Breaking New Ground in Montgomery County

I am currently working as a Research Fellow with the Breaking New Ground project. Breaking New Ground is an oral history project dedicated to preserving the history of African American farm owners since the Civil War by collecting oral history interviews from Black farmers, Black landowners, and the descendants of those farmers and landowners. The interview recordings and transcripts will become a permanent part of the Southern Oral History Collection at the University of North Carolina.

As a Research Fellow it is my job to gather contact information for potential interviewees. I want my interviews to focus on the stories of Black farmer, landowners and their descendants located in historical Black towns in the DC, Maryland and Virginia (DMV) area. So far I'm having a blast doing so! I've taken a particular interest in Montgomery county Maryland and I've already located about a dozen of historical black towns and pocket within neighborhoods.


Ms. Hunter, a community member from  the Boyds, Maryland drove me all around Montgomery county Maryland pointing out all of the historic black communities that have just about vanished over the last 30 years. Just like in Gainesville, Florida there was a Lincoln High School dedicated to educating all the black students in the whole county of Montgomery. Because of this one school all the mzee in the county know eachother and have formed a bond that is incomparable to anything I've seen.

My grandparents are not that old. In fact both that are still living and in their 60s so when Ms. Hunter began introducing me to the community elders it was so amazing to be embraced as family. They are excited about this project as am. They understand the need and importance to preserve their community's history. The land that holds so much history is literally being bought from under them and the struggles that their ancestors  faced to acquire such land, keep it, and cultivate it, are being silenced by the million dollar houses that now sit on top of much it...