This title and all historical archaeology titles are currently discounted in our Conference on Historical & Underwater Archaeology sale. Use code CHUA15 at checkout.
Today we publish Teresa S. Moyer’s Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare. The newest title in our Cultural Heritage Studies Series, Ancestors of Worthy Life examines historic preservation at Baltimore’s Mount Clare Museum House, the historically preserved colonial home of Charles Carroll, one of Maryland’s first senators.
Black history at historic plantations concerns more than slavery and freedom; it also tells the story of why blacks in the past are omitted at places with so much of their history to tell. Historic plantations exemplify the ways that racism changes and stays the same through the circumstances that enable black history to be revealed or hidden. Mount Clare in Baltimore, Maryland, offers a case study of how white history is told over the stories of black heritage. During Mount Clare’s management by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Maryland, black history and slavery were ignored in favor of white ancestry and the material evidences of whites’ ancestors’ societal prominence.
In her balanced discussion, Moyer examines the inextricably entangled lives of the enslaved, free blacks, and white landowners. Ultimately she argues that the inclusion of enslaved persons in the history of these sites would honor these “ancestors of worthy life,” make the social good of public history available, and address systemic racism in America.
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