiking in the Blue Mash , where the enslaved used to hide from their captors but now you can do some nice jogging or birdwatching. You can trip over history, traces of the past, if you’re not looking, and it’s everywhere, once you start to pay attention.

The plantations in Maryland were underneath parking lots, and in one case, a toxic waste drop-off facility, so you can no longer see what used to be. But then there’s the Three Sisters Plantation, which has become a housing development, and the main house has been clad in vinyl siding. It’s still there, but not. The Beale houses are gone but their neighbor’s place survived, from 1700s era—Darnall’s Chance was their closest neighbor, and that house remains.

I wish I knew what to say beyond, “This is weird, can you believe it? Look at this!” I joke with people about how they owe me back rent, as if I ever had a thing to do with that era, the ownership of these places, or the captives they enslaved.

But I grew up in houses that my parents owned, and my four siblings and I all went to college. We all went to Cotillion (ballroom dance and comportment classes) and learned to dance the foxtrot and waltz, how to sit and stand and wear gloves and greet our elders. We know how to be courteous in any social situation and which fork to use. We’ve been to the symphony, opera, and ballet, and know how to eat in a restaurant. We have books in our homes, and we enjoy learning. There’s a certain class awareness as well as race awareness in how we live our lives, some more than others. I believe these attitudes are inherited, taught along the way. My great-grandmother sneering at people who worked with their hands ripples down. We worry what people think of us. We don’t want to let down the side.

The privilege is real. I don’t know any other way. I don’t feel guilty about the life I live. I do feel that acknowledgement is vital. We got here because someone else did the work so we didn’t have to. We got here because someone else paid the true cost. It’s deeper than that, but I’m still thinking it over.

We left Georgia and crossed into South Carolina at the Savannah River, where one finds the boundary line, today. I looked on the Native Lands map and it said we were in Muscogee lands. I imagine it was Muscogee land back in 1830 but at that time, the John Dunn family had a plantation, and under their possession they also had a small group of enslaved persons — a middle-aged woman, a younger man, and four children, whose names have been lost to time. The Dunns gave their name — or took possession of — the local creek that ran through their property. Dunn Creek is findable on Google maps and it helped me find the land that had been under the Dunn family for at least a generation. More research on Ancestry helped as well.

We meandered way out some backcountry roads in South Carolina to a small town called Edgefield, which was the Dunns’ town, and then out some further backroads until we found the creek. I scooped up a little of the red earth near the creek and I spoke aloud the story. I wish I could have said their names but the folks are not even remembered by name, only by category — like possessions, like species, not like people, not like breathing humans with hearts. It breaks me to know how we are connected and affected so. I will be speaking these people’s names where I can, as close as I can get to the places where they lived.

We went onward to Abbeville, where other Dunns lived and enslaved people. We are here for the night, in a haunted hotel. We walked around the town square, and of course there is a monstrous white obelisk singing the praises of the glorious Confederacy, as in so many Southern towns. But there’s also this new sign, from 2016, acknowledging the harm of lynching and naming those who had died by lynching in the past century. That is progress. Abbeville is where the first call for secession came from, and where the last meeting before declaring the war lost took place. There’s a place called Secession Hill and a Secession Street. I think they should change the names because THE SOUTH LOST THE WAR. There is no glory in losing. Because you were wrong. You lost. You’re done. Own up and grow up.

I’m kind of over it. I wish they were, too.

I’ve only seen one Confederate flag, however, all along our journey so far, and that is also an improvement. Last time I was in the South, 2015? Those flags were everywhere.

But the past is also present. There are signs in the walls, under our feet. Trinity Episcopal Church in Abbeville was built before the Civil War, and stood through it, and stands witness to how many racist abuses? How do you call yourself Christian and hate your brother?

And who built this church? Slaves.

Who paved the brick streets here? Who made the bricks? Who cut down the trees and cleared the roads and built the houses? Enslaved people. You can’t touch a thing here without the hand of an unfree person having smoothed it for you first. Abbeville was founded in 1764 by Huguenots who left France for what? Capitalism. Cotton, lumber, rice, whatever they harvested, it was by the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved folks who died doing the labor in the sultry, diseased air of the Carolinas. Yellow fever and malaria? A scented handkerchief won’t save you. Try and stay hydrated?

I sound a little bitter. I’m bitter about the way people were brought here, about how America continues to treat Black and POC, women especially, and how hard White folks have made it for the most basic of human dignities for anyone not a White dude (believe Black women! Help find Indigenous women!). It’s not a new gripe. I’m probably repeating myself. I’m outraged and inwardly seething and I’m wearing out good shoe-leather to see what I can dredge from the past and bring to light. Whatever it is.

Thanks for reading.