Page 3 - A Brief History of Racism and Health in So MD

· Slaves were kept from running away by extreme intimidation.
· They lived in cabins – as many as 20 in a single small cabin -- but often not as family units.
· They had little clothing. They might receive one set of clothes a year. They had rude shoes, if
any. There was often no clothing for children no matter what the season.
· They received course food — typically cornbread and occasionally salt fish.
· There were good masters and bad masters, but it was the overseer who ruled by the whip, intimi-
dation, and torture. Slave families were often separated, causing them great pain and anxiety. Fa-
thers could make visits on Saturday night.
· Female slaves were valued more than males, as they would bear children who were slaves from
birth, with the result that there were additional slaves every year or two. This was significant af-
ter the importation of slaves was banned in 1783.
· Sunday was a day off, but many slaves worked on Sunday to earn money.
· Slaves were often leased to others. Charles Ball, for example, was leased to the Navy Yard in
Washington, DC, at age 20.
· Slave owners would not only buy slaves but also sell them to slave dealers, who would often take
them south to sell them. Charles Ball walked from Calvert to South Carolina chained to 50 other
slaves. The journey took four weeks, during which he constantly dreamed of escape – and con-
sidered suicide.
· After working a full day, slaves gardened to supplement their diet. They had little meat or fat to
eat, and their rigorous work required additional nutrition.
As is readily apparent, the treatment of slaves was inhumane to the extreme.

Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Segregation

County populations

1800 1860 1940 1960 1990 2020 Black % in 2020

Calvert 8297 10,447 10,484 15,826 51,372 92,525 13.1%

Charles 9,018 16,517 17,612 32,572 101,154 163,257 51.0%

St. Mary’s 13,699 15,213 14,626 38,915 75,974 113,510 14.7%

Southern Maryland remained a rural agricultural area from the end of the civil war with little growth in
population. At the end of the civil war, and in spite of the Freedman’s Bureau, liberation for Blacks in
Southern Maryland and all of the South meant
❖ No house
❖ No job
❖ No food
❖ No access to health care and doctors
❖ Often continuing to work the land where they had been enslaved.

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