Out of Town in Bawlmer

The post, "Abolition as a Self-Help Movement," has received a number of links. Hello everyone visiting via those links! Who knew all of my bitching and moaning had some wider interest?

Meanwhile, I haven't been writing because, first, I had to close out the first summer semester, and then I started this seminar series here in Baltimore. Both of these events really messed with my writing schedule, but at least the second has given me some material.

These seminars are fabulous, all about slave resistance. I am reminded of one of the reasons that this white, southern, suburban girl became interested in African American history. I had always felt that this was something secret, something I wasn't supposed to know or ask about in any great detail. Heck, I wasn't even allowed to watch Roots, when it first came on when I was in 4th grade, and was treated like a freak when I did watch it in reruns when I was in 8th grade. Naturally, prohibition made the subject more enticing. Every story, every statistic, every new approach that historians come up with still makes me feel like I'm learning something secret, exciting, important, and true.

I have to get back to reading, but I wanted to briefly share some images. I have gone over my Flickr limit for the month -- dammit! Before the photo gatekeepers shut me out, I was able to upload images of two of my favorite subjects in Baltimore.

First, Homicide: Life on the Streets:*

This is Broadway Pier, which served as the station house. The door there on the left side of the image still has the "Police" sign. One of my compatriots said that he imagined some poor schmuck getting mugged there on Thames St., seeing the "Police" sign, crawling over the stone street for help, only to find that the station is a relict of a t.v. stage set.

One of my favorite episodes featured this:
That is Edgar Poe's grave. That is, that is his second grave. The first was located in the same burial ground, behind the church that is to the left of the image. In the Homicide episode, Pembleton and Bayliss investigate a case in which human bones were found sealed inside of a wall in a brick row house. Pembleton -- ah! Andre Braugher! -- made the connection between the method of murder and Poe's grave across the street. There, they find a mysterious Poe aficionado; and you will have to rent the DVD of Season 4, Episode "Heartbeat," to find out the rest.

Of course, if you know anything about Frederick Douglass, you know that I went searching for places that he mentions in the Narrative:

This is the corner where Hugh Auld lived when Douglass first arrived in Baltimore in 1826. Hugh Auld was Thomas Auld's brother. Thomas Auld was Aaron Anthony's son-in-law. Aaron Anthony was Douglass's master. When Anthony died later that year, Thomas Auld, by virtue of his marriage to Lucretia Auld, inherited Douglass. Lucretia, by the way, died within a year of that transaction. Years later, after Douglass had named names in his published Narrative and then traveled to England to raise funds for the abolitionist movement, to seek a British (ultimately an Irish) publisher for the Narrative, and to escape enforcement of the fugitive slave clause, Thomas Auld sold Douglass to Hugh. Hugh then publicized his intent to re-enslave Douglass and sell him south.

The Garrisonian abolitionists based in Boston thought, "yea! What great publicity for our cause to have such an articulate and famous black man dragged back into slavery! What a wonderful way to expose the hypocrisy of slavery and the government that protects it!" Douglass began investigating the viability of a permanent relocation to England. Elizabeth Nichols, an English Quaker, gathered the funds and purchased Douglass's freedom from Hugh Auld.

The Garrisonians freaked, "this is granting legitimacy to the institution!" Douglass said, "thank you." You can see the Garrisonians' point. After all, buying a slave's freedom implicitly acknowledges the master's ownership of that freedom. They refused to in any way acknowledge that ownership. That was all fine and good for them to say so, but they weren't the person facing a return to a explicitly vindictive master in order to stand on their principles. This was one of the many things that drove Douglass away from the Boston camp (see also my responses to Digger in "Frederick Douglass on the 4th of July").

I got carried away there, didn't I? I do tend to go on. Getting back to the location of Hugh Auld's home, the picture above marks the location at the corner of Aliceanna St. and Happy Alley, now called Durham. All of the houses on that block seem (I'm not an architectural historian in any way whatsoever, so this is my wild-ass-guesstimate) to date to the period when Douglass lived there. That is, all of the houses except the Auld's:This lovely example of 20th century ugly seems to occupy the space of about two of the row houses that are typical of this Fells Point neighborhood. Here is an example of the neighbors:The homes are two rooms deep and two stories high, with an attic and a basement. I've lived in studio apartments with more square-footage. Douglass may have slept in the attic, or he may have slept with the little Auld boy for whom he was supposed to be a "companion." (I think "companion" actually means "babysitter.") That Auld boy may have slept in the same room as his parents, and maybe Douglass did, too.

In any case, these were close quarters (not that close quarters were unusual for anyone), and the neighborhood is very small and compact. I imagine that everyone knew everyone else's business, like in most small towns. This makes me wonder about the way enslaved and free black people had to behave, and the ways that they engaged in subterfuge, like helping one another disappear on a train headed to New York.

This also adds another dimension to the cooling of his relationship with the Aulds. In this spot, Douglass first learned to read from Sophia Auld, Hugh's wife. When Hugh found this out, he vociferously forbid the lessons. Douglass wrote that, after Hugh Auld forbid the reading lessons, "I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room for any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself." In such a tiny space, Douglass must have felt completely suffocated.

Douglass was sent back to Talbot County in 1833, then returned to Fells Point in 1836. By that time, the caste line that he had seen forming between himself and the Aulds had become quite definite. Part of the early sections of his autobiographies deal with his own growing awareness of his own status as "slave" and what being a "slave" meant. By 1836, he knew what being a slave meant, and Sophia and her children knew what being of the master class meant.

Between 1836 and 1838, he lived here, a teenager, pissed off about slavery with a fury to be free, in something approximating 800 square feet of space with people whom he hated. At the very least, he saw them as his natural adversaries. Sure, he spent most of the day away from them, and probably found other ways to legitimately stay away from them at night. Still, someone probably always knew where he was and what he was up to. This makes me wonder if the collective life of the enslaved and free black people in Fells Point had, in some ways, more methods of hiding itself than that of the slaves back at Wye House. Perhaps not more, but different.

Again, I go on. All I wanted to do was to share some tourist pictures.

*I would also visit scenes from The Wire, my other Baltimore obsession, but most of those places are a bit less tourist-friendly.