SALISBURY — Over the course of her nearly 40-year career as a professor at Salisbury University, Dr. Clara Small became known as one of the leading scholars and historians on African American history on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Years after her retirement from SU, Small is busy as ever: working on a soon-to-be released follow up volume to her acclaimed book “Compass Points: Profiles and Biographies of African Americans From the Delmarva Penninsula, Volume 1.”
Small, who is originally from North Carolina, calls Maryland’s Eastern Shore one of the most significant and important places in the country for African American history, but admits she becomes frustrated with indifference and ignorance to both the existence and the relevance of these stories from the general public.
Small sat down with The Dispatch this week to talk about the importance of preserving these local stories and figures and about the need for Black History Month in general.
Q: In Volume 1 of your book Compass Points, it’s written that African American history “has suffered benign neglect and has either been ignored or distorted to the point that it is virtually invisible.” Inadequate documentation is always the struggle when trying to chronicle history, but quantify how hard it is to chronicle African American history on the Eastern Shore of Maryland?
A: Luckily, the Eastern Shore has better documentation than most other areas because the most accurate and continuous records have started here and have continued. In Virginia in Eastville, and here in Salisbury, and as a result, some people have been interviewing people and researching these stories, and I’ve been interviewing individuals here for the last 30 years. So, it was very easy compared to other areas, and because Frederick Douglass wrote about lots of people and other people wrote about Harriet Tubman and their stories contain a lot of information about other people. It has been a labor of love working here because this is one of the richest areas in the country.
Q: But, after a lifetime of doing this work, it’s got to be a little frustrating when you start talking about African American history on the Eastern Shore and the conversation sort of derails after Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. But, as you point out in all your books, there are a lot more prominent African American historical figures from the Eastern Shore. Does it frustrate you that the conversation stops with Tubman and Douglass?
A: Yes, well, it stops, but it also starts. African Americans after slavery, and those who were not yet free, the first thing they wanted to do was find family and the next thing they wanted to do was to get an education and be literate. So, they began to write about their lives and other people started to interview them. The slave narratives talked about them, and the Freedman’s bank (in Washington DC) had information about family members. So, that has been helpful, and the Census has been helpful, but then you start talking to individuals about their families and finding out what they remember and what they remember about what their parents and grandparents told them, and church stories and histories. So, in some respects it has been easy, but there are still gaps. We are still trying to find a way to get that information in some kind of order, but while it’s frustrating, when you do find that information that links individuals with their past, it is like a bulb or a light that goes off.
Q: You and I have talked before about the idea that many of the African American stories weren’t told because there wasn’t much interest in them at least, at the level you were telling them. So, have you seen an increase in interest in African American history and does it directly correlate to the population growth and perhaps the diversity growth we have on the shore?
A: One of the problems is that some individuals don’t want their stories told for various reasons. But, sometimes it’s necessary to tell the story so the young people in the family can have some pride in themselves and their community and encourage them to do a little bit better. As more come into the area, they want to know about what happened here. The want to know who lived here, and what did they do, and what life was like, so they are starting to dig and dig. Twenty years ago, I don’t think too many people were that interested in the history here. I was, because I thought, ‘oh my gosh, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, I’m in the middle of all this.’
Q: Do you find that when people start digging, they are astonished with what they find and how much history they find?
A: Yes, they are amazed with Compass Points, and they are amazed by the number of (African American Civil War) soldiers who came from Somerset, Worcester and Wicomico counties — 1,284. We can document that. There were another 25 that we couldn’t say for certain (where they were from).
Q: To have that many black soldiers fighting for the Union army during the Civil War, especially where we are geographically speaking, so close to the Mason-Dixon Line, what did you find most compelling about the struggle for what those soldiers went through in the fight for their freedom in that war?
A: Some wanted to fight because they were promised their freedom. Others just wanted to fight for the sake of it. But, the other thing was, they were not allowed to do so until after the Emancipation Proclamation. And slaves in Maryland, as a border state, were never freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. The other problem was Maryland didn’t have enough soldiers. So, owners would be taxed if they didn’t free their slaves by a certain date, so how do you rectify that? Give the slave holders $300 for every able bodied male slave they freed over a certain age. Imagine a slave holder who owned maybe 30 able bodied male slaves (how much money that was).
Q: So, the Maryland government paid slave holders $300 per slave to free them?
A: No, the federal government did. Many people have no clue about the $300 and many people don’t have any clue about the struggle for slaves in border states to be free.
Q: So, equality and freedom came (literally) at a price?
A: Yes, at a price. It was as if you were owned by your slave master, and then owned by the federal government for the Union army. That’s taking it a step further, but comes out to be the same thing because they were basically sold to the federal government.
Q: And then when the war was over, they became free?
A: Yes and the owner had to provide specific paperwork to the government in order to get the $300. But, if they proved to be disloyal or they were sympathizers of the South, they never got that $300.
Q: We talk about that narrative of overcoming struggle in African American history. So, as you look at today’s generation and you look at what these historical figures fought against or worked through, what’s different and what’s the same when you compare today with a hundred years ago?
A: Today, on paper, you have certain rights that are supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Many young people don’t seem to understand what their rights actually are. They don’t like to read and understand the struggle that individuals went through to get them to this point. Lots of people died, not just blacks, but whites too, during the Civil Rights movement or the Civil War. They have no clue about it. They think that African American history is only about slavery and civil rights without understanding that there is a continuum. They don’t understand about reconstruction, or individuals who were lynched, or the Harlem renaissance or the fact that the civil rights struggle is still going on today. In other words, they aren’t being taught in schools and we aren’t just talking about public schools. In many respects, we are also talking about many of the colleges.
Q: There is a growing bit of rhetoric nationally about this idea of why should there be a Black History Month in the first place. Some have even gone as far as to ask ‘when is white history month?’ So as a historian, and as an African-American woman, when you hear conversations like that, how does that make you feel?
A: It makes me feel a little bit strange to know that people don’t really know their history. To put one person in a position, even as President of the United States of America, did not mean that things changed. This country has become more racist than it has ever been; not just overt, but outwardly. I’ve seen more racism recently than I could have ever imagined.
Q: Even during the Jim Crow era and segregation?
A: It’s just as bad. At least during the Jim Crow era you expected that. But, now it is just blatant. I never thought I would see an election this nasty, and mean and vicious and some individuals saying whatever they want to say with no reprisals. Why should there be black history month? To remember the past. There is very little in the history books about black people other than Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.B. Dubois and their conflict, Martin Luther King, and George Washington Carver. Other than that, very, very few blacks are mentioned, and there are more than those six or seven people.
Q: They say looking back into the history books can teach us not only who we are but also where we’ve been. So when you look back on this rich African American history on the shore, what does that tell you about where we’ve been and who we’ve become today?
A: It tells me that there’s a rich history, but it also tells me that in spite of all the problems that existed: the racism and discrimination, there were individuals who were fighting for rights and fighting for trying to make life better for themselves and others. In many instances, we’re talking about cooperation between the races. I think about something my parents and grandparents taught us: ‘look at the individual.’ Not their race, not their color, not their gender, not their religious belief, because once you get to know the individual you’ve got it made. Once you start putting everybody in a little niche, or a little block or a square, you’ve already lost part of the humanity of that person. Dick Gregory, the comedian and political activist once said, ‘a man who has no knowledge of history or heritage is like a tree without roots, and if a tree has no roots, it cannot stand.’ American history is a mosaic. It’s not just black and white, but when you think of all the groups that made up this country, and we are all immigrants except Native Americans, we still have work to do. I’m just trying to do my little niche, my little bit, to make it known.