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Book African American Education in Delaware

Download or read book African American Education in Delaware written by Bradley Skelcher and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Chesapeake   Delaware Canal

Download or read book The Chesapeake Delaware Canal written by and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland s Eastern Shore

Download or read book A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland s Eastern Shore written by Carole C. Marks and published by Delaware Heritage Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book American Folktales  From the Collections of the Library of Congress

Download or read book American Folktales From the Collections of the Library of Congress written by Carl Lindahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume collection of folktales represents some of the finest examples of American oral tradition. Drawn from the largest archive of American folk culture, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, this set comprises magic tales, legends, jokes, tall tales and personal narratives, many of which have never been transcribed before, much less published, in a sweeping survey. Eminent folklorist and award-winning author Carl Lindahl selected and transcribed over 200 recording sessions - many from the 1920s and 1930s - that span the 20th century, including recent material drawn from the September 11 Project. Included in this varied collection are over 200 tales organized in chapters by storyteller, tale type or region, and representing diverse American cultures, from Appalachia and the Midwest to Native American and Latino traditions. Each chapter begins by discussing the storytellers and their oral traditions before presenting and introducing each tale, making this collection accessible to high school students, general readers or scholars.

Book Kent County

    Book Details:
  • Author : Patricia Joan O. Horsey
  • Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
  • Release : 2005-08-31
  • ISBN : 1439613060
  • Pages : 132 pages

Download or read book Kent County written by Patricia Joan O. Horsey and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2005-08-31 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kent County, Maryland, has retained its serene beauty and tradition despite the passage of time. Situated on a peninsula where the Chester and Sassafras Rivers meander into the Chesapeake Bay, Kent County boasts 209 miles of scenic shoreline. The rich history of the waterfront towns features the 1782 founding of Washington College, the only college named for George Washington with his express consent. Chestertown, the county seat, is home to Emmanuel Church, where the name of the Protestant Episcopal denomination was proposed and adopted in 1780. Tolchester Beachs many amusement rides will be remembered by generations of tourists and Kent County residents.

Book Old Kent

    Book Details:
  • Author : George A. Hanson
  • Publisher : Genealogical Publishing Com
  • Release : 2009-06
  • ISBN : 0806346329
  • Pages : 440 pages

Download or read book Old Kent written by George A. Hanson and published by Genealogical Publishing Com. This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Upshur County, West Virginia was created in 1851 from Randolph, Barbour, and Lewis counties. Upshur's early history and the lives of its more prominent pioneers and nineteenth-century Native Sons are ably captured in this tripartite volume. Part I, a condensed history of the state prepared by Hu Maxwell, ranges over everything from the first explorations of the Blue Ridge, the French and Indian War, and the Revolution to West Virginia geography and geology, formation of the state, and the Civil War in West Virginia. In Part II, Mr. Cutright lays out the history of the county, with emphasis on the Indian Wars, religious life, geography, formation of the county and its political and governmental institutions, Upshur County and Upshur countians in the Civil War, as well as a whole host of miscellaneous topics, such as turnpike and railroad construction, newspapers, financial institutions, the birds of Upshur County, and much more. In the final third of the volume we find an alphabetically arranged series of over 600 biographical/genealogical sketches of Upshur countians (some of them illustrated), which range from several paragraphs to several pages in length. In the majority of cases the subjects, who were mostly born around mid-century, are identified by their year of birth, the name of one or more parents, and the names of their spouse(s) and children. In addition, we learn something of each subject's career, military service (if any), and his/her movements to and from Upshur County. In short, given the book's 607 densely packed pages of historical and genealogical detail, this is the starting point for Upshur County research.

Book 100 African Americans Who Shaped American History

Download or read book 100 African Americans Who Shaped American History written by Chrisanne Beckner and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 1995-11-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amazing stories of 100 Black Americans who everyone should know—for kids eight and up Engaging and packed with facts, 100 African Americans Who Shaped American History is the perfect Black history book for kids! This biography book for kids features 100 easy-to-read one-page biographies: Find out how these Black Americans changed the course of history! Illustrated portraits: Each biography includes an illustration to help bring history to life! A timeline, trivia questions, project ideas and more: Boost your learning and test your knowledge with fun activities and resources! Discover artists, activists, icons, and legends throughout American history! 100 African Americans Who Shaped American History introduces kids of all ages to some of the most influential Black Americans from the very beginning of the country all the way up to present day. Learn all about the incredible lives and lasting legacies of figures like Harriet Tubman, Duke Ellington, Malcolm X, Mae Jemison, and many more!

Book Injustice on the Eastern Shore

Download or read book Injustice on the Eastern Shore written by G. Kevin Hemstock and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lynching rumors simmered as journalists descended on the small town of Millington, Maryland, in the spring of 1892. The frenzy focused on nine African American men and boys-some as young as fifteen-accused of murdering Dr. James Heighe Hill, who was white. Prosecutors portrayed this as retribution for the Christmas Eve slaying of Thomas Campbell, an African American, for which no one faced criminal charges. Hill's alleged assailants were tried as a group before three white judges. Although some were clearly bystanders, all but one were convicted and sentenced. Four were executed by hanging, and the rest died in prison. Using court records, contemporary accounts and newspapers, author G. Kevin Hemstock narrates the tragic and compelling story of justice denied on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Book Pan African Chronology I

Download or read book Pan African Chronology I written by Everett Jenkins, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-10-16 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1400s were a pivotal time in the history of Africans. The Songhai Empire rose to prominence and new city-states arose in Hausaland, Yorubaland and Benin. One of the most significant developments, however, was European and Asian exploration of the continent and the rapid expansion of the slave trade. By the end of the century, African slaves could be found from India to the Indies, and the foundation was laid for a peculiar institution that would last for over 400 years. From the time of the first European expeditions to Africa to the end of slavery in the United States, this work chronicles the most significant events in African, Pan-African and African American history. Many of the entries (e.g., Columbus' "discovery" of America and the death of Toussaint L'Ouverture) are supplemented by brief historical accounts that set the event in context. There are extensive see references to related happenings.

Book Encyclopedia of African American History  3 volumes

Download or read book Encyclopedia of African American History 3 volumes written by Leslie M. Alexander and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-02-09 with total page 1272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh compilation of essays and entries based on the latest research, this work documents African American culture and political activism from the slavery era through the 20th century. Encyclopedia of African American History introduces readers to the significant people, events, sociopolitical movements, and ideas that have shaped African American life from earliest contact between African peoples and Europeans through the late 20th century. This encyclopedia places the African American experience in the context of the entire African diaspora, with entries organized in sections on African/European contact and enslavement, culture, resistance and identity during enslavement, political activism from the Revolutionary War to Southern emancipation, political activism from Reconstruction to the modern Civil Rights movement, black nationalism and urbanization, and Pan-Africanism and contemporary black America. Based on the latest scholarship and engagingly written, there is no better go-to reference for exploring the history of African Americans and their distinctive impact on American society, politics, business, literature, art, food, clothing, music, language, and technology.

Book Blacks at Harvard

Download or read book Blacks at Harvard written by Werner Sollors and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1993-03-01 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of blacks at Harvard mirrors, for better or for worse, the history of blacks in the United States. Harvard, too, has been indelibly scarred by slavery, exclusion, segregation, and other forms of racist oppression. At the same time, the nation's oldest university has also, at various times, stimulated, supported, or allowed itself to be influenced by the various reform movements that have dramatically changed the nature of race relations across the nation. The story of blacks at Harvard is thus inspiring but painful, instructive but ambiguous—a paradoxical episode in the most vexing controversy of American life: the "race question." The first and only book on its subject, Blacks at Harvard is distinguished by the rich variety of its sources. Included in this documentary history are scholarly overviews, poems, short stories, speeches, well-known memoirs by the famous, previously unpublished memoirs by the lesser known, newspaper accounts, letters, official papers of the university, and transcripts of debates. Among Harvard's black alumni and alumnae are such illustrious figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, Monroe Trotter, and Alain Locke; Countee Cullen and Sterling Brown both received graduate degrees. The editors have collected here writings as diverse as those of Booker T. Washington, William Hastie, Malcolm X, and Muriel Snowden to convey the complex ways in which Harvard has affected the thinking of African Americans and the ways, in turn, in which African Americans have influenced the traditions of Harvard and Radcliffe. Notable among the contributors are significant figures in African American letters: Phyllis Wheatley, William Melvin Kelley, Marita Bonner, James Alan McPherson and Andrea Lee. Equally prominent in the book are some of the nation's leading historians: Carter Woodson, Rayford Logan, John Hope Franklin, and Nathan I. Huggins. A vital sourcebook, Blacks at Harvard is certain to nourish scholarly inquiry into the social and intellectual history of African Americans at elite national institutions and serves as a telling metaphor of this nation's past.

Book Maryland  2000

Download or read book Maryland 2000 written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Traces and Memories of Slavery in the Atlantic World

Download or read book Traces and Memories of Slavery in the Atlantic World written by Lawrence Aje and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-28 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces and Memories deals with the foundation, mechanisms and scope of slavery-related memorial processes, interrogating how descendants of enslaved populations reconstruct the history of their ancestors when transatlantic slavery is one of the variables of the memorial process. While memory studies mark a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, the book seeks to bridge the memorial representations of historical events with the production and knowledge of those events. The book offers a methodological and epistemological reflection on the challenges that are raised by archival limitations in relation to slavery and how they can be overcome. It covers topics such as the historical and memorial legacy/ies of slavery, the memorialization of slavery, the canonization and patrimonialization of the memory of slavery, the places and conditions of the production of knowledge on slavery and its circulation, the heritage of slavery and the (re)construction of (collective) identity. By offering fresh perspectives on how slavery-related sites of memory have been retrospectively (re)framed or (re)shaped, the book probes the constraints which determine the inscription of this contentious memory in the public sphere. The volume will serve as a valuable resource in the area of slavery, memory, and Atlantic studies.

Book Together Let Us Sweetly Live

Download or read book Together Let Us Sweetly Live written by Jonathan C. David and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Together Let Us Sweetly Live THE SINGING AND PRAYING BANDS By Jonathan C. David UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS Copyright © 2007 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-252-07419-6 List of Hymn Notations...............................................................................ix Preface..............................................................................................xi Map..................................................................................................xxi Introduction.........................................................................................1 1. Alfred Green (1908-2003)..........................................................................43 2. Mary Allen (b. 1925)..............................................................................59 3. Samuel Jerry Colbert (b. 1950)....................................................................75 4. Gertrude Stanley (b. 1926)........................................................................100 5. Rev. Edward Johnson (1905-91).....................................................................128 6. Cordonsal Walters (b. 1913).......................................................................149 7. Susanna Watkins (1905-99).........................................................................164 8. Benjamin Harrison Beckett (1927-2005) and George Washington Beckett (b. 1929).....................176 9. Gus Bivens (1913-96)..............................................................................197 Sources..............................................................................................209 A Note on the Recording..............................................................................215 Index................................................................................................221 Introduction IN THE EARLY YEARS of the twentieth century, according to the older people of today, many African American residents of tidewater Maryland and Delaware would, in late summer, set aside their tools, leave their cornfields just when the tassels on each stalk turned golden and the tips of each blade changed from green to brown, abandon their tomatoes when a soft blush of red appeared on the hard green fruit, allow, for a time, their beans and sweet potatoes and melons to mature on their own, and make their way by horse and wagon, by car, or by bus to a Methodist camp meeting to attend to their sacred work. Those who had moved to the nearby cities of Baltimore, Wilmington, or Philadelphia in search of the higher wages and the excitement that urban life seemed to offer returned home by land or by water, traveling perhaps on one of the ferries that plied the Chesapeake or Delaware bays from city to town, from shore to shore, and back again. If the camp meeting was nearby, some individuals, families, or groups of unrelated church members might attend nightly services and return home to sleep, to work the next day perhaps, but then steadfastly to make their way right back to that same camp meeting for the next night's service, and the next, until that camp meeting's final, cathartic day. During several of the old-time country camp meetings, however, many would unhitch their horses, arrange all the separate wagons into a circle around a wooden-roofed tabernacle, arch a sheet of canvas over each wagon, and stay right there on the church ground for the duration of the meeting. Women would bring baskets and cheese boxes filled to the brim with fried chicken, home-smoked ham, biscuits, cabbage, and green beans. Men and boys would dig up old pine stumps and pile them high on the campgrounds, to be placed on fire stands and set ablaze to give light to each evening's spectacle. In the heat of the summer, when the ground might be parched and dust might billow-when you couldn't even walk across the ground barefoot, it was so hot-everyone lived in the shade, and "everyone had a good time," as one person recounted later. For two weeks, an intense but relaxed, joyful, communal "laboring in the Spirit" manifested itself in a day-after-day pattern of an exuberant testimony service, followed by a rousing preaching service, followed at last by a climactic, regionally distinct Singing and Praying Band service. During this latter service, in a maneuver that scholars might refer to as a "ring shout," participants formed a circle with a leader in the center; singing and clapping their hands, stamping their feet, and swaying their bodies all the while, they slowly "raised" several hymns and spirituals to a raucous, rejoicing, shouting crescendo, concluding the meeting with an ebullient march around the entire encampment. Although these bands shocked some outsiders and reminded other observers of Africa, committed participants considered them to be the foundation of the church. Camp meetings were not unique to this area or to that time at the dawn of the twentieth century. Drawn by the heady combination of religious salvation and spiritual democracy advocated in these festivals, Americans of various backgrounds had been making such yearly treks to camp meetings for over a hundred years. Those early meetings gave form to a religious movement attuned to the ethos of the new nation. In the frontier areas of Tennessee and Kentucky where they began, camp meetings sponsored by various Protestant denominations became temporary sacred cities, places of equality of souls and social solidarity that tempered the struggle to survive in the wilderness. In the states of the upper South and in Pennsylvania, these meetings also thrived. Here, where the camp meetings were predominantly organized by Methodists, both free and enslaved African Americans participated in large numbers along with English- and German-speaking European Americans. Perhaps because of Methodism's original antislavery witness, in Maryland, for example, this denomination received most of the black converts, while in 1800, approximately one-fifth of the Methodists in Virginia were black. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, white and black people alike frequently attended the same religious services, though often in segregated and unequal seating arrangements. Yet that century witnessed a complex and powerful movement to establish separate religious institutions for black Methodists. First came the effort to set up separate churches for Africans. Eventually the Methodist Episcopal Church organized a separate conference for all black churches within its denomination. A related movement led to the founding of independent, African Methodist denominations. Finally, beginning before Emancipation but accelerating after freedom, a similar but less-remarked effort saw African American Methodists starting camp meetings of their own. In the mid-Atlantic region in particular, these large, outdoor, African American religious events were the meetings that the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's participants built and today's older people witnessed when young. These camp meetings continue even in the twenty-first century. The camp meetings that the old soldiers of today recall were not unique; they were merely one echo of the religious festivals that became a new secular democracy's first religious mass movement. Yet the old-timers of today recall, above all other things, those aspects of their camps that were unique. That is, they speak mostly about the Singing and Praying Bands, for whom the camp meetings in this area became the primary regional showcases; these bands made these meetings special. They tell of the prayer meetings from which the camp meetings originated. They speak also of the march around Jericho, in which the Singing and Praying Bands led those at the camp meeting in a grand march around the entire campground on the final day of the meeting. * * * The Singing and Praying Bands of this area were special not just for the generations of participants in the African American camp meetings of the Atlantic coast states of the upper South. The antecedents of the twentieth-century bands seem to have played a clandestine but significant role in the development of African American culture in general. Therefore, the bands can stake a claim as important forces in the cultural and social history of America as a whole. Here is how it happened. At the end of the eighteenth century, when enslaved Africans in this area began to take to Methodism in a big way, the process of culture building by which Africans of various ethnic backgrounds began to transform themselves into one people was well underway. Yet that process was still incomplete. The new African American identity became consolidated throughout the South only during the first half of the nineteenth century, when hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were traumatically sold from the states of the upper South to cotton-growing areas of the Deep South. In the eighteenth century, prior to this mass transfer of human property, there had been two primary centers of slavery on the Atlantic coast of North America: coastal South Carolina and the Chesapeake Bay area. The ethnic mix of Africans imported into the two areas differed somewhat, leading to the possibility that the emerging African American cultures of these areas might also have differed. Of these two centers, the Chesapeake area had the larger number of slaves. In 1790, of all thirteen states, Virginia had the largest population of Africans, with 305,493 people. Maryland was second, with 111,079. Virginia also had the largest number of enslaved Africans-292,627-while Maryland's enslaved population of 103,036 was third largest. These two states also had the largest population of non-slave Africans at the time. In 1790, nearly 53 percent of the African population and 58 percent of the enslaved Africans in the country were in the upper South, in the states of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The nearby black populations of southeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern New Jersey had extensive cultural ties to their brethren in the upper South. This area where the upper South meets the mid-Atlantic states seems to have been one of several areas central to the formation of African American culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among the Africans in America of that time, for example, those who lived in the mid-Atlantic region and upper South were pioneers in building specifically black institutions. In 1787, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others founded a mutual aid organization in Philadelphia called the Free African Society, initiating, in the words of W. E. B. DuBois, "the first wavering step of a people toward organized social life." Numerous other grassroots benevolent and mutual aid organizations sprouted up at this time, aiming to provide members financial assistance in case of sickness or death in the family. Under the leadership of Richard Allen in Philadelphia, a group of black Methodists established the Bethel African Church in that city in 1794. In 1816, Bethel joined ranks with other independent black Methodist churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Baltimore to form the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) denomination. In Wilmington, the denomination called the Union Church of Africans was established just prior to the founding of the A.M.E. Church. Along with new institutions, a distinctly African American expressive culture was emerging in the upper South and mid-Atlantic region at the dawn of the nineteenth century. In 1819, for example, a white minister named John Fanning Watson, who lambasted many Methodists for what he saw as excesses in their worship, gave us one of the earliest reports of a specifically black religious song tradition, writing that "the coloured people get together, and sing for hours together, short scraps of disjointed affirmations, pledges, or prayers, lengthened out with long repetition choruses." In the same paragraph, Watson's description of these sacred performances by black worshippers is strikingly evocative of outdoor singing circles that the Singing and Praying Bands continue to this day. This account predates by over twenty-five years the earliest known description of a ring shout from the Atlantic coast area of the Deep South. Another writer, a Quaker schoolboy from Westtown School outside Philadelphia, described black worshippers at an outdoor camp meeting in 1817 marching around an outdoor tabernacle, singing a spiritual chorus and blowing a trumpet, in a reenactment of the march around Jericho by Joshua and the Israelites that is similar to the march that the Singing and Praying Bands continue to do today. If we look at these historical references with minds informed by the bands of today, we can project the current tradition to have been already thriving two hundred years ago, in the early years of the nineteenth century. This nascent African American expressive culture articulated new belief systems that were forming among Africans in this area, also to a certain extent in the context of Protestant evangelism. Africans in America developed a variant of this branch of Protestantism that expressed protonationalist African American identity. According to this theology of resistance, African American Christians began to associate their experience in America with that of the Israelites in Egypt, and the person of Jesus took on some of the qualities of Moses, who would not fail to liberate the enslaved. It was to some extent in the religious meetings of the upper South and in the language of this distinctive African American perspective that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner situated their rebellions in Virginia. (Continues...) Excerpted from Together Let Us Sweetly Live by Jonathan C. David Copyright © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Book Integrating Delaware

Download or read book Integrating Delaware written by Annette Woolard-Provine and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The personal stories of lesser-known leaders in the civil rights movement remain unwritten. Moreover, the peculiar situation of the black middle class, which produced many of these civil rights heroes, remains largely unknown. The Reddings of Wilmington, Delaware were in many ways typical of their class in twentieth-century America. Their story is important because they were ordinary, hardworking people who strove for excellence and achieved success, and who for a moment in time, helped make a difference in their community and their country."--Jacket.

Book African Americans in the Furniture City

Download or read book African Americans in the Furniture City written by Randal Maurice Jelks and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Americans in the Furniture City is unique not only in terms of its subject, but also for its framing of the African American struggle for survival, civil rights, and community inside a discussion of the larger white community. Examining the African-American community of Grand Rapids, Michigan between 1850 and 1954, Randal Maurice Jelks uncovers the ways in which its members faced urbanization, responded to structural racism, developed in terms of occupations, and shaped their communal identities. Focusing on the intersection of African Americans' nineteenth-century cultural values and the changing social and political conditions in the first half of the twentieth century, Jelks pays particularly close attention to the religious community's influence during their struggle toward a respectable social identity and fair treatment under the law. He explores how these competing values defined the community's politics as it struggled to expand its freedoms and change its status as a subjugated racial minority.

Book Hirelings

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jennifer Hull Dorsey
  • Publisher : Cornell University Press
  • Release : 2011-04-15
  • ISBN : 0801461154
  • Pages : 229 pages

Download or read book Hirelings written by Jennifer Hull Dorsey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Hirelings, Jennifer Dorsey recreates the social and economic milieu of Maryland's Eastern Shore at a time when black slavery and black freedom existed side by side. She follows a generation of manumitted African Americans and their freeborn children and grandchildren through the process of inventing new identities, associations, and communities in the early nineteenth century. Free Africans and their descendants had lived in Maryland since the seventeenth century, but before the American Revolution they were always few in number and lacking in economic resources or political leverage. By contrast, manumitted and freeborn African Americans in the early republic refashioned the Eastern Shore's economy and society, earning their livings as wage laborers while establishing thriving African American communities. As free workers in a slave society, these African Americans contested the legitimacy of the slave system even while they remained dependent laborers. They limited white planters' authority over their time and labor by reuniting their families in autonomous households, settling into free black neighborhoods, negotiating labor contracts that suited the needs of their households, and worshipping in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Some moved to the cities, but many others migrated between employers as a strategy for meeting their needs and thwarting employers’ control. They demonstrated that independent and free African American communities could thrive on their own terms. In all of these actions the free black workers of the Eastern Shore played a pivotal role in ongoing debates about the merits of a free labor system.