News & Events

Founded in 1880, this historic community has worked to keep its community intact. Today, it is thriving.

New historic marker is unveiled on May 11 at the Edward U. Taylor School for Black children in Boyds, MD/

Learn about slavery, Jim Crow, and the resilience of the historic Black communities that came out of this history in Montgomery County, MD.

A historic Black community in Montgomery County, Maryland Hawkins Lane, Bethesda, MD. Photo by Neile Whitney 2025. Driving up Hawkins Lane in Chevy Chase, Maryland, still gives a sense of what this small kinship community must have been like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This kinship community was founded by James H. Hawkins in 1893, when he bought three acres of land that had in until 1867 belonged to a white farmer named James Hawkins. Residents in the late 20t

Martinsburg is the only historic black community in Maryland that still has a church, school, and Lodge Hall.

A historic Black community in Montgomery County, MD River Road School, circa 1930s. Archival photo courtesy of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) The River Road community of about 33 families ( (Roberts 2017) was about where the McDonald’s is now, northwest of Little Falls Parkway. The Clipper Lane and Dorsey Lane kinship communities were down the road a little way and across the street. Two acres of River Road belonged to John Burley, former

A historic Black community in Montgomery County, Maryland Macedonia Baptist Church, Bethesda, MD. The heart of the River Road communities: Clipper Road, Dorsey Road, Crows Hill In the 1900 U.S. census, John and Martha Clipper and their six sons and two daughters lived in Bethesda, Maryland next to George Clipper (his son? 27 years apart in age) and George’s wife Lucy and their three children. The adult men were working as day laborers. Apparently the census takers had stopped

The Rock Spring Club was one of the hotels that were built near the C&O Canal and employed local Black residents.

The River Road/Crow Hill community of about 33 families ( (Roberts 2017) was located in Bethesda, MD about where the McDonald’s is now.

Miller's Flats was a small residential neighborhood in Bethesda Maryland.

The Pine Top community on Riffle Ford Rd. was linked to the Brownstown community in Germantown.

Albert and Eliza Thompson’s two great-great grandsons, both of us pastors, were standing in the same cemetery where our ancestors were laid to rest. For the first time, the fifth generation of their lineage walked this hallowed ground. We represented the third generation born into freedom in the United States of America.

The Sellman community grew up between the farm they had been enslaved on and the train tracks.

The community’s first church, Potomac Grove Colored Church, was built on Violettes Lock Road in 1893 by a community formed by workers at the local stone quarry, near the C&O Canal.

Book talk, Jason Green, Feb. 23, 2026 at peoples books in Takoma Park, Maryland.

The Brownstown community was founded in 1868 by William Brown, who bought ten acres here.

A short history of the Big Woods historic Black community in Maryland the 1800s.

The historic Black community of Sugarland, was founded in 1871 in Poolesville, MD.

What happened to them? What could they do and where could they go when they had nothing, and may not have known where to go and how to get there? Learning about our historic Black communities in Montgomery County, MD.

You are warmly invited to join us at a panel on Saturday at the Poolesville library.