EASTON, Md. — Dale Glenwood Green, an assistant professor at Morgan State University, had been studying the historic churches on the Eastern Shore for several years when Carlene Phoenix asked him to study the history of the people in The Hill neighborhood.
Green combed through U.S. Census records and cobbled together historic documents linking the community to widely unknown facts that he found significant.
He sought the help of some 75 academics, archeologists and researchers from 11 institutions who worked separately and in silence for four years.
What they’ve unearthed through oral history, documents, and preliminary archeological findings were missed, or perhaps deemed insignificant, when The Hill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and again in 2005. But for Green, a 30-year-old professor who specializes in architecture and historic preservation, the findings are those of “disbelief.”
As an African-American, he finds it difficult to articulate his feelings because he and others will soon be able to accurately rewrite the American story of slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, segregation and Civil Rights among free Blacks and Whites on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
They’ve found a historic community of free Blacks that predates Treme’, a neighborhood in New Orleans, which had been recognized as the oldest neighborhood of free Blacks until now.
