Content area
Full Text
WHAT FOLLOWS is a catalog of places in Baltimore where significant events in African-American history took place, but where no monument or acknowledgment exists. The original buildings may be gone, but their presence remains.
1 "TRAIL OF TEARS"
Afraid of an uprising, and to avoid conflict with Baltimore's large free black population working in the harbor, slave traders shipped the larger cargoes out of Fells Point. Slaves, chained together, were publicly paraded down Pratt Street at night from the 1820s until the 1840s. There is a persistent rumor that a tunnel was constructed under Light Street, connecting the slave jails to the cargo ships. Hope Slatter devised a unique method to transport his slaves: they boarded rented horse-driven omnibuses, becoming Baltimore's first example of "mass transit." Arriving in Fells Point, long boats would pick up the slaves and deliver them to the human-cargo boats anchored offshore. Frederick Douglass later recounted what he witnessed in the 1820s: "I lived on Philpot Street, Fells Point, and have watched from the wharves the slave ships in the basin. ... I have often been aroused by the heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our doors."
2 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
There is no known documentation of any of the safe havens constituting the "Underground Railroad" in Baltimore.
Slavery was never an economic foundation of Baltimore, incorporated in 1797, as it was in Maryland's tobacco-growing countryside. Nonetheless, Baltimore's earliest origins are linked to the existence of slavery and to its vocal opponents. Starting in the 1770s and continuing through the early nineteenth century, runaways followed the "Drinking Gourd," the Big Dipper constellation that points to the North Star. Many stayed in Baltimore, joining the ever-increasing numbers of skilled and semi-skilled free-people who had come to the city. In 1820, as the biggest urban center in the Upper South, Baltimore had the largest free black population in the nation. Slaves came in categories: lifelong, for a term of years, hired out or even living out (living independently but not freed). The city became a magnet for those seeking freedom, anonymity, and community support. Others continued north, walking, leaving by cart, boat, or train.
3 SLAVE JAILS
For decades prior to the Civil War, slaves were purchased,...