2024 Highlights
2024 | Our 5th Anniversary | New Projects | Learning and Teaching | Our Community | Statewide Movement
Learning and Teaching
Field Trips, Books, Films
To tackle this often-painful history, we engaged our members and the general public in fresh ways. Among our offerings:
​
In January, MoCoLMP members attended a screening of "Selma" at the AFI Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring—an annual event held by AFI on Martin Luther King Day, featuring a free community showing of a major film. Afterwards, we gathered to discuss the film.
​
In March, we went on a special tour of the Josiah Henson Museum and Park in Rockville. Diana Klein, the Education Program Manager gave the 20 or so of us a wonderful description of Henson's self-emancipation and the history of the grounds and the plantation that existed there.
​​
In April, members toured the 14-acre Hampton National Historic Site Farm and Historic Towson. The Hampton tour included the overseer’s house, the living quarters of enslaved people, and livestock barns. Owners of the farm and ironworks, which enslaved 500 people, were known for their cruel treatment, especially of those who tried to escape. Nevertheless, at least 80 courageous souls fled the plantation to seek freedom. Historic Towson is a historic Black community founded by formerly enslaved people from Hampton. ​Nancy Goldring, a descendant and member of the Baltimore County LMP hosted our group.
In July, we were treated to a tour of the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum in Annapolis. The museum traces Black history in Maryland beginning with the slave trade through the civil rights era and up to the present day. Among the many things our tour guides shared: After 1810, Maryland had more free African Americans than anywhere else in the U.S. But the state didn't end slavery until almost two years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and 222 years after the first enslaved people arrived in the state.
​
In December, 10 intrepid MoCoLMP members explored Old Town Alexandria’s Black history. On the manumission walking tour we learned about the highs and lows of their history, from seeing seeing the Franklin and Armfield Slave Pen—the site of one of the largest U.S. markets to traffic in human beings—to enslaved stepbrothers who self-emancipated via the Underground Railroad and free Black citizens who became very wealthy.
Throughout the year, members gathered over Zoom for our MoCoLMP book club. Participants had thoughtful discussions about a range of works, such as Kindred by Octavia Butler and the historical novel Black Cloud Rising.
