African American Folkways in St. Mary's County

Economics    |    Education    |    Health & Home Remedies    |    Religion    |    Values

folk·way [fōk'wā']
n. A practice, custom, or belief shared by the members of a group as part of their common culture. Often used in the plural - the ways of living, thinking, and acting in a human group, built up without conscious design but serving as compelling guides of conduct.

St. Mary's County has been historically one of the more "Southern" counties in Maryland in its racial attitudes.  This reality is reflected in the fact that African Americans, who currently constitute 14% of the county population and comprised the majority during most of the nineteenth century, have been largely neglected in the official histories of the county.  As the county that is the center of the 17th-century Maryland colony and site of its first capital, St. Mary's City, St. Mary's County has played a large role in the state's history and is the site of Historic St. Mary's City and other historical sites and museums.  Throughout its history African Americans have played a prominent role in the life of the county, but one would not know it from visiting the county's museums or reading its histories.  The Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions (UCAC) brought about a significant corrective step forward with the building of the African American Monument in Lexington Park, Maryland in 2000, and, hopefully, another advancing step with this book.

African American life in the county has been particularly affect both positively and negatively by the establishment of the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River, Maryland in the 1940s.  It displaced many African American residents and yet drastically improved their non-agricultural employment opportunities.  It has also recently contributed to a rapid increase in the county's population and development.  The oral histories that the UCAC has collected have served to capture what these twentieth century developments have meant to the African American community, and what contributions African Americans have made to county life.  Both the general public and the African American community need to hear from what has definitely been an "alternative voice" in the life of the county - a voice that has only in the last generation begun to feel "free" to make its views and contributions known.  Virtually all of our interviewees have been the product of a segregated community and have experienced a very rapid transition to the new order.  Their experiences and views need to be known and preserved.¹ 

Health & Home Remedies

Health & Home Remedies << Click to read more "... And if you were bleeding, one of my father's relatives, he used to say, "Put tobacco on it" and they would put–-fold tobacco and put that on to stop the bleeding ..." ~ Everlyn Louise Swales Holland

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Economics

Economics << Click to read more "... People see blacks as a financial risk. No matter what credit you have; no matter what property you own; no matter how your payment record is. Being Black makes you a risk...." ~ Clarence Smith [back to top of page]

Education

Education << Click to read more "... The first Jarboesville School was built. It was done by the parents. Children brought bricks. They had a brick contest, and they said some of the students were taking bricks out of their parents’ chimneys [laughter] to build this first Jarboesville High School!" ~ Elvare Smith Gaskin

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Values

Values << Click to read more In St. Mary's County, if I walk in a store and say, "Hello," You know, I'm going to have a half-dozen people say, "Hello" to me. It's just because it's part of our community. It's just, you know--. It's just the way it goes. You know. And in St. Mary's County, you're better off--. You'd much rather wave or say hello to somebody that you don't know than to miss somebody that you do [know]. . . I just wave going down the road. And [my friends] say, "Well who is that?" "I don't know. I'm not sure. It's just, you know, somebody." And, the people wave back. . . . ~ Alonzo Gaskin

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Religion

Religion << Click to read more And, every Sunday, we go to church. So, you could go one--no, five, four seats from the front, anywhere after that you could sit. And then, one Sunday, they had a rope. They had a little yellow rope come all the way across, and I didn't, you know, I didn't know. I said,--. Bea, you know, she was saying, "No, Emma. Come back. Come back. Come back here." I said, "Why? Why?" "Come on. Come on. Come on. Come back. Sit back there." So, we got out of church and she said, "No. That's for the White people." ~ Emma Hall

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1 In Relentless Pursuit of an Education: African American Stories from a Century of Segregation, 1865 - 1967 (Lexington Park, Maryland: Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions of St. Mary's County, Incorporated, 2006), Preface.