African Americans in Maryland

[citation needed] Mathias de Sousa was one of the nine indentured servants brought to Maryland by Jesuit missionaries, and was on the Ark when Lord Baltimore's expedition arrived in the St. Mary's River in 1634.

[citation needed] Matthew Henson was an American explorer best known as the co-discoverer of the North Pole with Admiral Robert Edwin Peary in 1909.

[citation needed] An historic plantation c. 1703, Sotterley has built itself into a premier location for exploring the complicated past of the region.

Sotterley Mission Statement: "To preserve our historic structures and natural environment and use the powerful stories of our land, lives, and labor to bring American history to life while serving as an educational and cultural resource.

"[citation needed] Sotterley Vision Statement: "To foster a better understanding of our world today by providing a living link to America's complex history and legacy of slavery.

Soon, the first African slaves were imported into the Province of Maryland by 1642 to develop the economy in a similar way to Virginia, with tobacco being the commodity crop, which was labor-intensive.

[4] Changes in the main commodity crops to others less labor-intensive alternatives after the American Revolutionary War led numerous slaveholders to free their slaves before or at the time of their death.

[5] The boys, denied education, were torn from their parents and sold South, to their lives as farm animals in the growing new territories of Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas.

Maryland was one of the key states in the Underground Railroad with cities such as Baltimore and Cambridge focal points for transported the fugitives further north.

[7] Maryland was required to pay black and white teachers equally by 1941, based on a case argued by Thurgood Marshall.

Laws criminalizing marriage and sex between white and black people were enacted in colonial era Maryland, and not repealed until just before the Supreme Court ruled on Loving v. Virginia in 1967, further reinforcing segregation in the state.

The continuation of support for Jim Crow and segregation laws led to protests in which many African-Americans were violently injured out in the open at lunchroom counters, buses, polling places and local public areas.

[12] While such protests continued in Maryland, by 1961, the Freedom Riders began rolling through the state as they headed further into the deep South, from Washington, D.C.