Historians at Bowie State University in Maryland recently completed a study of lynchings that occurred in the state of Maryland between 1854 and 1933. The study documented 40 lynchings in the state during the period.
The study notes that “lynching was one of the ultimate tools that whites used to keep African Americans in a positions of political non-existence and social and economic subordination throughout the South. It was the extra-legal means to enforce the color line when African Americans engaged in activities that were thought to have transgressed the informal code of social etiquette – including African American success or prosperity.”
The study, Strange Fruit in the ‘Free State’: A History of Lynching in Maryland, 1854-1933, was conducted by Nicholas M. Creary and two students; James Copeland and Sydney Lawson. Dr. Creary is an assistant professor of history and government. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and African Studies from Georgetown University, a master’s degree in U.S. history from the Catholic University of America, and a Ph.D. in African history from Michigan State University. Dr. Creary is the author of Domesticating a Religious Import: The Jesuits and the Inculturation of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 1879-1980 (Fordham University Press, 2011)
More information on the lynchings that occurred in Maryland can be found here.
